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We've cloth diapered since Jax was
born. There were a few reasons that sent me in the direction of cloth
diapering were:
Cost (about $500 to purchase our stash
that will take us from newborn through around two years old, and all can
be re-used for future children),
Gentleness (I have
extremely sensitive skin, so I wanted to put the softest, most
chemical-free product I could on Jax, in case he inherited my sensitive
skin but had no way to tell me),
and Eco-Friendliness
(this was the least important issue for me, but I'm glad not to be
throwing 7,000 diapers into our landfills and water supply, which is the
average use from newborn through potty training).
The
biggest obstacle of course, for most people, is POOP. Honestly, you
have to wipe a baby's poopy butt no matter what kind of diapers you
use. And that's the worst part. Rinsing it off in the toilet is just
not that much harder.
The second major obstacle is
TIME. To wash and fold all that extra laundry. For us, it hasn't been
that hard. I wash diapers twice a week, and I do my normal laundry once
a week on a separate day. When Jax was a newborn, we had to wash
diapers daily, but that was because we had purchased a limited supply of
cloth diapers, and didn't have enough to go more than a day and a half
without washing.
And I'm happy to report, that even
though most people I knew didn't believe we'd stick with it, we have.
And I love it. I love folding the fluffy, fresh-smelling diapers when
they come out of the dryer. I love walking outside to hang them on the
line to sun out the stains (only for EBF exclusively breast fed poop -
once Jax started eating solids, his poops don't seem to stain the
diapers anymore). I love that I'm not putting a bunch of petroleum and
chlorine bleach and scratchy paper and adhesive on my son's skin. And
it's just not that hard to rinse off the poop and do two loads of
laundry a week. I'm so glad we chose this option.
We
do use a "more" natural disposable diaper for overnights. I tried many
different kinds of overnight options, because once Jax started sleeping
through the night (mostly), I no longer wanted to wake him up with a
diaper change in the middle of the night. I found several cloth options
that held all the wetness in, but he would always wake up in the
morning with his skin all red from the wet touching him for so many
hours. Due to my skin sensitivities, I'm only using natural fibers in
his cloth diapers. There are "stay-dry" polyester inserts that could
solve our problem, but I've chosen not to use polyester on Jax since it
irritates my own skin. So we disposable at night, and that seems to
have solved the problem.
We also disposable on
vacation, because I'm not going to wash diapers in someone else's
laundry machine, or lug heavy wet bags of nasty diapers home with me
after a trip.
What the baby does while I'm hanging out his laundry.
Wipe solution.
1/2 cup Almond Oil
1/2 cup Dr. Woods Lavender Castile Soap
20 drops Lavender essential oil (for fragrance)
20 drops Tea Tree essential oil (natural antiseptic and anti-bacterial)
Swirl mixture in bottom of gallon jug.
Add one gallon boiled water (sterilized).
Put
stack of cloth wipes in cloth wipe warmer, pour solution over wipes to
fill container. Keep remaining solution in refrigerator to keep it from
becoming stale.
Wrangling the squirmy ones who want to crawl away.
I still need to get his pants on. Toys sometimes keep him still.
We use Planet Wise large wet bags
to hold dirty diapers. We have two of them. One holds dirty diapers.
When it's full, it goes in the laundry with the diapers. The clean one
comes out to get filled. And the cycle continues.
Also,
I decided to order the wet bags to match the room they're used in. In
this case, we have always changed diapers in our room, on our bed.
Our
diapers are from a local cloth diaper store, because having a local
small business owner to help solve cloth diapering problems is a MUST.
We use unbleached cotton prefolds and Bummis nylon covers. They were
literally the only waterproof diaper covers I could find that weren't
polyester. And they're discontinued as of a couple months ago, which I
discovered when I hopped online to order a few more. Some hunting led
me to Dappis, which are basically the same thing, thank goodness.
Our cloth wipes were sewn out of cotton flannel by my mother-in-law. They work SO MUCH nicer than disposable wipes, and aren't full of a ton of chemicals.
We use this wipe warmer, designed especially for cloth wipes (the top of the box is completely open, rather than made with a small hole for a package of disposable wipes). I do have to tell you that somehow, (poor design), water got into where it attaches to electricity, and corroded it. Luckily I have a husband who could patch the problem area and solder a new cord onto the box. So while this is the only cloth wipe warmer on the market, I'm not sure I can completely recommend it.
Show above from top left: Stack of medium size cotton prefolds, wipe warmer, stack of "fancy" hemp fitteds and all-in-ones (AIOs), basket of snappis/rash cream/miscellaneous baby stuff, wad of Bummis, stack of wipes and changing pads.
