Hippie parenting decisions I made for totally non-hippie reasons

I am not anyone's idea of a "hippie." I don't get my knickers in a jumble about the environment; I'm not that concerned about the quantity of pesticides on my food; I have a lot of trust in modern medicine; I don't immediately cast out anything that might potentially be the very slightest bit carcinogenic ... and yet, there are some decisions I've made in regards to my child that would beg to differ. 

... Until I tell you why I made the decisions. Then you will see that I'm just as big of an idiot as you thought I was the whole time.

I hired a doula for my natural childbirth

As for why I opted for a natural childbirth in the first place, that is a story for another day (and is actually a post I'm working on for the longer term, with lots of unique drawings and unrepeatable language). The issue in question here is my hiring of a doula.

Now, for those who don't know, a "doula" is like a midwife only even hippier. A midwife is someone trained in delivering babies without medical intervention -- so basically like an obstetrician except they aren't actually MDs and they can't give you a C-section. A doula, on the other hand, is someone who sits with you while you are in labor, singing "kumbaya" and holding your hand and telling you to "feel the power of the sisterhood!" 

Okay, actually, a doula is this: 

So doulas are not doctors, and don't have medical training at all. They are literally labor cheerleaders, there for support only.

Originally, I wasn't going to hire a doula for my labor, because clearly doulas are only for people like this:

But then some smart people reminded me of something: natural labor is hard, and there are a lot of coping mechanisms, relaxation techniques, and breathing exercises that can be done to help manage the pain. Can I really expect my labor support team of Jesse and my Mom to remember all of them and suggest them to me when I'm in a lot of pain and can't keep track of them myself?

Ummm ... I love Jesse and my mom a lot, but put them in a room together and it's like:

So, for what stupid reason did I actually hire a doula?

To be a human textbook.

After all, why study for a test when you can just hire the nerdy kid to whisper all the answers to you? My doula was awesome at that shit, and she was worth every penny. 

Hippie points awarded: zero.

I cloth diaper my baby

Cloth diapering is great for the environment. It keeps all those billions of disposable diapers out of landfills, which is important because it takes a disposable diaper longer to decompose than it took for the dinosaur bones to turn into petroleum or whatever.*

* totally invented this fact but here is a dinosaur wearing a diaper: 

Cloth diapering is also cheaper in the long run. Sure, the diapers can be expensive at first, but when you think about the cost to keep a kid in disposable diapers for 2+ full years, the math turns around pretty fast. And if you're planning on having more than one kid? Forget it. Cloth diapers clown on that math.

One of these days I need to put together a post that is nothing but all the f***ed up terrifying clowns I've drawn for this blog thus far.

However, neither of these are the real reason why I decided on cloth diapers. The environment? F*** it, it's already doomed. Money? Ehhh, okay, yeah, but how much is my time worth? It takes a lot of laundry to keep those cloth diapers clean.

The real reason I decided to cloth diaper?

To avoid poop blowouts.

As we've previously discussed, a blowout is when baby poops so aggressively that it shoots up and out of the waistband of the diaper, getting all over baby's clothing, back, and even sometimes hair. 

A blowout is a f***ing disaster when it happens. Trying to get the poopy clothing off without getting poop EVERYWHERE is almost impossible. And if the blowout is really bad, then the baby will need a bath to clean it all up. This takes a lot of time, is gross, and is the Worst Thing Ever if it happens in a public place. And for kids in disposable diapers, it happens all. the. time. 

Especially when they start solid foods and their stomach is like "whoa, wtf? Let's diarrhea!"

But cloth diapers are big and have elastic waistbands. Do you know how many poop blowouts Audrey has had in cloth dipes? ZERO. F***ING ZERO.

Every blowout she has ever had has occurred while she was wearing a disposable.

So there you go -- cloth diapers for the win.

Hippie points awarded: zero.

I feed her homemade baby food

This one's a no-brainer too. Everything in the grocery store is full of pesticides, and the Gerber corporation has one goal and that is to kill your baby and also give it cancer.

Therefore, the best thing to do is to make your own baby food out of nothing but the freshest organic ingredients. This plan is also slightly cheaper over the long run.

But ... I don't really care about the Gerber corporation's goals in regards to my child. I don't think the tiny bit of preservative they add to the jar is going to have any ill effect on her. So why do I feed her homemade baby food?

So that she doesn't grow up to be a picky bitch.

We all know that one person who, as an adult, refuses to eat anything but chicken breasts, rice, and peanut butter sandwiches. And we all hate that person.

These bad eating habits usually started in childhood. Kids reach a certain age and they don't want to try anything new, and parents don't want to fight over it, so they just let the kid eat whatever makes them happy. And then next thing you know, you're at Red Robin with some asshole who can't even eat a goddamned hamburger without fifty thousand special instructions because "I don't like onions or cheese or ketchup and the meat has to be well done and can I swap something for the steak fries? The potatoes have skin on them still and I don't like skin."

How to avoid this? Well, one way is to start getting your kid used to a lot of different flavors when they're still too young to scream "NOOOOO!" and throw their bowl at your face. 

And that means making your own baby food.

Cook a lot with curry? Maybe sneak some curry powder into baby's sweet potatoes and see how they like it. Add a pinch of cumin to those strained carrots. Squirt a glob of Sriracha sauce into the pears and apples. 

It's cool; we've got cloth diapers.

Next thing you know, your kid is used to eating your cooking, and isn't quite so afraid of trying new things. And all you had to do was spend an extra ten minutes a week grinding up shit you already cooked and shoving it into pouches!

Totally worth it to avoid turning your kid into this:

Hippie points awarded: zero.


Also, if you couldn't tell, I totally recommend all of these things. Cloth diapers are the bomb, my doula was the only reason I made it through labor without an epidural, and Safeway doesn't sell bananacado baby food. Game, set, match.