Now I know for some the thought of washing out poop and touching a diaper beyond just wrapping it up to throw away is just not an option but I would ask you to just give it a chance. Who knows you might just fall in love (with cloth diapering that is).
When I was pregnant I knew that we wanted to cloth diaper. Call it my hippie instincts coming out but that like breast feeding was something I just was not budging on. I researched so much about cloth diapers and if you have done that then you know there is so much information out there. Really in my research I managed to put myself in a panic that cloth diapering was going to be difficult and have way to many steps. Well thanks to some Mom friends who cloth diaper and many Facebook messaging sessions I finally overcame my information overload and got excited about cloth diapering again. So I thought I would share with you my (limited) experience with cloth and try and make it a little less confusing. Today I will just share with you our timeline of cloth diapering and what brand of diapers we use. Next week I will give you guys our washing routine (its simple I promise).
For the first three to four weeks Teddy was in disposable diapers because he did not quite fit into our cloth ones. Let me tell you that four weeks showed me how much I did not want to be using disposables forever. We had quite a few leaks and blowouts which made for unpleasant diaper changes and wardrobe changes for all involved. So as far as I was concerned the sooner we could get Teddy in cloth the better. Now we have still had leak issues but I think those are more compression leaks from the diaper being compressed in some way.
I thought we would start slow with cloth and gradually work our way up to using it full time. However, once we put little man in his cloth diapers they were just too cute to go back to disposables. As far as buying cloth diapers and what brand to choose this is different for every person. I will not e even try to explain all the types of cloth out there but I will tell you about the ones we use.
We hit the cloth diaper lotto, so to speak. I have been fortunate enough to only spend $35 dollars on cloth diapers and we have a stash of 38 diapers. A friend of mine had twenty barely used cloth diapers that she no longer needed and was so generous as to give them to me while I was pregnant. Now she had two girls so if you happen to see Teddy rocking a pink diaper do not judge. (Real men wear pink right?) Anyway these diapers are Fuzzibunz pocket diapers (not the newest style) and I really like them. As aggravating as it can be to have to adjust the elastic its the only reason we were able to start cloth so early with out have to buy a whole stash of newborn diapers. Now I mentioned that its a pocket diaper and all that means is that you have an insert and an open pocket that the insert goes in. (See picture below)
Now the next type of diapers that we have are Sunbaby pocket diapers. I love these as well. They are not quite as adjustable as the Fuzzibunz but you are able to snap them down to a smaller size. We had to wait a couple of extra weeks before Teddy could fit into these. One of the biggest selling points for these diapers is that they are not expensive but they work great. If you are looking to start cloth diapering but the cost is getting you down then these are great. These were actually the ones recommended to me by some Mom friends on Facebook. The only downside is they come from China so you have a little bit of a wait on shipping but the shipping is free.
Our final brand of diaper is Bum genius. We actually have three types of Bum genius diapers and they are pockets, all in one, and newborn. We did break down and buy a few newborn diapers with some gift cards we had to Babies-r-Us. I would recommend unless you just have a tiny baby researching your options for newborn cloth though because Teddy only wore these newborn all in ones a couple of times before he outgrew them. Our next type of Bum genius are the pockets. These work just like all the other ones just a different brand. Our final type are the all in ones ( I think Bum genius calls these free times). These are the most minimal work out of all the cloth diapers and I really like them for nighttime. They seem to be a little thicker and able to stay dry for longer stretches.
Have you hung on this long? If you have actually read this then color me impressed. Sorry to be so wordy I guess I just really love my cloth diapers and want you to love them too!
