Well I thought I would give a bit of background into my cloth diaper experience. A few years before I had kids, I went to a get together with a few of my high school friends (two of which had kids). I was shocked to see one of them using a diaper that did not look like what I imagined cloth diapers to look like and they sure weren’t disposables (they were bright orange). And so I was introduced to Fuzzy Bunz, cloth diapers. A year or two later, I found out that I was pregnant and the first thing I did was buy one Fuzzy Bunz (Orange) and one Happy Heiny (Forest Green). They were the cutest things ever. My husband was not sold on cloth diapers at all, he thought they would be messy, hard to use, and most of all expensive (at about $20 a diaper they are not cheap). I still wanted to cloth diaper (CD) but never brought it up again until we went to a baby show in Toronto. At the baby show there were lots of vendors selling cloth and I picked up one more diaper (variation of the Monkey Doodlez in lime green). The man selling however had my husband convinced that getting started CDing would cost about $2000 (Holy Crap that is a lot of money and would we really spend that much on disposables?). Granted we did want more than one kid so the next child it won’t cost as much and cloth is better for the environment (I like to be as environmentally friendly as possible but we could compost our diapers here) but still that’s a lot of money. I knew there must be a cheaper way to CD and I did find a Work-At-Home-Mom who made cloth diapers that were much cheaper so I bought a 4 pack variety pack of diapers (4 different styles of diapers).
I only had 7 diapers when my son was born and I had no idea what I was going to do with them. My son came home from the hospital in disposable and wore then for the next few weeks. The cloth diapers were much to big (even though I bought small ones and my son was 8lbs6oz when he was born) but Finally one day when I was bored I decided to put my son in the Happy Heiny. It was a bit big but if fit well enough and so I decided that I was going to do cloth diapers part time (only at home and not at night). A week later there was another baby show and I was introduced to Bum Genius (BG) diapers. The thing that helped convince my husband (who really cares more about our bottom line than the environment, while I am the opposite) was that these diapers were one size (OS – meaning that they grow with your baby from 5lbs to 30lbs but the 5lbs they will still be giant on your baby). With OS diapers they would reduce the cost of cloth diapering by 2 or 3 times (most sized brands come in S,M,L and XL). We bought 6 of them and they worked great (I had come to think that it was normal for cloth diapers to leak a lot because most of my other diapers leaked) no leaks, no blowouts, they were awesome.
I still had no idea what I was doing. Where did the dirty diapers go (I needed a pail), what should I line the pail with (I needed a wet bag), what if I wanted to use them when I went out (need a travel wet bag), how should I wash them (they were starting to smell), what should I wash them with (they were starting to leak)? Finally I joined a CDing group on Facebook and wow was there a lot of info. Everything from what the different kinds of diapers were to how to wash them, what to wash them with and what not to do (we were doing a lot wrong which is why they leaked and smelt so bad). We were using dryer sheets (caused the leakage), only washing them once with bad detergent (they now get washed 3x with Ecos detergent and tea tree oil). I found websites to buy wetbags and more diapers and so an addition began J. We went from only using cloth part time to only using cloth (disposable only when we went away and when the diapers were in the wash). I began buying any cloth diaper I found that looked cute, I found lots of on-line stores and went a bit crazy (my husband had to perform a cloth diaper intervention and I had to try to stop buying fluff). However, my husband also fell on board with the whole CDing thing (other than the excessive buying of diapers), mind you he only using the BG brand of diapers and refuses to use any diaper that has snaps.
Things were going great until we had a leaking set back, every night our son would wake up soaking wet. He would leak through the diaper, his sleeping sack, and sheet, Every Night. We started putting him in disposables at night (he leaked though that too). Eventually we found a solution to that (I stopped the night-time feed) but now we are back to disposables at night (so sad about this and if you have any suggestions let me know but my diapers are clean, and well stuffed with hemp insert at night).
Tavish has been in cloth for just over a year now and other than the night-time (now) they are amazing. Some brand work better than others (for us anyway), we use all sorts of diapers (one-size, sized, pockets, all-in-ones, hybrids, fitted, pre-folds and even g-pants with cloth inserts) and we just bought him his first pairs of cloth pull-ups. I love finding more people who are interested in cloth and 3 of my friends have recently converted to cloth. In my next fluffy blog, I will go over some of the types of diapers, and what you need to get started. Cloth diapering is not that hard (especially now that many kinds are just as easy as disposable and easier if you use a liner). I will also go over some of the pros and some of the cons (not many). I am excited to share my story and I hope you enjoy.
Also posted at http://www.everythingmom.com/blogs/amiequinn/
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