Qatie

I'm expecting a baby in a month, and I want to cook some meals to freeze now and thaw later. But I've never done this before, and I want to know some basic techniques. I'm pretty confident about soups, stews, sauces, etc., but what about stuffed pasta? Meatloaf?

Are there dishes I can stick directly in the oven frozen (without thawing first)? If so, how do I adjust the cooking time/temperature?

Do I have to cook everything completely before freezing, or can I freeze some things raw and throw them in the oven later? (I guess I specifically want to know about meatloaf for this question).

And as far as the stuffed pasta I mentioned - I have a fabulous recipe for stuffed shells (the jumbo shells are cooked al dente, stuffed with a cottage cheese, mozzarella and parmesan mixture, then covered with a can of Italian-stewed tomatoes and tomato or spaghetti sauce and then baked). Would it be best to prepare it entirely (cover it with sauce, etc) before freezing, or just stuff the shells, freeze them, and then dump the canned tomatoes and sauce over them when we're ready to have them for dinner?

Any other tips you have would be very welcome. Thanks!!!

I have been considering making the switch over to cloth and I was looking for some advice. My toddler is currently 15 months old and 25 pounds - so I know it's kind of late to start cloth, but we also have a baby #2 on the way so we'll be able to reuse diapers on the next kid.

So my questions are:

How old was your baby when you started using cloth?

Is there anything else I will need besides the diapers? Like, are those spray attachments for your toilet really worth it?

I live in Kansas where we frequently get 30-40 mph winds, so line-drying (which is frequently recommended) will be a little problematic. Is that going to be a big deal?

In your experience, do cloth diapers really cut down on diaper rash? Or do you still have problems? (I've just spent the last 24 hours with my son screaming every time I changed him because his bottom was so red and painful - even bleeding a little - so this is a really important question for me.)

How do you manage when your child is at daycare?

Is it economically foolish to switch when my child is so old? Or can I still save money? I had a friend who said you don't even break even with cloth diapers until the second child - is that true or was he way off?

What brand(s) do you like best? A lot of my friends use BumGenius AIOs, so mostly I've been looking at those, but I'm open to other options.

Have you had any troubles with older babies undoing their cloth diapers?

Anything else I should know?

Thanks a lot!

I just started charting my cycles in the middle of January; here are the last two: http://www.fertilityfriend.com/home/2c2c04

All you really have to do is follow the link, look at my charts and answer the question. But if you want more details, read on:

I'm in total agreement with the ovulation day predictions on both charts - my BBT rose, my CM production decreased dramatically (even though this month it was still EW the day after I ovulated, there was WAY less of it), and my sex drive totally vanished the day after each predicted ovulation.

I have been breastfeeding recently - I started the weaning process mid-January and totally weaned my 1-year-old on 3/25. So I don't think my cycles have had time to become regular again. They USED to be consistently 33 days (sometimes 34) before I got pregnant. But the last few months they have averaged around 41 days and have ranged from 35-50 days.

I'm concerned because my January luteal phase was 18 days so I expected to see my period starting today, 19 dpo. But there is no sign of it yet, and I usually start in the mornings, though not always. I don't want to take a HPT yet - I'd like to wait until I'm reasonably sure I'm actually late. (I'd rather not waste $5-$10 on a box of tests just to have my period show up two hours later, and you can see from the BD data that I was not in the typical fertile window when we had sex, though I was close.) But at the same time, the longer I spend not getting my period, the more stressed I'm going to get.

So when should I decide I'm late? How much should I expect my luteal phase to vary between cycles?

(P.S. I haven't been feeling much in way of pregnancy symptoms, though I did have some unmistakeable breast tenderness last week - but not anymore. And I NEVER get tender with PMS - the only two times I have EVER had tender breasts were the first time I started birth control pills and when I got pregnant the last time.

Also, where it looks like my February/March cycle is triphasic, that's also about when I came down with a nasty cold, so it's possible that it's just a fever and not a real triphasic pattern.)

