Archive for the ‘Cloth Diapering’ Category

11-25

2009

The Awesomeness of Cloth Diapers

Cloth diapering (aside from breastfeeding!) is one of the best financial and health decisions a parent could make!

Oh yes, that is the face of a happy and healthy attachment baby!

When I was pregnant with my oldest son, Daniel, I wanted to cloth diaper him, sadly I wasn’t able to do so (due to his biological father) until Danny was about a year old. With him I used mainly pre-folds and covers with a few pockets and AIO (all in ones).

This time around I pretty much let Keith know from the start we would be cloth diapering Tristan. Explaining the health benefits, the FINANCIAL benefits, and well the cute factor heh, he was totally on board!

My father purchased us a dozen Bum Genius 3.0 One Size diapers and our friend Jen, purchased us another dozen. How lucky are we!

Here are some of my (and Keith’s) favorite aspects about using cloth diapers!

Keith’s Reasons

The sheer financial aspect
Zero diaper rashes
The containment (of the poopy “blowouts”) is really good, no leaks
They absorb really well
The versatility of the cloth diapers, by customizing the inserts
The maintenance is really simple
We never “run out” of diapers, no 3am runs to purchase disposables
They’re pretty (he wanted me to make that more manly sounding lol)

My Reasons

The cuteness! Seriously, a t-shirt, a cloth diaper, and some baby legs, adorable!
Super comfy on the baby, no rashes either
Really easy to just do a load of laundry
No gel bits of who knows what attached to my baby
Cloth diapers do not have that weird smell/stink
There is no “dunking” of diapers, Tristan is of course, exclusively breastfed and that is water soluble.

Actually Keith listed most of our reasons, go figure!

Financially, with the option we went with, for an initial cost of $400 approx, we have a set of diapers that will last from newborn until toddler. With disposables that cost would be approx $1800! Also Keith had talked to the water company and the woman he spoke to was shocked. Apparently our family of four uses the same water consumption as a one person household. I was so surprised considering how much laundry we do, my long showers, the billions of dishwasher loads, etc.

We wash the diapers every other day and use powdered Tide for the detergent. Honestly, Keith is the one who does ALL the diapering. He changes all the diapers, washes them, and stuffs them.

His method for washing is:

Put washer on the largest size setting (ours is super) and add the 1^st measure of detergent
Put temperature to cold/cold
Set to highest agitation level
When that cycle is done, set temperature to hot/hot
Set to highest agitation level and add 2^nd measure of detergent
Once that 2^nd cycle is complete, run one more time, without detergent to fully rinse diapers
Run through the dryer on low temp for 60 minutes

It may sound like a lot of steps, but in reality it’s just moving the dial a few times on the washing machine!

Do you use cloth diapers? What type (pocket, pre-folds, AIO’s, etc)? Do you have a favorite retailer? How did you start using cloth?

archived under: AP, Cloth Diapering

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About Sarah & Osn

I'm Sarah, mom of two sweet boys, Daniel & Tristan. I'm passionate about Attachment Parenting & photography. Why don't you learn more about me!

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Fought for a VBAC and lost
"She proceeded to make the comment “I know the situation, and because of that I’m not feeling sympathetic” in reference to Sarah leaving the hospital AMA and not accepting a repeat c-section previously, and to the massive amounts of pain she was in."
Vent - VBAC Scare Tactics
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