Changes!

They're a good thing!

When we started Instinctual Mamas,  we wanted a place where like minded people can come share, ask, and vent.  Of course there are many places like that on FB, We used the term instinctual because we knew not everyone would fit lets say.. the "crunchy" term 100% I think it is pretty difficult to.. We are ALL learning along the way whether we are first time or experienced moms.

Instinctual Means different things to different people, but in the end it all boils down to following your instincts. Your "gut" feelings when it comes to parenting. We are very inexperienced when it comes to blogging, we have our own personal blogs Christy and I, and we also wanted to help other blogging moms like us who felt they were instinctual to get their ideas out there!  We came up with an idea of a blog roll!  We are grateful for those who jumped at the idea! But now I think we need to evolve on such idea. The blog roll moms will still have our support and we will be placing links to your blogs on our main page, As well as shout outs and tweets! 

We want the actual Instinctual Mamas Blogger page to be more than diaper giveaways, we want to evolve..
with that I present to you our latest projects..

Instinctual Mama Blogger/mompreneur of the month.  Each month we will be featuring a new mom who we feel encompasses the term Instinctual, She can be a blogger or WAHM who makes parenting with instinct and sharing valuable information that is relevant to the Instinctual beliefs a part of their online presence.

Instinctual Mama of the Month.  We know not everyone is a blogger/mompreneur and that is why we have a special recognition as Instinctual Mama of the month to you mommies who make everyday the best day for your children and families. Who are learning with us along the way and support parenting with instincts.

Both Moms will have a post dedicated to them!  Momma Blogger will be on the 1st of the month, Instinctual Mama will be on the 15th.  That way we don't have to wait so long to learn of all the great moms surrounding us!

Momma blogger/mompreneur of the month will be given interview questions that they will submit back and will be awarded with a special button for their blog and will get a featured banner on Instinctual Mamas for the month.

Mama of the month will get to write a blog on IM  Really anything goes, they can write about their road as a mom, their births, how they came to parent the way they do.  If they need help with a more structured idea we can give that to them. They will also get to have a picture of their choice as a default on the IM facebook page.

We also will be scouring all of your blogs for great posts that we will feature on here!  We still want this to be a community blog so we will try to make it sort of a  scrap book  a "scrapblog" if you may of all the great information and touching posts by everyone. If you want to make sure we know of your blog please comment below with a link to it.

If you would like to be considered please fill out this form  Instinctual Mama of the month

Spreading the fluffy love

We're working on building up Spreading he fluffy love on facebook, by doing giveaways and increasing its exposure, For now it is concentrating on scouring for deals, and giveaways, We know there are alot of great sites doing the same however this is ultimately not STFL's fate.. We are building up enough followers for it to become a network, we want enough people so that in the future people in dire need can post about their situation  and they can either get responses from cloth companies to receive donations of their seconds or we can advocate for them, or they can be seen by people like you who may have well loved but functional diapers, or may want to donate out of your own kindness to them.  In the future we want STFL to get exclusive discounts from retailers.  It wont happen overnight but we're working on it.


We hope you're as excited about these changes as we are!  We still want this to be a fun blog to follow and a fun page to participate on!  Now... if only facebook would fix the order of the posts! ..but that's out of our hands..


Tanya and Christy.

Blissful Booty Diapers. Review and giveaway!

I contacted Cathy not long ago and told her about Instinctual Mamas and about our plans for Spreading the fluffy love, I had contacted several vendors and not only did she reply immediately and with enthusiasm she sent items right away for a review.

Before you think this altered my review, let me just say I am a child of habit and I am loyal to brands.. I have only used 2 kinds of diapers in the 6 months I have been cloth diapering, and was weary of trying new ones..that certainly changed. You see, I think Cathy is enthusiastic about reviews  and generous with giveaways because she knows she has one of the best diapers out there.. I have not tried many but I already know some diapers may come close but not compare.

My first reaction with the blissful booty diaper? I did not know you could turn clouds into cloth diapers!

They are sooooo soft and fluffy on the inside I could absolutely see this as the perfect diaper to put on brand new delicate baby skin. It literally is blissful.. think of a warm fuzzy robe or slippers, but on your baby's bottom.

