At Thanksgiving, my father referred to me as his “hippie daughter who makes her own baby food.”

I’m okay with that, actually. I know my son is receiving good food prepared with love (ever read “The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake”?). I know what exactly he is eating, and more importantly, what exactly he isn’t eating.

I also started out (way back almost a year ago!) using cloth diapers. The problem became his growth spurts, however. I didn’t do my research particularly well, and by three months, Little Man had outgrown his cloth diapers. And we didn’t have the money to cough up to restock.

Enter Monday morning.

6 am – well, 6:22 am, to be exact, Little Man starts to cry. And it’s his unhappy-uncomfortable cry. I go into his room and lay him on his changing table. I can tell he’s soaked through his diaper, his onesie and his pajamas. I unzip his pajamas, and I realize that not only is he soaking wet – he’s covered in some sort of gel-like substance.

You know – like those “do not eat” silica gel packets that come in shoe boxes and boxes of things you order and have shipped to you?

Yea. That stuff.

It. Is. Everywhere.

I strip off his pajamas and onesie to find his (dirty) diaper has literally disintegrated overnight.

There are huge wads of this gel stuff all over my precious little son’s perfect body.

I run a quick bath and dunk him into the tub, rinsing everything off.

Poor kid – he’s barely awake and now he’s freezing.

This is what was in his pajamas:

I rediaper him, redress him in warm and dry clothes, give him a little bottle and he contentedly drifts back to sleep.

I am livid. What kind of diaper disintegrates? And worse – what was that stuff? (according to the diaper website, it’s perfectly safe. Uh huh. So is high fructose corn syrup…)

Last night when Keith comes home, I tell him (and really, I probably should have discussed it with him, but I didn’t) that I want to switch back to cloth now. We have the money to lay out, I’ve done WAY more research, and I don’t want my son’s penis to ever come in contact with whatever that supposedly “safe” gel stuff is again.

Ever.

Being the wonderful (or scared of me) husband that he is, Keith agrees.

So off I went this morning to our trusty cloth diaper store and stocked up. I loved using cloth diapers early on – and not ever running out of diapers or having to spend money on them each week is heavenly. I bought the Flip diapers and inserts, plus two bamboo diapers for overnight use. I can’t wait to get them prepped and ready to go!!

So I’m a hippie. I feed my kid homemade food (not just limited to “baby” food anymore) and he’s going back into cloth diapers – hopefully tonight.

Oh, and I’m seriously considering/researching raw milk. I went to the organic farm yesterday for beef and eggs and the farmer gave me a gallon for free. But don’t tell my family!! I imagine they’d freak out 🙂