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Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Monday, Monday...so good to me?

Last night our family home evening lesson was a little chaotic. I woke up with good intentions for the day...kind of. Benjamin had been up screaming for most of the night. He's gotten very vocal lately so when he's upset he screams and when he's not upset he yells (this evening, for example, he happily yelled "Ah-la-la-la-la-la!" at the top of his lungs over and over until he suddenly fell fast asleep).

We've been battling diaper rash so at one point in the night I switched him from cloth to disposable so that I could slather his bum in cream. It helped a little, but he still spent most of the night tossing and turning in terrible discomfort. Still, I figured I could get up, take the kids for a walk in the cool morning air, do some laundry, make a plan for dinner, and so on.

Instead, I woke up, took Benjamin to the bathroom and panicked because it appeared he was peeing blood. I spent over an hour on hold, waiting to speak to a nurse, receptionist, anybody! When I finally did make an appointment it was only fifteen minutes from the time it was currently. I frantically threw a diaper bag together and dashed out of the house with the kids.

Miriam may or may not have been wearing a pink dress with blue flowers, a red skirt with white polka dots, and a pink belly dancing scarf. Whatever.


As panicked as I was, I knew it wasn't a life-threatening emergency. There was no fever and Benjamin seemed almost happy, now that he was awake. Turns out he only has a yeast infection. Go figure!

The bleeding wasn't related to his kidneys or bladder at all, just the diaper rash. We got some prescription cream and things are looking a lot better. I did some research and now I know that I've been treating his rash all wrong! I had no idea it was a yeast infection—it's my third child in cloth diapers but I've never had this problem before!

Creams and things aren't good for cloth diapers so I switch to disposables when my kids get rashy, just so that I can lather their little bums with ointment. When the rash clears up, I pop them back into cloth diapers and it's never been a problem. This rash, though, was relentless! I've been going back and forth from disposables to cloth for weeks and this rash keeps coming back with a vengeance.

So, apparently yeast will continue to breed in cloth diapers unless you kill it, hard core. It looks like I'll be boiling diapers and bleaching covers in the near future. (I'm still trying to figure out the best way to go about doing this.) And then hopefully the rash will stay gone. I don't even know how many times I've accidentally re-given Benjamin a yeast infection because I didn't know.

Needless to say, that impromptu trip to the doctor ate up my entire day. We had macaroni and cheese (and grapefruit and peas) for dinner before tidying up the house and settling down for family home evening. We learned about family trees and had each of the girls fill out a three-generation tree. Benjamin just "scribble-scrabbled."


He certainly does love to draw. Here he is this morning, very focused on his artwork:


I love when he gets down on his tummy to work.


He loves magna-doodles. We went to dinner at a friend's house on Sunday evening; we'd been there before so Benjamin knew where the toys were kept. The minute we walked in the door he took off across the floor and pulled the magna-doodle off the bookshelf where it's kept.

He would draw all day if I let him. And so would this girl:


I did manage to get them both out of the house for a little walk today. It was so hot, though, that we decided to head home before we'd even made it to the park.


Here's Miriam with her little baby doll:


I have no clever way to finish this blog post. It must be time for bed.

2 comments:

  1. Yuck on the yeast infection! Poor Benjamin! I try to add bleach when I wash my Bum Genius diapers once a month. I don't know how the others are to be done and I don't know if that kills everything. Good luck figuring it out!

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  2. I had a couple babies that would get them. At least now I recognize them so I can switch to the anti-fungal cream instead. They are such a pain.

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