As far as function, they are great,  they do keep baby's skin dry and dear daughter decided to poop on them.

and THAT is where I saw the convenience of All in One diapers.  It is just like a disposable, you don't have to worry about a prefold or insert shifting or trying to keep the cover clean. Also it made dumping of solids easier as you don't touch a wet insert.  I want to have more of these! 

Another Benefit is that Hubbies who might be weary of changing cloth would definitely appreciate the ease of these as they are as simple to change as disposables!

The fit was great! It didn't not hinder my daughter's mobility. she was crawling standing.. and getting into her usual trouble as they were not bulky and they were trim around the legs.

I am certainly a Blissful Booty fan now!

The quality is outstanding and the price is pocket friendly compared to most All in One diapers out there..

I also used the spray and the cloth wipes, I usually would make my own spray and wipes but I am now a convert there too!  the scents of the sprays are amazing I got to sample coconut  and baby's breath.. I highly recommend Baby's Breath! The wipes especially, they have a side of super soft terry and the other side is a soft fleece but somehow they are thick yet thin enough to be pliable and  get into all of baby's crevices and thoroughly clean! I am definitely getting tons more wipes.. I could see different uses for them as well, especially if you are into UNpaper toweling.


The wipes Seriously are amazing! You only need one.. and 2 at the most for big messes! So the 10 pack goes a long way in between laundry days.

With the solution you will get a big bang for your buck! just one tsp goes into 12 oz of water, so you will have plenty of wipe solution for a while.. So convenient and so soothing on baby's booty!  No wonder it has so many great reviews on the page!

We at Instinctual mamas and Blissful Booty want you to feel what bliss on your baby's booty can feel like..

with a diaper giveaway!

WINNER

Chosen by Random.org Comment #212 "Taya"

 

IM friends.. Monday February 14th, 2011.

Exciting, week.. we just got our first diaper to review and are networking with other companies for Spreading the fluffy love, Our ultimate goal is to have easier access to cloth diapers to families that do need them and in order to build that network we must connect with work at home moms and other parents regardless of their cloth diapering needs. For now we try to use the page to bring deals to you and we will be doing giveaways... in the future we'd like it to have enough people to start the real work, swapping diapers, donating them etc..  so head on over!

And here's our weekly review!


Over at Rockin Mama Blog Tanya took some time off, she did write 1 "non mommy" related blog called The Problem With Immigration.

This week on Adventures in  Mommyhood Christy covered how quickly babies can change in What a difference a day (or 2) can make! She wrote about her High Needs baby growing into a High Needs child in DUH! He's a High Needs Child.  She blogged about her quest into the realm of Gentle Discipline in What is Gentle Discipline Anyways?   She asked her baby girl Tubs to please slow down and stay a baby just a little bit longer in her WW post Wordless Wednesday: Please Slow Down! She confessed that she sometimes dislikes cloth diapers in I have a Confession.....  and finally she followed up on her What is Gentle Discipline post with the post This is Where the Healing Begins-Letting Go of Perfection where she talked about her need to let go of trying to be the "perfect mom".

This week over at Fine and Fair Joella discussed on of her biggest parenting needs in My Parenting Must-Have: Support which was part of the February Carnival of Natural Parenting: Parenting Essentials.  For her Whats What Wednesday post she covered the basics of cloth diapering?: What's What Wednesday: Cloth Diapering Basics  She wrote a beautiful post about choosing love and the strong emotions tied with the words "love" and "hate" in Choose Love.  For her Feature Item Friday post she had LuSa Baby Wipes:  Featured Item Friday: LuSa Baby Wipe Juice  She wrote a cute little letter to her daughter about how much her daughter enjoys the word "NO" in the Antidote to No and finally she wrote a beautiful Valentine's Day post to her daughter in You Make My Heart Sing.

This week at Confessions of an earthy young mom, Rainbow wrote about the other side of 'gender appropriate' toys, and if only letting children play with certain toys is necessary or harmful in Boys PLAY with Monster Trucks, Girls Play with Barbies. She covered the issue of mothers feeling the need to tell little white lies to each other in A Little Lie Wont Hurt. She posted a beautiful video of a birth montage (an inspiring video!), which proved to be controversial when posting the video on facebook. And lastly she posted about whether or not parents and modern toys are discouraging imaginative play, and the importance of imaginative play in Imaginative Play Out The Window? (with great links for some awesome natural toys!)

