The Road to "Crunchy"

Hopefully, I have successfully changed the name of this blog to "The Misadventures of a Newly Crunchy Mom".  We'll see if it worked.

For those of you who are not familiar with the term "crunchy" (as it applies to people), it refers to people who are into "natural" stuff, and I most often run into the term when it applies to parenting.  Home births, cloth diapering, co-sleeping with your children, breastfeeding into toddlerhood, "attachment parenting", babywearing, eating organic food, not vaccinating your children or delaying vaccines, making your own baby food, etc., etc.  "Crunchy" as in granola.  Not all "crunchy" moms practice all of these.  For example, Peanut is vaccinated (she just got shots today, as a matter of fact), and I can't afford lots of organic food.  And I don't eat granola.  Except in bar form.  And they're the chewy kind.  But moving on...

I was introduced to this lifestyle (I'll call it this though I think there's a better word somewhere) gradually.  It started with a woman at my church.  (You know who you are. :) )  She was certified as a midwife a few years ago, and she shared stories of her certification process as it went on.  It sounded really interesting.  So when I married Matt, I said, "Hey, is it ok if we use her whenever we have kids?"  Matt, being the open-minded and compliant husband he is, had no problem with this.  So I got pregnant three months later, double-checked that it was still ok, and got the thumbs up.  Then I found out she only does home births.  Ok, cool.  Checked with Matt, and his response was, "As long as we can get to a hospital if something goes wrong, that's fine."  Sweet!  So I started doing research on home births, and I liked what I saw.  So Peanut was born at home, in the very place my feet rest every night.  Turns out we did need to go to the hospital shortly afterward (I hemorrhaged badly, lost lots of blood).  But in spite of all that, I loved laboring at home.  Had I been at the hospital, I would have had tons of interventions that I did not want or need but are standard procedure at hospitals.  Even with everything that happened, I'm not sorry I did it.

Anyhow, doing the research about home births, I came across blogs and websites of crunchy-type people.  Through these sites, I was introduced to other "crunchy" practices.  I did a lot of research on a lot of topics and began to see the benefits, though without doing the research I would never have considered some of them.  Kids, babies, sleeping in beds with parents?!  HECK NO. NO WAY!!!  I worked in a child care center, for heaven's sake.  SIDS training for state-licensed child care facilities was mandatory.  Babies on their backs to sleep, in their own beds.  Hearing of babies sleeping with their parents in bed made me cringe inwardly.  However, I found there are ways of doing it safely.  And I'm reluctant to admit it because I had always been so against it, but Peanut does sleep in bed with us for part of the night most nights.  And that's just one example.

And Matt, once again the open-minded, compliant husband that he is, was agreeable to many of these practices.  I even talked him into cloth diapering!  Granted, cloth diapers have come a long way since my parents used them with me.  I do not have to rinse them in the toilet, for one thing.  Peanut is exclusively breastfed (even at 6 months old, another uncommon "crunchy" practice), and breastmilk poop rinses out in the washer.  And they make these cool diaper sprayers that hook into the plumbing of the toilet so you can rinse yuckier solid-food poop into the toilet without touching it.  There is no flipping way that I would ever put my hand in a toilet.  Eww.  But cloth diapers save so much money!  Sizeable investment up front, but one-size pocket diapers can be used from itty-bitty all the way through potty-training, and can be used for more than one child.  And they're super cute.  I forgot to put pants on Peanut last Saturday, but her lime-green diaper kinda sorta matched the shirt she was wearing.

Anyway, that's "crunchy" in a nutshell.  It's my second crunchy post in a row.  I promise they won't all be like this.  I will get back to posting stories and pictures.  In fact:

Next post:  more misadventures!