Sunday, June 5, 2011

iPad to the rescue!

This past Monday, I gave birth to a perfect little 7 lb baby boy, E. Obviously, blogging has not been a high priority since, but I wanted to share how the iPad saved the day (or night, rather).

It was around 2am, and while feeding E I realized it was time for a diaper change when he was done. Then I realized that he was wearing the last of the disposables we'd brought home from the hospital, meaning that it was time to try cloth for the first time.

Then I realized that I'd never gotten around to learning to fold a cloth diaper.

iPad to the rescue! While he finished eating, I grabbed it from the nightstand and found folding directions, which really weren't that hard.

So we headed to the changing table, where I confidently folded the diaper and placed it in the brightly-colored diaper cover. I wrapped it around E, only to once again be confronted by my own ignorance. These covers are made to fit babies of many sizes, and thus are positively covered in several thousand snaps for adjustability. I had absolutely no clue which to snap to which to make it wearable.

I did my best, with a ridiculous-looking result that I really should have gotten a photo of. Whatever I'd done, it was not correct, but the diaper and cover were attached to the baby for now, at least.

By this time, E had made it clear that he was still hungry. So we sat back down and once again I grabbed my iPad while he ate. This search took a while, but I eventually managed to find a YouTube video explaining exactly which snaps fasten where. When E was done again, we went back to try to emulate the video - success! After an hour of trying, my baby was properly cloth diapered for the first time.

Without the iPad, this would have been a far more annoying process. The desktop computer lives in the same room the dogs sleep in, so using it would lead to their insisting they go outside at 2am. A laptop would have been unwieldy to juggle while breastfeeding, but the iPad is perfect. I can prop it up on my pillow and do all sorts of things - even write this blog entry entirely one-handed - easily and comfortably. It certainly made that night go much more smoothly!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad