Tales of a Sciencey Laundress

I don't know why this changed, but I have been extremely ill again... as in, approaching levels of illness I had while pregnant with Amelia.

The only clue I have is thyroid-related. I recently had a dose increase to get my lab results back into the normal range. I was sick enough that I experimented with not taking the thyroid to see if the nausea stopped... it did. Despite feeling obviously hypothyroid, I felt immensely better since I wasn't ill. I started taking it again at the lower dose and the nausea returned within hours. I felt AWFUL.

I felt so much better without the thyroid medication despite the hypothyroid symptoms that I am very, very tempted to just never touch the stuff again.

But then... there's Microraptor. Being purposely hypothyroid wouldn't merely mean having cold hands and feet and constantly feeling sleepy. It would just straight up be bad for little Dragon.

So I guess I should call up the doc or something and see what he says. Or maybe the midwives. Or both. I don't know. I could just cry. Even with chronically heavy eyelids and cold extremities, I just felt SO much better without the unremitting nausea or the extreme heat intolerance.

I wish I wasn't confident they'd tell me to take my thyroid medication anyway.

I take my medication at night so as to minimize nausea, but I could not sleep night before last because I was too hot, even with the air conditioner blowing straight at me. And then I began to vomit bile yesterday morning upon walking into the kitchen. I skipped the thyroid again last night, and again, I feel fine. If I think about it, I notice I am indeed a little nauseated, but obviously, it's not bad.

Sigh. Disturbing trend, this.

Moving on to a slightly less disturbing subject! Amelia's sleep habits!

Recently we got fed up with how Amelia's bed time has been creeping closer and closer to midnight despite attempts to put her to bed earlier. Thus, we began waking her up at about 7am every morning, napping her at noon, and putting her to bed at 9pm. Every day. The first few days went all right, but I could swear that now she is just as resistant to going to bed as she was before. Only change: she is now fighting sleeping from 9pm to 10:30pm instead of from 10:30pm to midnight. This is an improvement. I think. I'm not certain that waking up every morning (mandatorily, even!) is an improvement, though...

Anyway... were you wondering how the cloth diapering transition has been going? No? Too bad! I'm going to tell you.

Amelia likes the cloth ones just fine. She especially likes the cool prints on the covers, though at first she was really confused about why we were trying to put this fluffy thing on her butt instead of one of the disposable diapers. Once she figured it out though, it was great. Usually when it is time to put a disposable diaper on her butt, she runs away and plays hard to get. Most of the time with the cloth diapers, she'll just walk over and sit on the open diaper so we can put it on. We'll see if that continues once the novelty wears off.

[Caution: I am about to get really excited (and nerdy) about laundry. The entire remainder of this post is about laundry. You have been warned.]

Caring for the cloth diapers has been mostly quite simple, though I am still perfecting the routine, which has been less simple. I knew I would need to tweak the routine somewhat because of regional water differences and what my diapers are made of and the idiosyncrasies of this particular washing machine and such, but I am so surprised at how fulfilling I am finding it all to be. But after some thought, it becomes obvious why I am enjoying doing the laundry so much.

Troubleshooting. With science.

Guys, I get to use science. Science! I get to freaking use my brain! And my scientific training! And do practical experiments to test hypotheses! It is so wonderful! So fulfilling!

Laundry science has suddenly become a passionate interest. I can't believe I used to avoid laundry and put it off for as long as possible.Why didn't I ever figure out that laundry is fun? And that it stimulates the brain? Guys, laundry is like my favorite thing!

Ahem. I digress.

And the new detergent we got lots and lots and lots of... Oh my heck, I'm in love.

I never realized how much the smell of most commercial detergents bothered the heck out of me. That classic Tide smell makes me ill. And the new detergent cleans as well as... or actually, better than what I was doing before, even without the scoop of OxiClean and even without the bit of vinegar in the rinse cycle of each load. James' ancient and greying garments are turning white again.

Oh, and I just got some pit-stained white maternity clothes from someone in the ward. One wash in the new, gentle stuff and voilà! Pit stains gone. And that was one cold wash, mind you. Huzzah! (Probably the previous owner had viciously attacked those pit stains with a generous helping of bleach, which reacts with sweat gunk to make an even yellower, even more gross-looking stain...)

Oh, wait. Oops. Excuse me. I digress again. Ahem.

So far my adventures in getting the diapers squeaky clean have been exciting.

I started with the typical instructions: cold rinse no detergent (to rinse out any leftovers on the diapers that didn't get flushed down the toilet), hot wash with detergent, then a second cold rinse in addition to the one normally at the end of the wash cycle. All on "extra-large" capacity, even though the volume of stuff in there would normally call only for a small or a medium load. Theoretically having all that room to move about as well as the extra water helps gross diapers get ungross.

It was fine... only... well, a completely full load with all our diapers in it was rather underwhelming for our top loader. The spin cycle on extra-large was just too fast and every time it would get off-balance and I'd have to go move things around in there so that the washing machine could continue with what it was doing before it freaked out. Lame. Especially because each diaper load involves three spins.

