Parenting Blind/When sight escapes us

From an ear infection right into the Stomach Flu I am so glad there are no deadlines to meet.

Ben’s just getting over a 48-hr stomach flu.  It was for a change mild and we got to the ear infection late and he really suffered but two boughts of antibiotics later and he’s still got a runny nose.

Okay, now to the notes part.

The Textural Nursery

With one blind parent and most companies putting everything into almost identically shaped bottles, never mind everything smells the same.

You can understand how easy it would be for a blind parent to mix up the baby body wash with the baby lotion. 

This is why I sat down long and hard to work out how my husband was going to be able to bath and diaper his own son.  What follows in my way of doing things, maybe it will help someone figure out what they need to do for their child.

1) Different types of baskets on shelving helped us sort by need.  We had Bath, Diapering, Diapers, Toys, Medications, Socks, Shoes, Hats and Recieving Blankets. We used a Billie Bookcase from Ikea and a 4 drawer dresser to keep his clothing by the change table.  Each drawer was set up from top to bottom : Sleeping stuff, oneies, pants, sweater. 

2) We had a captain’s bed in the room with 2 large drawers where larger clothes, twin bedding, crib bedding and extra heavier stroller blankets were kept.

3) This ment that when Peter my husband had to diaper Ben my son.  He could pull out the diapering basket, a diaper and just get it done.  If we were heading out I could ask him to get a spare diaper for the diaper bag and not have to wait 20 minutes for him to find one. 

4) Babies actively find ways to have baths and Peter feared shampooing Ben’s head with baby lotion.  What we did was keep the baby lotion in the diapering basket away from the baby body wash and chose a head and body wash so there was no loss of the bar of soap.  We kept all his towels and half his face clothes in this basket, a few tub toys and the key ingredient got a piece of cloth tape around the bottle.  Lavender scented bath for Ben.  He always got hyper in the bath and it seems to relax him a bit.

5) Peter got a set of foam washable mats from Canadian Tire and they were put down on the floor for him so that he didn’t have to have an anxiety attack about Ben falling off the change table.  Also Ben was always nervous on anything like a changing station or table.  The foam mats can be used as a play mat however our cats clawed them up.  I will be getting more and a rug from Ikea later we found these mats were great when Ben started to climb and would fall.  It’s a quarter of an inch of solid foam padding between him and the hard wood floor.

6) The medication basket kept a bottle of baby tylenol, gripe water, baby nail clippers, a hair brush, comb, nasel asperator, q-tips, cotton pads, sterile water, saliene solution nose drops and we had special items you can pick up at shoppers drug mart.  A stopper for each bottle that fit into the tylenol and gripe water bottles that you could open up and insert a saringe(has no needle) and draw out measured doses exactly of the liquid medication.  How does a blind man see how much is drawn?  Simple I would always measure the first doses of any medication and score the plunger at the point where the necessary amount is needed.  He would draw it out using his finger nail to find the mark. To make sure the saringes weren’t mixed up the bottles were kept with their saringes in separate zippered bags.  This helped keep them from getting dirty too.  Cosmetic bags come in handy for keeping other things organized.  Try one that has many pockets often used for travelling to keep make-up and jewellry organized.

7) My son still hates to wear his socks at home.  He’d rather run around in barefeet or just his slippers.  With all the cute socks out there.  Imagine finding the mate blind.  There are 3 ways to fix this. The first is to roll your socks.  The second is to buy all the same type of sock. The third can be painful is to use safety pins to hold them together which if they are stainless steel could in theory go through the wash.  However, I wanted a safety pin free nursery for baby and daddy safety.  I chose to put all dirty socks right into a langerie bag that zipped up and rolled them when they were dry.  I haven’t lost a sock yet.

Hats and shoes are so cute and useful.  However with them being so tiny at first they make great cat toys!  So another few baskets made it onto the shelf.  Hats and shoes.  My son has always loved accessories such as these even now when he wants to go out for a walk he’ll put his boots and scarf on and hand me my purse.

9) Receiving blankets also had burp clothes in it.  This basket later turned into the sweater basket.  With all the spitup etc. this made for a great grab and go.

Dusting and vacuuming is easy in a room like this in the beginning. 

I used cloth diapers that had a diaper cover that used valcro rather then safety pins and it was a service so that they took the dirty diapers away weekly and gave us clean diapers weekly.  We never ran out of diapers and there were no midnight runs for them either.  It cost less then disposable and work even for premmies and multiples.  The diaper pail was a dry diaper pail with a charcoal filter.  This ment there was no chance of baby drowning in the diaper pail.  Environmentally the company we used had won and continues to win awards for their efforts.  They even went out of their way the one time we could not be there to accept delivery showing up at our house at 11pm with the delivery.

I’m sure this is rambling now as I look at the hour I’m going to cut off here tonight with one last thing.  I’ve also taken this basket idea and cleaned up my front entrance  way too. Each person has their own basket for hats, mitts and such.  There’s one for clutter and another for house guests.  This has helped greatly with the one wet mitten and missing sunglasses.  Even heading out the door it’s easy to pull out an umbrella without much thought.

Next Note: Taming the diaper bag clutter for the blind husband and do you really need to carry a purse and a diaper bag???