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| 4 months old with Carla "lala" |
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| Pocket diaper with insert at his 1st birthday! See how cute! |
We have both used pocket diapers. These have an outer shell with a pocket, and an insert (typically made of microfiber) that fits into the pocket. Carla has also used pre-folds with a cover. We've used a variety of brands, and in my opinion, they are all similarly made.
I have certainly had a love/hate relationship with cloth diapering. We didn't start until L was about 3-4 months or about 10 pounds. I knew I wanted to cloth diaper and a friend of mine helped me start the journey by selling me her used diapers. Stop. I know what you're thinking, USED diapers?! Really though--it's no big deal (mine are washed on hot and rinsed a gazillion times-more on that in a minute). So I bought Fuzzibunz pocket diapers from her for $5 each. This was incredibly cheap. New pockets are at least $20 each.
CD is simple when/if your baby is exclusively breast fed (EBF). EBF babies' poo is water soluble so you just throw them into the washing machine. I did a load of diapers every 2 days or so. With a 4 month old, you change a LOT of diapers, so I did supplement with disposable at times.
Here is my typical wash routine:
I use Rockin Green soap, but am in the process of switching to Carla's recipe which you can find here: Laundry Day the Natural Way
I first remove all inserts from the outer shells of the diapers, and throw them all into the washer (I have a front loader HE), along with the washable trash can liner I use. I run a cold water rinse first. Then, run a hot wash with detergent, then 2 more cold rinse cycles. And voila=clean diapers! I dry the diapers on this fabulous drying rack at Ikea per Carla's advice.
At first, I was worried about staining, but Carla came through again with advice to put the drying rack outside and leave the sun to the stain fighting! Amazingly, the sun does have the power to bleach my white inserts white again!
When L started solids, I had a hard time CD. So, there for a period we did use mostly disposables. Also, he went through a weird phase where they didn't fit him that great. Poor Carla, who was watching him during the day for me, was having to constantly change his clothes due to leaks. For the poo, I researched and found that many people use a diaper sprayer that hooks onto the toilet. I read both positive and negative reviews, but ultimately decided that I didn't want to spend $50 on something that I wouldn't be satisfied with. Enter the economical but vomit inducing metal spatula. This little dear was used to scrape L's breast milk/sticky solid (mostly bananas and avocado then) poo into the toilet. And, it wasn't pretty. I just couldn't handle gagging every time I changed a poo diaper and I knew that if we continued down this road, mama was quittin' the cloth. So, I found flushable liners and they changed my life! :)
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| Source: Amazon |
Now, I simply pick up the liner and throw it into the toilet! Much better. We are back to CD almost full-time now, due to the fact that L no longer leaks and my husband (aka babysitter during the summer since he's a teacher) is a hardcore CDer. I love that it doesn't bother him at all!
During the school year, L is at a sitter's house 4 days/week, so we do use disposables during the day. We have always used disposables at night too. The few times we've tried cloth at night (even recently) he leaked. We also use disposables when traveling for convenience.
Since several of my friends have inquired about CD, here are several factors I would use to convince you to cloth diaper (ahem, Jamie/Carrie/Macyn/Jennifer...)
- Cost- I have maybe bought 3-4 boxes of diapers and my son will be 15 months in a few weeks. There is a statistic that people spend $2500 on disposable diapers until a child is potty-trained. At least when you buy cloth- you can also use them for your next child, and so on.
- One-size- with snaps and elastic on the FuzziBinz they truly are tailor made to fit your baby. I have a skinny mini and although we occasionally had leaks, I can tighten the elastic around the legs. I love knowing that I can use the same diapers from newborn until L is potty-trained.
- Washing- it's not that bad. See above.
- There are many cute colors and patterns to choose from!
Rockin the argyle print! And no, I can't figure out how to flip it!
- Environment- I can't stand to think about all those diapers in the landfill!!
Source: http://www.greenspotdropoff.org/blog/uncategorized/cloth-diapers-vs-disposable-diapers/
So if you're having a baby, if you've had a baby, or even if you have a diapered toddler- consider cloth diapers.
And---check out my friend's informative post on specifics: All You Ever Wanted to Know (and more) About Cloth Diapers
~Trina
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