Olivia with a delivery of cloth!
Sorry in advance to anyone that reads this and is not a parent or has no interest in what covers Miss O's bottom.
After months, not kidding, of going back and forth and struggling with my convictions over Olivia's well being, the well being of our bank account and the amount of diaper trash we were disposing of on a daily basis we decided to jump disposable ship and dive head first into cloth diapering!! I can honestly say that since we have switched there has not been a moments pause about our choice. Before I get into our experience in cloth so far I'll give the background of why it took us so long to get to this point.
What took us 8 months to get to this point? To be honest the only reason we didn't choose cloth from the very beginning is because I didn't want to burden people with our choices. I, like many people who don't know much about modern cloth, thought that it was a huge burden to child care workers and I didn't want to be the hated mom in O's class who was making their lives even more complicated than they already were. I also didn't want our parents and families to be put out when they were watching Olivia (we're beyond lucky to have so much family in town that we really have minimal need for sitters.) I knew that cloth diapers were gaining popularity but still there is a stigma that some people have a hard time getting past.
I had mentioned cloth diapers to Jake while I was pregnant and when she was having her crazy diaper issues as a newborn but not until a few weeks ago when I brought it up again did he say alright lets go for it! I think it was the plain and simple numbers that got him on board. The savings is huge; we're talking thousands of dollars over multiple kids at the rate we were going through with the little lady. Yes the upfront cost is a bit and I'm kicking myself for not deciding to do this before she was born because we could have registered for them BUT we are slowly building a stash. We have about 12 diapers now and tomorrow I'm going to pick up a few more to have enough to go to washing every other day.
Ok so here are my observations, rants and raves about cloth diapers thus far:
Let's state the obvious we're saving money and saving mama earth!!
No diaper rash! She gets a rash almost immediately now when she's in a disposable (learned this the hard way the week she was still in disp. at school and cloth at home before the big transition)
They are so much easier to clean than I imagined, yes I have to deal with the dirty stuff a bit more intensively but it's really not that big of a deal.
When we were making the choice to switch it was crazy information overload and hard to narrow in on where we should be looking for information. Thank goodness for friends that cloth and Mama Natural!!
We have tried 3 different brands and here are my thoughts
(6) Bumgenius 4.0- I'm in love!! No leaks, easy to adjust, easy to stuff, easy to clean and precious patterns
(2) gdiapers - convenient to fill and good for long outings so I don't have bulky diapers taking up space in the diaper bag, also cute patterns and easy to clean
(4) Fuzzibuns One Size - I so wanted to love them because a lot of my mommy friends love them but I HATE them! They are a pain to adjust with the elastic and buttons at the waist and legs, stuffing is not as easy when compared to the bums, the fabric started piling heavily after just one wash and every time O has worn one it has leaked. The colors are bolder but when I'm having to deal with leaks I don't care what color it is.
Regular products that we would use with disposables for diaper rashes are limited because they will cause build-up in the fabrics luckily the rash cream we have been using lately is cloth friendly, Love love love California Baby Calming line.
So far everything we have experienced with cloth has been a positive and I'm glad we made this choice for our little family. While I know that this is not a choice for every family it was a positive choice for our family and it is doable if your child is in child care. I also know that I am very lucky to have some amazing teachers in Olivia's room that love her and support the decisions we make for her!
Forgotten rant until just now - Why is it that in Austin, of all cities, it's fairly hard to try and find stores that sell cloth diapers? I have found a few stores here and there but they either only sell the velcro closures (I hear the snaps are good for the long haul,) only sell Fuzzibunz or are in Round Rock which is quite a haul from Westlake. We're trying out a new store downtown tomorrow and we'll see how their selection stacks up.
Sorry in advance to anyone that reads this and is not a parent or has no interest in what covers Miss O's bottom.
After months, not kidding, of going back and forth and struggling with my convictions over Olivia's well being, the well being of our bank account and the amount of diaper trash we were disposing of on a daily basis we decided to jump disposable ship and dive head first into cloth diapering!! I can honestly say that since we have switched there has not been a moments pause about our choice. Before I get into our experience in cloth so far I'll give the background of why it took us so long to get to this point.