And then there's the poop about to be swirled down the toilet. Runny EBF newborn poop can be laundered without rinsing, as it is completely water soluble. It's also so runny that the diapers tend to absorb it like they would urine, so you couldn't really rinse it off if you tried. "Transition" poop where baby has some solids but still a lot of breast milk, is the worst. It's this gummy gluey stuff that doesn't want to come off the diaper. The best thing to do is lay the diaper, dirty side down, in the toilet bowl where it can soak. About five minutes later, it's softened enough to be easily sprayed off. Toddler poop, or even transition poop where baby has increased intake of solids, can be a formed lump just like adult poop. It literally shakes off into the toilet. So easy. There's also bio-liners, which are sort of like a dryer sheet, which lay inside the diaper. The liner shakes off into the toilet, taking all poopy mess along with it. Since spraying diapers isn't that big of a deal to me, once I got past the learning curve, I haven't paid the extra money for the disposable bio liners.
This is the handy sprayer to rinse the poop off into the toilet. It works surprisingly well.
Shown above:
Two different cloth changing pads. The polka dot one is very large, with a flannel top and waterproof (slippery) bottom. I keep this style in the diaper bag, to lay over the fold-down changing stations in restrooms. It nearly covers the whole thing. The plain white one is flannel on both sides, with a waterproof middle. It's more stiff and sturdy, and it's what we use at home to protect the bed. I have about four of these, because when Jax was a newborn, pretty much every poopy diaper managed to get a mess on the changing pad.
Top center is a plain white nylon and spandex waterproof diaper cover. These are not the heavy, stiff, rubbery ones of my childhood. They are silky and have soft openings with gentle elastic. They can crunch up into a tiny little ball, so they're easy to store, and don't add any bulk when worn. We own these in three sizes: newborn, small, and medium. At twenty pounds, we moved Jax up to the medium. These are the Bummis Whisper Pants that have been discontinued. The Dappis that arrived today look almost identical, but have larger leg holes (which I don't like, because larger leg holes leak runny poop).
Bottom center is a GroVia "all in one" diaper. We call these the "fancy" diapers. They go on and off with little snaps, and behave just like a disposable. They're called "all in one" because they have a soft cotton inner layer combined with a waterproof poly/nylon outer layer, all in one piece. We use them for babysitters, and for church on Sundays. We use them at church because it's easier, and because they are smaller, so they fit better underneath Jax's fancy slacks. The cotton prefolds are pretty bulky, and make Jax need larger sizes of pants.
Bottom right is a hemp fitted diaper. "Fitteds" are soft fabric shaped with elastic and closed with snaps. They still require a waterproof cover. These hemp diapers are way more absorbent than the cotton prefolds, and they wick moisture away from the skin better than cotton as well. I use them when I know we're going to be out of the house for a while, and I don't want to be changing diapers while we're gone.
Top right is a plastic Snappi. These hold the cotton prefold diapers closed. They are much easier and safer than safety pins. They do eventually stretch out, or break, so they will have to be replaced between children. Since they cost about $3, and I only own two or three of them, that doesn't worry me.
The diaper rash ointments shown are safe for cloth diapers. Most standard rash creams have petroleum in them, which can build up on cloth diapers and prevent them from being absorbent. Cloth diaper safe creams use natural oils. These are the two favorites we've used, after trying several.
This happened while I was taking photos of my diapering supplies. He had tissue paper in his mouth when I found him.
After trying many cloth overnight diaper solutions, we settled on disposables at night. It wasn't necessary until Jax started sleeping through the night. At that point, I didn't want to wake him up with a diaper change. Or, if he woke on his own, I didn't want to reinforce the waking with a diaper change. Prior to him sleeping through the night, hemp prefolds or hemp liners or the fitted hemp diapers worked great. They would stay on him three to five hours with no issues.
Once we got longer than five hours at a time, and I wanted to leave him in a diaper for eleven hours straight, we had a problem. Our problem was that the natural fiber diapers (cotton and hemp) were
not adequately wicking moisture away from Jax's skin. So he would wake
up in the morning with a red bottom from so much wetness on his skin all
night.
Because I'm allergic to polyester, I'm avoiding it for Jax. There's many polyester cloth diapers that would solve our overnight problems, but I'm not using them, for now. Plus, the overnight diapers are expensive, and part of why I cloth diaper is because it's cheap. I was spending $20 here and there, several times, trying to find a workable overnight solution.
So I bought a "more" natural disposable, and we've been using it overnights. The problem I have with it, is when it gets too full, it leaks all over the place. At least with the cloth, I could put enough layers on to keep him from leaking.
So I'm not thrilled with either solution. Perhaps I'll figure out a remedy at some point! For a while, I put a cotton prefold OVER the disposable. The disposable wicked away moisture, and the cotton prefold absorbed once the disposable started leaking. It actually worked pretty well.
This is the nursery and "changing table" that we've used as such only a handful of times. It's so much easier to change him on the bed where there's more space for his squirmy butt!
This is the wet bag in the bathroom next to the nursery. It matches the girly decor in that room (which belongs to my sisters).
And when the diaper change is all done, we tickle and giggle and play.
