Cloth Diapering

[athene]

Finally, my long-promised (mostly to myself) post about cloth diapers.

For the first few months of our Little Prince’s life, we used a diaper service for our cloth diapers. We were able to do so thanks to the generosity of our families. Diaper services are awesome! They give you a stack of diapers and at the end of the week they take away all of the nasty ones and give you clean ones! They also lent us a Snappi and some covers. We quickly learned that we needed more Snappis and covers and so we bought some of our own.

However, we soon realized that with daycare not willing to use cloth diapers (boo. This is the only thing I don’t like about his daycare) the diaper service was no longer worth it. So we (meaning my mom and I) started looking into different kinds/styles/etc of cloth diapers.

My first resource was these set of blogs from my ex-co-worker Laura. She goes into a lot of detail of different kinds of diapers and how to clean them and all of that.

We ultimately decided to stick with prefolds with a snappi and a cover. My favorite prefolds are from Green Mountain Diapers. They can be pretty expensive, and I was super thankful that my family was once again willing to pitch in and start us off with two dozen GMD yellows. As we were getting ready to move from the yellow to the reds (you know what size a prefold diaper is by its stitching), we got lucky as GMD had a seconds sale so I was able to get a dozen that way. Then I found another two dozen via Diaper Swappers. I couldn’t tell you why most of the seconds were seconds and the ones we got from Diaper Swappers were in amazingly excellent condition (I think only two or three had even a hit of stains). So now we have three dozen of the reds. We also have about 2 dozen regular infant sized chinese prefolds, which make FANTASTIC burp cloths and are pretty much all we use them for (well, that and putting them on the changing table in case LP decides to  pee or poop while being changed).

LP in a red GMD with a Snappi

Side not: yes, that is a Pee Pee Teepee in the background. I thought they were silly too…until I learned how far his stream can go. Now I think they are awesome.

I have found my favorite covers to be the Thirsties Duo Wraps. We bought the size 1s when LP was just born and because of the way they size up, he still fits into them. They come in cool colors and patterns (owl pattern, I have my eye on you!) and as long as you make sure everything is tucked inside, they almost never ever leak anything out of them. No, really. We’ve had poops that I’m sure would have been total blow-outs in disposables that leaked around or up and over the prefold and were caught by the cover.

LP in a shirt and yellow Thirsties diaper cover with the Happy Apple

For a diaper pail, we use a large Thirsties Wet Bag inside of a simple trashcan. We have two of them so that if one is in the wash, we still have another one. These wet bags will actually tumble all of the diapers out of them in our washing machine, so I don’t even have to touch the dirty diapers! We put a deo-disk at the bottom of the pail to help with the smell. It works ok. I’m thinking of finding an alternative solution.

For washing the diapers, we use Rockin’ Green. We have hard water so we use the Hard Rock “Rage Against the Raspberries” formula. We start out with one wash on cold with no detergent. Next we do a hot/sanitize wash with about 1 and a bit scoops of detergent and an extra rinse. Sometimes I do another rinse and spin after that just to make sure all of the detergent is out.  Then we dry them in the dryer on high/anti-bacterial. The only time we had a problem with LP’s butt reacting is when we forgot the extra rinse. I know some people like to hang dry their diapers, but I don’t have a line in my back yard and the dryer works just fine.

As for the disposables, we use Pampers Swaddlers at daycare and Pampers either Swaddlers or Baby Dry overnight. At first we were doing cloth overnight, but LP hated to be wet at all and so by going to disposables at night, we don’t have to get up and change him, especially since he’s pretty much stopped pooping overnight.

Lastly, I came up with this last night as I was trying to get a diaper on a wiggly post-bath baby and posted it on FaceBook. I called it the Fugue For Diapers:

I got the diaper here,
It goes over right over your rear
And it’ll help to keep your bum quite clear.
Can do, can do, this diaper it can do. Can do can do.

I got the Pampers, why
Cause it’ll keep ya dry
Though sometimes the stink can attract a fly.
No leaks, no leaks. All night with no leaks. No leaks, no leaks.

Originally published at my baby blog. Please leave any comments there.