Bedtime!

My blog seems to be getting more and more baby focused. Oh well, I guess that just reflects my life at the moment.

Anyway I was wondering if anyone had any input re the bedtime issue. Astrid (who is almost 1) goes to bed at 9pm (used to be 9.30 but we pushed it back) and gets up around 7.30. She usually naps for around 3 hours a day. I figure 13 hours of sleep a day is ok but then talking to some Dutch and American B&B guests and surfing the web I realise that bedtimes in other countries - or at least the Netherlands and the US -tend to be extremely early. The Dutch seem to put their kids to bed at around 7.30 and one American told me that the kids she babysits go to bed at around 6!!

So are we denying our baby the sleep she needs? A sometimes wakes up at 5.30 and won't go back to sleep so I'm always afraid to put her to sleep earlier. But I've been told that these kids who go to bed at 7.30 sleep 12 hours a night. Are different kids just different or is there some secret to an early bedtime.

The only issue is that I get home from work at 6.30 at the earliest so if the baby went to bed at 7.30 I'd hardly see her and there wouldn't be time for a breastfeed, dinner and maybe a bath before bed. But I guess working hours are earlier in Northern Europe as well.

Being off work sick in Italy

Just a little vent while the baby is happily chewing on things. This is one of those perennial expat blog complaints like the post office. :(

So my sciatica has come back. I had to be wheeled out of work into a waiting taxi in a wheelchair. I was unable to walk or move for several days and now I can walk only with difficulty. Lifting the baby causes lots off pain. I kind of look like a 1 year old just learning how to walk.

Since I've been off work for more than one day I had to get a doctor's note and post it via registered post to INPS, a big Italian bureaucracy, within 48 hours. Sounds simple, but remember I can hardly walk, even into a taxi and certainly not up all the stairs at my doctor's office. I imagine anyone who is off work for several days is pretty sick by definition. Doctors here don't email or fax things so this would have meant a trip to the doctor to get the note then a trip to the post office (standing or sitting in a long queue to top it off) to send it off. Not really what the doctor ordered. When I called my doctor's receptionist she asked "so how long do you plan to be off work sick?" How on earth am I meant to know how long it will take for me to get better ahead of time? Last time it took almost 2 weeks, this time I'm feeling a lot better after only a few days but I can't predict exactly what day I'll be well enough to go to work and I imagine that would be difficult with any illness.

Luckily my husband's work is flexible (although he's insanely busy) so he went to the doctor and the PO for me (of course getting to the PO a bit more than an hour before it closed and being told that they're not giving out any more numbers for sending things registered post so we've missed the 48 hour deadline). But how on earth does someone who is very sick but has no relatives nearby manage? One person said "just ask a friend" but I really wonder how my friends' bosses would react if they said "I have to take a morning off work to do the INPS paperwork for a sick friend."

Breastfeeding in Italy

OK I admit it I've spent much of my maternity leave becoming addicted to reality TV. As I wrote a few weeks ago I've become a huge Trinny and Susannah fan (from What Not to Wear) but having a kid and all I've also watched a bit of Supernanny - both the American and Italian (SOS Tata) versions.

The American and Italian versions of Supernanny are pretty similar. Chaotic families with hellion children and no schedule are whipped into shape by a very bossy visiting nanny. By the end of the show, all is resolved and children and parents are happily eating around the table with the TV turned OFF.

But one cultural difference really stands out to me. On the Italian show I've seen several episodes where a young toddler (say 12 months up to 2 years old) is 'still' breastfeeding. The Supertata shakes her head disapprovingly and manacing music plays as the toddler is shown nursing happily before bed. "The child is too old to still breastfeed" the supernanny says authoritatively to the mother who looks kind of sheepish and guilty, "she's using it as a crutch". Supertata advises weaning subito by subsituting other things for nursing sessions (ice cream cones, juice in a bottle, a cuddle).

I read somewhere that only 9 percent of Italian women are still exclusively breastfeeding at 6 months and the attitude I've encountered here seems to be 'breast is best' but we're not going to help you at all with it in the hospital or when you return home so if you have problems you're on your own. And if you do chose to breastfeed you have to go on a crazy almost impossible to stick to diet (at the hospital I was told by the paediatrician that if I chose to breastfeed I had to avoid cow's milk dairy products, cauliflour, cabbage, broccoli, onions, garlic, chillis, strawberries, peaches, melons, peanuts, chocolate, fried foods etc etc.) and you should defitely wean when the baby is around 4 months old or at least before s/he grows any teeth. In addition, when you start solid foods at 4-6 months (I followed the Australian guidelines and started at 6 months) you should quickly start the 'svezzamento' (ie weaning) of the baby off breastmilk. By month 7-8 you should only be breastfeeding once or twice a day.