I've been breastfeeding for over a year now (I've been gradually weaning by son for a few weeks now), and I've been getting periods since June. My first two cycles were 34 days and then 50 days. But since then, my last three cycles have been 41, 40, then 36 days. And in fact, I'm not entirely sure exactly when I started my period in November (I forgot to mark it on the calendar - I just know I had my period on Thanksgiving) but I'm not off by more than two days. So it could be that my last three cycles were really 41, 38 and 38 days (or 41, 39 and 37).

Regardless, I am now 42 days into my cycle with no sign of good old Aunt Flo. Furthermore, I just started tracking my cervical mucus and BBT this past month. Even though my temps were a little erratic at first, I do have a pretty obvious sustained temperature rise following four days of egg white mucus and high sex drive - so I feel pretty confident that's when I ovulated. That means that right now I am 19 dpo. My husband and I had sex about two days before ovulation, and we used spermacide (which I know is less effective as a contraceptive than other methods).

I've had two or three days where I felt nauseous, but nothing like the symptoms I felt the first time I was pregnant. And I've tested three times in the last week, and every time it's been negative. So I'm going mad with uncertainty right now, and my doctor won't tell me over the phone whether it's reasonable for me to expect to be menstruating by now.

And I don't want to make an appointment with her until I'm definitely late because I did that last summer. I had been sure I was pregnant, went in for a check up at 33 days (my cycle before getting pregnant was predictably 33 days), and when the urine test was negative she refused to do a blood test because she said it's no more accurate thant the urine test (???) and told me to go home and wait some more. I don't want to do that again.

So should I give it a few more days? It is reasonable for me to still be really irregular, even when my last 3 periods have been pretty consistent? Do some women have luteal phases that are 19 days and longer?

And four days after my estimated ovulation day (in between I had a couple days of dry cervix and no sex drive at all) I suddenly had more egg white mucus and my temperature dipped again - though by then I was cross-checking the regular 10-second thermometer I started using with a 60-second BBT thermometer, and the BBT thermometer didn't dip and stayed high. Part of me wonders if that was my real ovulation day... Could it be possible? I'm using http:www.fertilityfriend.com to keep track, and it's ovulation calculator thinks that the earlier OD is more likely, and it doesn't even know that I suspect the low temp isn't accurate or that I haven't had any increase in sex drive since cycle day 23 (my predicted ovulation day).

I just finished the antibiotics for the third urinary tract infection I've had in the last four months. They started when my baby was about 8 months old. I never, ever had a UTI before, not even when I was pregnant. For the first or second infection, my doctor made an offhand comment like "Well, you ARE breastfeeding" as if that was an explanation for the UTI, but I didn't get the chance to ask her about it.

So, has this happened to any women out there? Does breastfeeding and/or postpartum changes in the perineal region really make women more susceptible to UTIs? If so, why?

The real reason I'm asking is because I'm starting to suspect that it is the spermacide I started using about a month or so before the first UTI. But I would much rather have my breastfeeding be the cause since the spermacide was the only temporary method left for birth control for my husband and me besides a non-hormonal IUD (which isn't available from my doctors) or natural family planning (aka the rhythm method) which concerns me as a reliable method. So does anyone have any experience or advice that would support breastfeeding as the cause, or do we pretty much have to have all our kids back-to-back and then get a vasectomy?

We are looking for a booster seat that is has both a 5-point harness and a belt-positioner for when our son turns one in a month. I have been looking at the Safety 1st Summit and the Eddie Bauer Astoria (which turned out to be the EXACT same seat, both made by parent company Cosco), but the user manuals say to use the 5-point harness for children 34-43 inches. The Chicco KeyFit30 rear-facing infant seat we currently use has a maximum height of 30 inches.

I'd really rather not have to buy a lot of intermediate car seats, and I don't want to have to buy a bulky convertible car seat because we have a compact car ('06 Saturn Ion 2). I have doubts that ANY of the convertibles would actually fit in the car as a rear-facing seat - the Chicco we use now pushes the front seat all the way forward.

Any suggestions on seats would be appreciated.

Thanks!