Harmony and all that Jazz wrote a mom confession! She realized this thanks to Days of our lives ;)

Also Please visit

This side of Crunchy for post by an average breastfeeding, baby wearing, attachment parenting and cloth diapering crunchy mama/military spouse

All-American Momma to follow Shelly's  project 365

Spreading The Fluffy Love.

We all know the economy isn't well, many people struggle to get food on the table and for those with little ones, they struggle to buy diapers.  I personally experienced this early 2010, I fell on unexpected hardship and did not have enough money to purchase diapers, So I had to rely on friends to help. I did not want that to happen again so I did research and purchased inexpensive cloth diapers. Not having to budget money for diapers has been a great weight off my shoulders.

Christy is a mother of 4 who tries to find ways to save money, she cloth diapers 3! and it has been a great money saver for her.. most of her diapers have come from friends in the cloth diapering community wanting to help, as well as from small businesses such as Bummis who provided some great quality diapers so she could review them, you can read the review here..

Both of us Did it for monetary reasons and then it opened up a whole new world of being more "green" or Eco-friendly, we switched the laundry soap we used, we hand washed in the summer.. and so on.

I was watching a show on TV once with a pregnant unemployed teen in it, she had to throw at a diaper party at a donut shop in order to get friends to bring her diapers.. the whole time I kept thinking with  3 of those boxed she could have started a nice "stash" and not had to worry about diapers until baby was potty trained. Those 3 boxes were provided by one person so that own person could have done that.

A bit after I started Noticing companies like Huggies with their "every little bottom campaign" watch the touching video with their stats.. according to them 1 in every 20 women have "cleaned" the disposable diaper and re-used it.. something not as shocking if it were cloth.

Pampers also ran with a similar campaign, which I cannot find right now due to site maintenance.

While the efforts are nice and their statistics sad, we feel that a bigger difference could be made if we give cloth to those who truly need it.

Spreading The fluffy love is looking to network with small businesses, work at home moms, the cloth diapering community to help families in need by networking to swap, give new/used diapers, offer special discounts, network to "win" diapers and donate,  and build  great resource.

What we need:

Families in need.  (we need you to e-mail your story, to post when other moms offer, to keep with the page for alerts on giveaways from us or other sources)

Volunteers:  to participate in online giveaways to win diapers for those in need, to donate used diapers, to alert us of new businesses or contacts, to twitter about us, make local STFL pages for local drives to help families in you area.

Retailers: Big or small business, willing to donate  for giveaways, for review/giveaways, to mention us, to provide special discount codes, in return for ad space and traffic and of course the feeling you get when you make a difference.  This includes  cloth diapers, cloth wipes, mom cloth, detergents, wipe solutions, wet bags.

Media:  Bloggers, Vlogers, writers, news, to help get the word out to those in need.

Ideas! we need any idea you can give us, feedback, knowledge.

It's a project we are trying to do with our heart.  We are very passionate about helping families and about spreading  "the fluffy love". 

Instinctual Mamas.
InstinctualMamas@gmail.com

Weekly Wrap up February 7th 2011

To make up for last week's fiasco with the wrap up, we've included 2 weeks worth of reading material.
Thank you very much to those who helped.

I am happy to say we have been contacting some people about give aways and we're getting a decent response.  Christy and I have also been working on a project.. called "Spreading the fluffy love" It's going to be taking a life of its own, as a community where families in need can reach out to get new or used cloth diapers, and people can swap. The Community will not involve selling, like in other sites, this is mainly so people that honestly want to cloth diaper or people who already do but cannot afford much can ask for donations. People who have used diapers, are done diapering can donate.  Think of Eats on Feets, but with Cloth diapers. We will also be working with Cloth diaper companies to sponsor donations and giveaways.

Thank you for your support we are looking forward to being of help!

and here's the blog wrap up, if you want to know how you can participate read more about it here.

Last week, Emily at This Side of Crunchy wrote about being prescribed a baby in The Road To Motherhood . In My Heart Has Always Known You , Emily writes a letter to her daughter in which she describes how she has always loved her, even before birth. A fun song by Jamie Lidell inspired I Need Your Touch To Get Me Through My Day , a post about the importance of skin-on-skin contact.  

This week at This Side of Crunchy, Emily gave in and purchased a Sophie the Giraffe as described in The Baby, The Budget, And the $20 Teether . Moms who pump at work are encouraged to send comments to the US Department of Labor in Help Shape Legislation for Breastfeeding/Pumping in the Workplace. 