I completely ignore my paediatrician's wacky recommendations re breastfeeding and diet. She's the one who wanted me to put Astrid on a diet at 3 months (ie breastfeed only once every 4 hours) because she was 'too fat' and pretty much only feed her meat, carrot broth and rice cereal now that she's eating solids. But when she asks I tell her the truth so when she asked how many times a day Astrid breastfeeds and I said "4" she nearly fell out of her chair. It seems that most Italians have this reaction to breastfeeding past a certain age. I even had one older woman say that babies have to be weaned at 6 months because breastmilk becomes 'harmful' after that.

I will wean eventually. Astrid won't still be breastfeeding when she goes to kindergarten. But considering the reaction I get from people to breastfeeding a 10 month old it doesn't surprise me at all that so few Italian women breastfeed long term despite their generous maternity leaves and the World Health Organization's recommendations that women breastfeed for "at least 12 months and thereafter as long as mutually desired".

Baby uggs

Our Dutch/Australian/American baby already owns a pair of Dutch clogs. To add to her shoe wardrobe, her grandma recently gave her a pair of Australian baby uggs:



Now all we need are a pair of cowboy boots to complete her shoe wardrobe.

Things I'm still waiting for in the post

I think I, along with pretty much every expat blogger in Italy, have already written about how much I hate Poste Italiane. It's always been bad but seems to be getting worse. Apparently, it's well known that postal employees here open packages and steal what they fancy (I've been told they sell anything valuable on ebay). They've even been caught doing this on security video -with no consequences. And the rest of the stuff - well, they just can't be bothered delivering it -too much work when you're a state employee with a job guaranteed for life I guess. And then there's customs, postal fees, VAT etc - which are slapped on pretty much every package which manages to arrive from outside the EU including those which are clearly marked "gift" or "used items" (one person I know had to pay customs, postal fees and VAT on a package containing only documents). When my mother sent me a DVD worth Euro20 from Australia which was clearly marked "gift" - I had to pay Euro 12 in customs, VAT and mysterious "postal processing fees" (I guess to pay for the person to calculate the customs fees?) And of course there's no recourse - you pay up, however unjust, or you don't get your package.

This situation makes living here really difficult particularly when you have a baby and your overseas friends send you baby gifts (I warn anyone who asks not to send me anything or to send it to Rene's sisters in Holland- but many nice friends sent surprise gifts - which didn't turn up). In the past, things sent from within the EU tended to show up - but not any more. I guess I just need to give up on using the mail or doing any online shopping.

Things I'm (still) waiting for in the post

-beautiful Parisian newborn baby clothes sent by my French friends in June, 2008 a month before Astrid's birth
-2 separate packages of cloth diapers and covers ordered from a UK website in October, 2008
-1 book about childbirth ordered from Amazon.co.uk during pregnancy - so around March, 2008
-newborn baby clothes from my friends in Australia - July, 2008
-baby books in English sent by friends from the US - July, 2008
-a package of clothes ordered from Boden in the UK - February, 2009
-several issues of the Economist and the New York Review of books (I've been given subscriptions to both)

Sometimes when I'm feeling down I imagine some postal employee giving my newborn baby clothes to a pregnant friend as a baby gift - although it's probably more likely they were sold on ebay.

Cloth diapering/nappying in Italy

Cloth diapering has recently been enjoying a renaissance in the richer parts of the world: Europe, North America and Australasia, after a period of about 20 years during which almost all parents switched to disposables. According to an Indian friend, cloth nappies never went out of style in the developing world - pretty much everyone in India uses them and I suspect that the situation may be similar in other parts of the globe where Proctor and Gamble et al have yet to make inroads and most people wouldn't be able to afford disposable nappies anyway.

Like breastfeeding, cloth nappying is inexpensive, easy, simple and old fashioned. Needless to say, it's also environmentally friendly - especially in a country like Italy awash in overflowing landfills and piles of festering/burning waste. As with breastfeeding, however, the big multinationals have a strong vested interest in persuading parents to abandon age-old parenting practices in favour of their more expensive "modern" products -disposable diapers and baby formula, although, of course, these products do have their place. Baby formula, for one, is a wonderful food for babies who, for whatever reason, cannot be breastfed and disposable diapers are a great convenience for travelling.