So I switched down to the large cycle instead of the extra-large. That fixed the spin cycle issue. But then--doom! The diapers didn't smell clean after the washing was over with. Doom, doom, doom! Dang it, I did need all that water.

What I eventually did was designate one or two towels to always go into the diaper load and bump the water level back up to extra-large. That fixed the spin problem. And, it probably helps to agitate the diapers that there's a bit more stuff in there to rub against.

The only thing I really wish I could do that I just can't do... Line-dry those diapers, particularly any that have any hint of a stain left. That'd get 'em all beautiful and white. The ultraviolet rays from the sun do a marvelous job of breaking down any organic stains (poop, blood, tomato sauce, fruit juice, sweat, chocolate soy milk, weird yellow underwear stains, etc.).

Unfortunately... this is Oregon. Sunshine theoretically exists here, though, and therefore ultraviolet rays do supposedly make it down to the ground, even through heavy cloud cover. Even in rain or snow. (Though if the snow covers up the item you are trying to stain treat, doom.) In theory, this means I should be able to sun out the stains no matter what, though perhaps it would take a much longer time that it would in, say, Arizona. So I elected to try it anyway.

Worst thing I could possibly have done.

I live in an apartment. It is technically against our contract to leave any of our belongings outside our unit. Bum, grumble, grrr. In any case, pretty much everybody does so anyway, so I left three inserts out in the sun on the pavement in front of our door.

Then wind happened. Even if I clothespinned stuff to a line-drying rack, there is sometimes enough wind to knock that puppy over. Not only does that mean the stain is face-down and not getting any ultraviolet goodness... it also means that the entire item is now completely covered in horrible, evil tan bark. EVIL stuff, this. Think tiny, nearly invisible splinters that get stuck in your skin if you go walking barefoot. Now add these to a microfiber diaper insert.

Disaster! Pure, horrid disaster! This was a Velcro-like reaction. Neither the nearly-invisible bits of tan bark nor the microfiber cloth had any intention of letting go of each other. Ever.

I had the not-so-brilliant idea to just throw those three prickly inserts into the wash with all the others. Surely the agitation during the wash cycle would dislodge those suckers, right?

Um.

Well, yes. It did do that. Kind of. The end result was nineteen inserts covered in tan bark prickles instead of only three. I very thoroughly bewailed my error as I laboriously picked each sliver of bark out of those inserts with tweezers.

Now, you can surely understand why I've decided a nearly undetectable poo stain (that I can't even see except in certain light conditions) is infinitely preferable to even a remote possibility of an insert ending up in the tan bark again.

Feeling determined, though, I again reasoned that some ultraviolet light must filter in through our open windows, so maybe if I just dry those suckers in front of the window...

Eeeenk! Wrong again. I believe this may have worked someplace besides Oregon, in an apartment situated to actually ever receive direct sunlight through one of its windows. Seriously, we get about half an hour of direct sunlight through our back window. Kind of. There is a tree in the way.

Add to that inconvenience the fact that the ultraviolet bleaching process really only works on wet stuff, and the item in question just air-dries before any appreciable difference in the stain happened. Even adding lemon juice (sunshine + lemon juice + water = extremely effective stain eater) was not enough.

The only thing I haven't tried on this front is leaving an insert on the dash inside my car. Only Fred's windows are uber-dark. They were designed to live in Arizona. Fred does not live in Arizona. I suppose some UV would get through the dark glass, but I am not desperate enough to try this unless I have an evil, eye-blinding stain.

...Especially since the stain I was originally worried about has simply disappeared after a few more washes. It may have helped that I switched from cold rinses to warm rinses. In theory, a stain is easier to get out at the temperature at which it originated. Obviously, poo and pee were originally body temperature, which is almost exactly the same temperature as the water on the warm cycle. This discovery was especially prudent given the hydrophobic nature of microfiber and the oleophilic nature of toddler poop. Perhaps cold rinses would have been sufficient if we had spent twice as much and gotten the more hydrophilic hemp/cotton inserts instead.

Enough about diapers, then, I suppose.

But, ohemgee. I just have to digress into another laundry subject. I just cleaned all our towels. They'd been smelling perpetually musty, as had our washing machine, no matter what I did. Well, the new detergent got the washing machine smelling clean again, so I tried it on the towels. GUYS, MY TOWELS NOW SMELL LIKE HAPPINESS! That is all. I promise not to go on any more laundry tangents for the remainder of this blog post.

...Perhaps this goal would be attainable if I stopped writing now.

Longing for the day I have an extensive backyard (without evil tan bark) with lots of space for line-drying laundry and gardening and taking over the world in general,
Jenna
and Amelia
and Dragon

P.S. Anyone in the Eugene/Springfield area interested in a mostly full thingy of Clorox 2 and a boatload of fabric softener sheets? And maybe some Shout stain remover? I do not think I will be using them again.
P.P.S. Donations of baby boy clothes are totally welcome. Also, this would give me an excuse to do laundry.