Last week over at Rockin Mama Tanya wrote about the birth of her first daughter in 2 separate posts. First she covered the natural birth that was not meant to be  birth revisited... DD#1 part 1 and about her subsequent attempts at breastfeeding in Birth Revisited DD#1..Part 2 Booby trapped!.  She also expressed her annoyance over the assumed entitlement people often have to attack each other online/through social media just because they do not have the same beliefs or opinions in I am sick and tired ...

This week at Rockin Mama Tanya covered the always sensitive subject of circumcision in I'm Going to give my Newborn a Tattoo.  Discussed the dramatically different birth of her second daughter (a home birth) in the beautiful post Birth Revisited DD#2 A Healing birth. )a MUST read post!). She posted a beautiful tear jerker post to her baby daughter in Today.... (grab your tissues before you read) and wrote a hilarious take on the idea that moms who home birth somehow think they are "better than" those who do not in The Hot Blonde in the room... 


Last week at Adventures in Mommyhood Christy vented about mothering styles and the cliques that can form in But Where Do I Belong?  Shared a very personal account of her childhood and how that helped her to become the Instinctual Mama that she is in Childhood Lost and Found.  Gave a little insight into her parenting philosophy as part of the Natural  Parents Networks Wordless Wednesday blog parade in Wordless Wednesday: Parenting Philosophy She then switched gears and gave a hilarious little window into her daily life in the post I have to laugh or else I may cry which has all the makings of a hilarious sitcom skit.  Finally she showed us the world through the eyes of her preschool with a photo piece full of pictures he took in The World Through a Preschoolers Eyes
  
This week at Adventures in Mommyhood Christy also touched on circumcision and her own guilt over circumcising her son in A Mother's Guilt.  She shared photos of her experience with this weeks blizzard that covered a large portion of the US in Wordless Wednesday: Snowmageddon 2011.  She shared her attempts to start a completely dye free diet for her family in Our Dye Free Adventure.  She then covered the strange phenomena of mommy's telling white lies to each other and their family/friends/doctors in Mommy Lies and wrote a follow up piece to her original "The World Through a Preschoolers Eyes" featuring more pictures taken by her son with Through a Preschoolers Eyes- Little Sister   Finally she shared a hilarious story of where she found one of her daughters asleep in Where's Monkey? There She is! and a funny yet sad "eulogy" to some cherished books from her sons babyhood that were destroyed in Rest in Peace Pablo, Caterpillar and Tails

Last week over at Confessions of an Earthy Young Mom Rainbow wrote about her favorite time of day for her little Snuggle Bug in Bedtime Giggles.  She wrote a beautiful post about how much she loves her body now after giving birth (complete with beautiful photos) in My Baby Made Me Love My Body.  Finally she talked about her decision to stop taking Snuggle Bug to the doctor for well check ups in Check Up Check Out expressing that since they do not vaccinate the well check ups are more of a hassle than anything else.  Creating a lot of work for a mere 5 minutes with the doctor just to hear baby is "doing great".

This week at Confessions of an Earthy Young Mom Rainbow talked about the sensitive issue of discipline and when it crosses the line into abuse in Abuse Masked as Discipline.  Vented about the stupidity of so many who think that all SAHM's sit on their butt all day long doing nothing and have the easiest job in the world in Stay at Home Moms Don't Do Anything.  Obviously anyone who thinks like this has NEVER been a SAHM!  She posted a yummilicious looking recipe for Home Made Pop Tarts and vented about the pressures others can place on a new mom (or new parents in general) and the decisions they choose to make for their kids in Ruffled Feathers especially grandparents who do not agree with certain choices (or all choices) being made.

Last week at Fine and Fair Joella wrote a cute little post to her daughter about her new found pouty face in So It Begins.  She covered the reason why she chose to cloth diaper in Whats What Wednesday: Why Cloth?  She talked about her love for Knickernappies One Size cloth diapers in Featured Item Friday: Knickernappies One Size Diaper and shared a 15% discount code for LuSa Organics  in LuSa Organics Discount! tgis code is good through Marcg 1, 2011 and gets you 15% off a purchase of $50 or more.

