I think it’s written somewhere into the blogging contract that if you blog and you use cloth diapers, you are duty bound to at some point write a blog post discussing every minute detail about your experience.
Internets, consider my contract fulfilled! BEHOLD! My cloth diapering post.
First let me say that not using cloth diapers was never an option for me. This determination wasn’t born of some over-inflated, holier-than-thou philosophy (i.e. “My baby is better than your baby because she shits into fleece.”) no, this was simply because I wouldn’t be able to handle the guilt of not doing it.
I don’t know where it came from, this guilt, this crushing sense of failure if I throw something out that could have been recycled, or if I buy something new that could have been found secondhand. It just exists. Always. Heavy on my shoulders, whispering insidiously and steering me sternly towards hemp and recycled materials.
So for us the decision to do cloth diapers was already made, we just needed to figure out which brand, and man are there OPTIONS!
I realized pretty quickly that cloth diapering is like everything else in babyland, it has its own terminology, its own websites and weird strange rituals. You think you can just go somewhere and read about the different types of diapers, pick the one that best suits you and be on your merry way. But you’re wrong. Idiot.
You read page after page, click on link after link – before you know it you’ve spent five consecutive hours squinting at the computer screen while muttering about prefolds and liners, trying to make sense of nonsensical terms like snappis and bummis and huggabunz and rockin’ green detergent. They talk about prepping and soaking and stripping and tryst me, none of it means what you think it does.
Obviously, I went deep, deep down this road. You know me. I researched and compared, read reviews and reports and lost myself for weeks inside this strange and bewildering new world.
I did eventually managed to emerge with my sanity intact, and ironically, I was saved by my own vanity. You see, Olive’s last name begins with a G, and this diaper company called gDiapers makes fun, colourfully designed diapers, all with a little g stamped on the butt. Nothing appealed to me more than the idea of our little creature tooting around in monogrammed nappies, and upon further inspection, gDiapers seemed kind of cool. They were made up of a cloth outer layer, a plastic liner that snapped inside, and either a cloth or disposable insert to go into the liner (you still with me?)
So for diaper changes, you could either change out just the insert, the insert and the liner, or toss the whole diaper in the wash in the event of a poopslosion. This was great for me because I planned on getting diapers secondhand, and was way less skeeved out by buying some of the cloth inserts new.
It’s also handy to have the option to buy disposable inserts in case we’re travelling and don’t want to arrive at our destination with a diaper bag full of dirties.
I also use cloth wipes. It’s sort of ridiculous not to, if you’re cloth diapering. I have some fuzzy ones (shown above) that were kindly made for me by my sister as a baby shower gift, and a bunch of more basic double-ply cotton ones I ordered from Etsy.
I keep my wipe solution in a plastic squeeze bottle, made up of the following
- 1 cup water
- 1 Tbsp olive oil
- 1 Tbsp Dr Bronner’s Castile soap
- 1 tsp aloe vera
When it’s butt changing time we just squeeze some solution onto a wipe, warm it briefly in our hands, then begin the de-pooping process.
Our diaper cream is just coconut oil. It’s honestly the best thing ever, cloth diaper safe, and smells like a dream. I also use it for body moisturizer and eye makeup remover (From a different jar, obviously! Ew.)
(Our drawer of diaper liners and wipes. The roll of toilet paper looking stuff is a flushable paper liner, but as Olive only poops like once a week we don’t really use it too much at the moment)
(diapers on the left, stuffed with cloth inserts and ready to go, extra plastic liners on the right)
So, in a dramatic conclusion to this riveting post about how I dispose of the waste generated by my infant daughter: I’m happy with the diapers, we have about 14 and do laundry every day or every other day, no leaks, no diaper rash, and honestly, it’s as easy as pie.