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 1st 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 2nd measure of detergent
• Once that 2nd 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?

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