In Italy, unfortunately, it seems that a huge proportion of parents use disposable nappies. I think that the main hurdle is that the ubiquity of disposable diapers and the endless advertising have persuaded many parents and potential parents that cloth diapering is a huge amount of work, akin to washing your clothes at the village water pump with only cold water, a washboard and some marsiglia soap, and a bit 'schifoso' (gross). I've had many, many people assume that I'm some kind of supermum (and/or completely crazy) because I use cloth on Astrid. While I was pregnant and collecting cloth nappies a lot of experienced parents assured me that I'd give up and start using disposables within 3 weeks as cloth diapers are "just soooo hard." In fact, I'm extremely lazy and about as far from supermum as is possible. It actually really isn't that much more work using cloth than using disposables and it's a hell of a lot better for the environment, your pocketbook and your baby's bum.

Disposable diapers are extremely expensive in Italy - probably twice as much as in the US on average although I haven't studied this in detail. If you'd like to do a quick calculation of the amount of money you'll save using cloth use this calculator Remember when crunching the numbers that disposable diapers are more expensive here as is electricity but that we tend not to use dryers making washing the diapers slightly more economical after everything is totalled up.

I started out while pregnant reading a US based website for cloth diaper users called the Diaper Pin. The site can be quite overwhelming as there are so many different kinds of cloth diapers available these days and so many different opinions. There were certain cloth diaper addicted mothers on that site who kind of scared me (no it's not necessary to spend $50 on a handknitted wool cover for your cloth diapers!) Another useful site for things like diaper folds and washing techniques is Diaper Hyena. To make life easier for anyone considering cloth nappies here's a summary of the different categories of cloth diaper available these days:

1) All in Ones or AIOs - these diapers are, as the name suggests, one piece nappies which include an absorbent part and a waterproof part similar to a disposable. I read on the Diaper Pin site that these diapers take a very long time to dry and since we don't have a dryer I decided to skip these.

2) Pocket Diapers - these are a great innovation especially for the parent looking for a disposable-like nappy. It consists of a two layer piece which either snaps or velcros around the baby's rear - waterproof on the outside and soft and water wicking on the inside (usually fleece). Inside there's a pocket where you can insert an absorbent layer - either microfiber (quick drying - I recommend it), cotton or bamboo (bamboo takes a long time to dry but it absorbs a lot so good for outings). I have several bumgenius, fuzzibunz and peapods (an Australian brand which I wouldn't recommend as they came apart in the wash) pocket nappies. The bumgeniuses are my favourites as they 'one size' so there's no need to buy more as the baby grows. The downsides are the cost (compared to option 3) and the fact that you've got to be careful with how you wash them and keep them away from diaper creams. I've found that they wash fine on hot with normal detergent, though, and I just use a fleece liner if I'm using diaper cream.

3) Absorbent cotton flat diaper plus waterproof cover - this is the workhorse of our diaper stash along with little pieces of thin fleece (called pile in Italian - buy it at any fabric store and cut into pieces) as liners. We use Indian Prefolds which I got on ebay. In the UK terry cloth squares seem to be the norm (I've never tried these). The big advantages are: they're cheap so you can buy lots - this is especially great during the newborn stage, they indestructible in the wash and they also make great burp cloths. We use PUL covers - mostly bummis (which are Canadian) and imse vimses (a Swedish brand). Disadvantages are -need to use snappis or pins (I like snappis better - they're flexible rubber grips), need for a cover, need for a fleece liner, slightly steeper learning curve for those who've never cloth nappied before.

4) Fitted diapers - such as the British Tots Bots, the Canadian Motherease nappies and the American kissiluvs. I haven't tried these but I've heard they're great for containing newborn poop (sorry, but this is a post about diapers!) The big disadvantage is that they cost more than the flat diapers and babies constantly grow out of them so you need to buy more. These diapers also require a waterproof cover.

We aren't cloth diaper zealots and we do use disposables sometimes: when travelling out of town, at night and sometimes when we're out. Especially during the newborn stage I noticed that we got a lot more huge leaks when using disposables (usually while I was nursing the baby so all over my skirt or trousers - yuk!) Maybe it was just our baby, but disposables just didn't seem to be able to cut it in the poo containment arena.