This week at Fine and Fair Joella shared her daughter Delilah's love for playing in her closet in Closet Cave.  She discussed all of the modern options for cloth diapers in What's What Wednesday: Cloth Diapers-Beyond Prefolds and Pins  complete with some adorable pictures of Delilah in some fluffy wear.  She wrote a letter to Delilah discussing the generation Delilah was born into, Generation Z, and all the things that are expected for that generation in  Talkin' 'bout My Generation She covered the features of a very wonderful sounding wet bag that I had never heard of before in Featured Item Friday: Sarah's Stitches Wetbags.  Finally she talked to Delilah about her dislike and attempts to not use the word N-O in That Dreaded Two Letter Word

Over at All American Mamma Blog Shelly continued to faithfully post her 365 Project enteries everyday.  She is doing much better than me at this.  My poor 365 Project Blog has kinda sorta been abandoned. 

Over at Harmony and All that Jazz

Last week she wrote a touching post called Ultrasounds and waves  a must read! About how a little ultrasound can change everything in an instant.  She also wrote about Moderation not just for diets anymore about finding a middle road with all this extremism in parenting.

This week she wrote, Boobs and Playboy to sum it up, She talks  about tagging random photos does nothing for the breastfeeding acceptance cause, because boobs are great and fabulous multi-taskers. about tagging random photos does nothing for the breastfeeding acceptance cause, because boobs are great and fabulous multi-taskers.
Secondly, not mom related but a glimpse into why she chose to be agnostic. on Where's the humor? Not in this post .

Spreading the fluffy love winners...

Ok, Whew! This was the first time I ran a contest such as this! I made up some rules I had seen on other giveaways, but then i got confused, and then some people I think weren't getting it.. totally my fault I have glitches to fix..

In order to be fair and not just randomly select whichever comment and making sure everyone got their entries in, I had to make a spreadsheet with all of you and your entries for example the first one tweeted a lot and completed other requirements so she got numbers 1-12, second one 13-15 <--3 entries.. etc..  I used random.org then to pick a number and whoever had that number range won.

here's the spreadsheet I am talking about

The ones Highlighted in green were the people who did not cloth diaper those were 15 out of 44 of you!
The ones in Yellow are our Cloth pros or those who already have some cloth.

The winner for the people who already cloth is..

waiting for baby
she told..
"we love cloth diapering because it is best for our baby, super easy, extra cute, and good for the environment. We are saving lots of $$$ and can use our stash for all of our future children "

Congratulations! you will be contacted via E-mail

And the Winner for the Non-cloth diaperers is..

I must say in reading all the stories this was one that touched me, by no means did it influence anything as there were other touching testimonies and I wish I could give on to all!

SD
=) here I go. First confession, we USE TO use cloth, I had preemie ones specially made and some S/M ones. When my boys outgrew them I joined a cloth diaper exchange and found someone to donate my stash to. The way it was suppose to work was you donated your stash of unneeded ones and you would be match with a donor for the new size you required. I thought this was an awesome way to go because I know I struggled to get my first stash. Sad part is the group owner took down the group and I was never matched, I gave a way a stash I could have sold to be able to buy my new stash and just couldn't afford to start from scratch again. So we are back to diapers! Our youngest boy will HOPEFULLY be potty trained by this summer and will be out of diapers, but my middle son is disabled and can not be potty trained (he can't feel when he needs to go). He is very tiny (size 3 diapers) and would still fit cloth diapers which we are hoping to switch to again, he just started JK and we think it would be far better to be in school in cloth than regular diapers (and thankfully his school prefers this). We just haven't been able to find the money to make the switch back, we live on a tight budget due to his medical costs and finding "extras" is hard. It would be so much easier to have a few cloth to cut down on the amount of regular diapers, the savings by cutting down would allow us to stash away some money to be able to up our collection. We absolutely LOVED cloth when we had them, the boys had almost no rashes, and if sick we just had to run a few more loads but didn't have to worry about running out during the night and having to make a mad dash for the store. Our son will also be in diapers for a lot longer than most children so it would save us a LOT of money in the long run.

Congratulations!!

To the ladies who tweeted! Thank you for your efforts and don't be discouraged! We will have lots of More giveaways via Twitter only! so you'll get to have the upper hand! ;) and We will do monthly diaper giveaways! As we want to spread the fluffy love! <3

If you know anyone wanting to donate diapers for giveaways e-mail us at InstinctualMamas@gmail.com