All of my cloth diapering stuff finally got here last Thursday (so a week ago). My covers were held up in customs coming from Canada. I promptly washed them so I could make the big switch on Friday to cloth entirely. I guess I should back up and say why we went with cloth and what we chose to do. :)
Brodie had a diaper rash (red, scratchy, and raised) for over a month. After about 2 weeks of having a rash I decided that I needed to look into cloth diapers (Sarah and Bree already were doing cloth and said it was easy). When I started to research cloth diapering I discovered some VERY interesting facts:
-50 MILLION disposable diapers are thrown away EVERY DAY
-A disposable takes between 250-500 years to decompose
-You will spend over $2000 on disposable diapers for one child from birth to potty training
-You will spend another $500 on wipes per kid
-There are some things in disposables that can cause cancer
-Our wipes we were using have been shown to cause a rash
With my new found knowledge I told nick I was seriously considering switching to cloth diapers with Brodie and to my surprise he responded, "I'm actually really glad that we are going to switch to cloth diapers...I think they will be a lot better for us and him."
Then, I dove into the world of cloth diapers and all the different types that exist now a days. There are a lot more options than rubber pants and pinning cloth. Now there are
prefolds w/ covers,
fitteds with covers, pockets,
AIO's, AI2's, and hybrid systems. After LOTS of research we decided to go with
prefolds with covers as our main system with a few
gdiapers and pockets thrown in there as well. I have yet to try the pockets and have only tried one
gdiaper but the
prefolds are working great! No leaks except a dime sized poo spot on his outfit this morning but that was to be expected since he hadn't pooped in literally a week.
I'm loving the cloth diapers. I feel like we are doing the best for our little man, we aren't contributing to the landfills, we are saving literally THOUSANDS of dollars (I think I spend less than 300 on all the diapers/accessories for diapers total), and Brodie's bum is soft like a baby's bottom should be.
With cloth diapering came the need to rearrange our house/nursery. We took Brodie out of our room (he was in a co-sleeper) and put him into his room (in his crib) 8 days ago. That's going great as well. We took off the changing pad/diaper storage on the pack n play to make it smaller since all the changes are happening in the nursery now. And the nursery, well, we had to TOTALLY rearrange it to better meet our needs. Now he has a wonderful changing station complete with a diaper pail, hangers for diaper covers, a changing pad, an organizer for many essentials, and my cloth wipes (which pop up like disposables in an old
Huggies case!) with wipes solution. We even have a basket of burp cloths for easy access. The new nursery set up has a lot more storage, floor space, and is cleaner. :) I'm so happy with all the changes we are making around here and with how happy our little man is.
That's all for now! Gotta go fold a load of diaper laundry. (laundry is no big deal...one load every 2-3 days...and easiest stuff to fold ever!)
~Heather