Cloth diapers are slowly making their way onto the Italian scene. Here are list of Italian and European stockists (if you're in Italy it's best to order from within Europe rather than the US as you won't need to pay customs.)

Italian sources
Babynatura
Ecobaby
NewBabyBerry
Bimbomarket
La Casa dei Bimbi

European sources
Imse vimse UK
Twinkle Twinkle nappies UK

I've also seen Poppolino cloth pocket diapers for sale at Natura Si if you'd like to check them out in person. They also sell handy flushable diaper liners.

Washing methods
A lot of the American cloth diaper sites recommend special detergents. These aren't available in Italy, unfortunately, but I've never had problems using regular detergents from the supermarket. Just keep away from anything containing enzymes or brighteners. The cheap stuff is best. For these instructions I'm assuming the use of a front-loader.

My tried and tested washing method for prefolds, PUL covers, pocket diapers (bumgenius and fuzzibunz) and fleece liners is as follows:

-flush poo down toilet after changing baby (you should be doing this with disposable diapers as well as it's not a good idea to put human waste into the garbage)
-store dirty diapers in a big plastic bin on the balcony. It really doesn't smell at all if you wash frequently - if smell is a problem there's plenty of advice on the sites I linked to above.
-when it's time to wash, remove inserts from pocket nappies and attach velcro to tabs on pocket nappy 'covers' and PUL covers. Dump everything in the washing machine. Rinse diapers - on my machine this function is called "riscaquo & centrifuga". After rinsing the diapers add about a third of the amount of detergent recommended on the bottle, the recommended amount of calgon and a few teaspoons of Napisan to the detergent dispenser. Wash on 60 degrees.
-Hang diapers to dry on clotheshorse. If there are any stains hang them in the sun which will bleach out stains in no time.

Cross posted on my other blog, Rome for Children.

What not to wear

I guess everyone has their shameful TV addiction. Mine is "What Not to Wear" - the reality show where they pluck clueless fashion disasters off the street, throw out and make fun of their entire wardrobes, give the victim a large amount of cash to go shopping for new clothes and voila! complete makeover. I'm not sure that I agree with the premise of these shows- that fashion really can change your life -but when you see how some of the fashion disasters dress before the makeover you wonder how they ever managed to get a job, be promoted, find a mate, find friends, find a place to live etc. We're talking overweight 60 year olds in micro miniskirts, a man who wears stained bright pink suits all the time - you get the picture.

When I lived in the US, I used to watch the American version with Stacey and Clinton, more recently I've watched the UK version with Trinny and Susannah on BBC Prime. And I've just discovered the Italian version "Ma Come Ti Vesti?" with Carla and Enzo. I have to say my favourite version is the original British one. I love Trinny (Susannah is just OK although she's a good straight woman to Trinny).

So what US-UK-Italy cultural differences have a gleaned from my addiction to the various versions of this show? All three shows feature two well-heeled, perfectly groomed hosts who educate the fashion disasters in hem length, heel height and colour. In the Italian and US show it's a (seemingly) gay man paired with a skirt wearing ultra-feminine woman but while the man on the US show generally wears taseful sweater-vests over button down shirts, Enzo on the Italian version wears things like checked Mr Toad suits and cravats so it's a bit hard to take his fashion edicts seriously.

The British show has a strong social class theme, not surprisingly I guess. In some promotions Trinny and Susannah are described as "sloaney" and the majority of their victims seem to be (based on accent and job) decidedly not sloaney and I guess that's part of the dynamic. Mr Higgins takes Eliza and instead of changing her accent gets her a whole new tasteful wardrobe. Although bad taste is definitely not a class thing and they do have a few victims with similar accents to their own. I have noticed that they tend not to force the more upper class victims (who also, as it happens, seem to be older) to strip to their undies in the dreaded 360 degree mirror whereas the other victims are not spared.

I've just discovered the Italian show (Ma Come Ti Vesti?) and it's a lot of fun. I guess in keeping with Italian salaries the fashion disaster victims are given a smaller amount of money than on the US and UK shows. They tend to use less colour and more black and they include sexy, non-practical, non-supportive lingerie as a wardrobe item to be bought. And participants are always clothed in their horrible "before" outfits when looking in the 360 degree mirror. No need for a literal "brutta figura" ie. 360 degrees of sagging, middle aged flesh under TV lights clothed only in droopy underwear.