I am a mom of 5 and counting. My children are Hailey(9) , Donald "AKA Bub" (7) , April (4) , Daniel (21 Mo) , and Leah (7 Mo). I have a wonderful husband, Jason.
I'm am a WHAM (Work At Home Mom)
What do I do?
Well, I make cloth diapers(Dan&Leah Diapers), clothes, toys, just about any thing for children and mothers.
How do I do all of this with 5 children ?
Haha, its not easy AT ALL.
Lets just say long nights and LONG days with a cup of coffee and faith that one day it will get easier.
But seriously, here is how.
I wake up around 5-6 am every morning but Saturday mornings, that's my only day off. I drink my coffee and think about what I'm going to do for the day, make breakfast for children get dressed and ready for the day. Kids wake up get them dressed and ready for the day feed them , nurse the baby then check emails and get school work together for the little ones and orders and all the good stuff. Then start sewing and cutting by the time i get one or two things done its time to stop feed kids again change diaper's, Yes i said (diaper's) both Daniel and Leah are in diapers. SO, after all of this work then I get back to work sewing some more diapers. After about one or two more its time to nurse again and snacks for children then nap time. Then back to work sewing some more. and the story goes on, you can only guess whats going to happen next, right? lol... Then bed time and getting ready for the next day and so on.
So you might ask, Why are you doing this?
Well it all started when Daniel was born. He was born Oct 14th 2011 at around 5:45 pm 7lbs7oz 19in tall Red hair and a head full of it to. The Drs told us we could go home a day or two after he was born. We went home and rushed him back to the Drs for a check up. his Jaundice levels where to high so we had to rush him to the hospital. This is where every thing started going down hill. he was there for 3days. he came in running a fever but the hospital staff just said he was fine there was nothing wrong with him. after 3 days of still having a fever they sent us home and said he would be fine. before we left the hospital he started getting a horrible diaper rash. every time i would feed him he would just poop it right back out and his little but would bleed so bad. he could not wear disposable diapers he had layers of skin peeling off. but the Drs said he was fine once again , so we took him home. The next day he became completely none responsive . We rushed him to MUSC one of the best hospitals in the US which is about two hours away from where we live.
We get to MUSC and they start an IV and ask us to leave the ER room he was in. We where being bombarded with questions, WHY DIDN'T YOU BRING HIM IN SOONER? we had to explain he was at another hospital Trident Hospital they sent us home with him like this, they said he was fine. Well after a spinal and other lab tests they start him on 3 antibiotics in his IV and sent us upstairs. later that night about 12 hours later they said after having all these antibiotics he would start to do better, well Daniel was doing worse not better. the Dr said he's just not fighting this virus its beating him. =,( I think that was some of the worst news i had ever heard. How do you cope with the thought that your newborn baby might die? ... all i could do was cry, i stood over him crying and crying telling him how much i loved him , how much i care for him, how amazing he was, how much i needed him. I begged him to hold on and fight i begged him and begged him! Not one moment did i leave his side , not even to use the bathroom or eat. The Drs came back in and said okay, he is not doing any better we have to send him to ICU . So to the ICU we went thinking he might not make it.... Well he started to not get any better or worse he just stayed the same for a day or two. Still not good but at least he was not getting worse. His little body just laying there almost lifeless . Any time I needed to shower or any thing i strolled him by the bathroom door, i would not eat till some one brought me food. My husband had to work so he was only there in the evenings and at night with us. We had a sitter watching the other children.
A day or so later Daniel opened his eyes =D the joy that flooded my heart made me cry and literally jump for joy. I ran out of the hospital ICU room and shouted (HE OPENED HIS EYES !!! HE OPENED HIS EYES!!) The nurses came running in smiling and telling him Hello and they where jumping for joy with me. Words can not describe how happy I really was. The Drs let me hold him and even Nurse him =D HE ATE! The next day we got out of ICU but he still was very sick. after another week of being there he wound up getting another infection and had to be treated AGAIN . But after almost another week we got to go home. =) Daniel was Alive and doing well!!!!
His little butt tho was still blistered. So i went and got a bunch of fabric and started making cloth diapers. I had NO CLUE they where popular again. we made our own pattern, and fiddling around on Facebook and the Internet and discovered a few blogs and groups for cloth diapering. I posted a pic of the cloth diaper I made for Daniel and got a huge response from it. We went threw many of our own patterns lots of hours of learning and making and tears of joy and of just wanting to give up. But because of little Daniel and his horrible rash we kept going. We tried so many cloth diapers and he was just so small that most did not work for us. Because we just could not find a diaper right for us we just kept at it at making our own.Well when Daniel was about 6 months old we found out we where pregnant again and it was a little girl. She arrived Dec 24th 2012 weighing a whopping 8lbs and 9oz and 20inches tall with a head full of black hair!
Naturally i made diapers for her also. At this point i wanted to name my diapers, but what to name them? boy, we thought of SO many names. My first thought was Tiny Heine's . But that was taken and so where all the other names. But i got to thinking, do i really want to name my diapers some random name JUST like most other people do? No offence to any other WHAMS that may be reading this, because there are some really really cute names and if they would not have been taken i totally would have taken on one of them. But I thought , why not name them after the children I made them for in the first place? Daniel and Leah... hhmmm.... Dan&Leah I like it! (Dan&Leah Diapers).
How are our diapers different?
Well , we didn't buy our pattern. We made our diapers by measuring and fiddling around and what worked best for Daniel. Daniel is super small so this is how our diapers "where" made ,small. But Leah is not so small, she is my chunky monkey. So I had to make a diaper that would also fit her. I am happy to say that I'm happy with the fit we have now. But I think any and every thing always has room for improvement. But at the moment I'm very happy with our pattern and don't see any need for improvement.
We do have an all NEW diaper that we are working on that is top secret right now as far as details and pictures go. But this diaper will Truly look and function differently then any diaper i have ever seen before. We are working hard to get it finished and patented so we can start the market for them. I'm very excited about this diaper and i know all of you will be and will love them to!
How can you find our diapers/products?
Here are our links
Our Etsy Store
Our Facebook Group
Our Fb Group
Our Facebook Page
Will we keep making diapers after Daniel and Leah are out of diapers?
Yes we will. I did say five children AND counting ;)
and i look forward to it also. It gives us time grow and get better at what it is that we do.
We will have plenty more blogs to post soon, please stay tuned
Christin
I love this! Thank you for sharing your story and being so strong!!!
ReplyDeleteThank you , I have been wanting to do this just didn't know how...
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