What took us 8 months to get to this point? To be honest the only reason we didn't choose cloth from the very beginning is because I didn't want to burden people with our choices. I, like many people who don't know much about modern cloth, thought that it was a huge burden to child care workers and I didn't want to be the hated mom in O's class who was making their lives even more complicated than they already were. I also didn't want our parents and families to be put out when they were watching Olivia (we're beyond lucky to have so much family in town that we really have minimal need for sitters.) I knew that cloth diapers were gaining popularity but still there is a stigma that some people have a hard time getting past.
I had mentioned cloth diapers to Jake while I was pregnant and when she was having her crazy diaper issues as a newborn but not until a few weeks ago when I brought it up again did he say alright lets go for it! I think it was the plain and simple numbers that got him on board. The savings is huge; we're talking thousands of dollars over multiple kids at the rate we were going through with the little lady. Yes the upfront cost is a bit and I'm kicking myself for not deciding to do this before she was born because we could have registered for them BUT we are slowly building a stash. We have about 12 diapers now and tomorrow I'm going to pick up a few more to have enough to go to washing every other day.
Ok so here are my observations, rants and raves about cloth diapers thus far:
Let's state the obvious we're saving money and saving mama earth!!
No diaper rash! She gets a rash almost immediately now when she's in a disposable (learned this the hard way the week she was still in disp. at school and cloth at home before the big transition)
They are so much easier to clean than I imagined, yes I have to deal with the dirty stuff a bit more intensively but it's really not that big of a deal.
When we were making the choice to switch it was crazy information overload and hard to narrow in on where we should be looking for information. Thank goodness for friends that cloth and Mama Natural!!
We have tried 3 different brands and here are my thoughts
(6) Bumgenius 4.0- I'm in love!! No leaks, easy to adjust, easy to stuff, easy to clean and precious patterns
(2) gdiapers - convenient to fill and good for long outings so I don't have bulky diapers taking up space in the diaper bag, also cute patterns and easy to clean
(4) Fuzzibuns One Size - I so wanted to love them because a lot of my mommy friends love them but I HATE them! They are a pain to adjust with the elastic and buttons at the waist and legs, stuffing is not as easy when compared to the bums, the fabric started piling heavily after just one wash and every time O has worn one it has leaked. The colors are bolder but when I'm having to deal with leaks I don't care what color it is.
Regular products that we would use with disposables for diaper rashes are limited because they will cause build-up in the fabrics luckily the rash cream we have been using lately is cloth friendly, Love love love California Baby Calming line.
So far everything we have experienced with cloth has been a positive and I'm glad we made this choice for our little family. While I know that this is not a choice for every family it was a positive choice for our family and it is doable if your child is in child care. I also know that I am very lucky to have some amazing teachers in Olivia's room that love her and support the decisions we make for her!
Forgotten rant until just now - Why is it that in Austin, of all cities, it's fairly hard to try and find stores that sell cloth diapers? I have found a few stores here and there but they either only sell the velcro closures (I hear the snaps are good for the long haul,) only sell Fuzzibunz or are in Round Rock which is quite a haul from Westlake. We're trying out a new store downtown tomorrow and we'll see how their selection stacks up.
1 comment:
woohoo cloth diapers! I too cloth diaper and knew from the very beginning (probably even before I got pregnant, actually...) that I'd probably cloth diaper. For me, it's mostly about the cost.
Researching cloth diapers is so overwhelming, isn't it!? I end up just going with prefolds because they seemed the simplest to understand to me, not to mention the cheapest and easiest to wash. I can sew so I actually made my own covers, so that helped quite a bit with the price tag too. I made a couple pocket diapers in the beginning, but didn't use them much and just stuck with prefolds. At some point, if prefolds no longer seem to meet our needs, I might make some more pocket diapers, but I actually really like prefolds a lot and might stick with them the whole way through.
ha ha, I actually bought a couple flat diapers and am going to practice folding them - talk about old school diapering! :) Man, if I can figure out those things, then were talking about some ridiculously cheap diapering...but we'll see...
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