Carson's 9 month summary photo

This was inspired by 52home :)  http://www.girltalkhome.com/52home/P15/ picture taken by my mom, Kay Dees.

My Experience with Cloth Diapering

My son in a cloth diaper at 2 weeks old, in a milk coma :)

This is a post about one of the 'weird' things that I do with my kid! Cloth diapering isn't for everyone, but if you are considering doing cloth diapering maybe I can help by posting some things about it here. I'm not super into being organic and natural childbirth and all that, I just did cloth mainly for the savings. But as I have done them, I have noticed that cloth diapers really are friendlier to a baby's butt (Carson's pretty much never had a rash). And if you think about how disposables are piling up in landfills, never to decompose, it can be pretty depressing.

Alls you need to do this is to be willing to do a little more laundry, and spray off your baby's poop into the toilet instead of throwing it away. You also need to be willing to save TONS of money.

I like to use Bumgenius One Size 4.0 pocket diapers (see cottonbabies.com). A diaper consists of a shell (comes in many colors!) and an insert (or two) to absorb stuff. I have 24 diapers and have used them for the 9 months of my son's life with no problem (except one snap that fell out, but it wasn't essential). I do a load of diapers (anywhere from 8 to 15 diapers) about every 1 to 2 days, as the brand that I use requires a wash within 48 hrs of becoming dirty. I absolutely HATE the small of urine, so prefolds (traditional cloth diapers), which can go more than 48 hrs without a wash, aren't really for me. Though unlike my kind of diapers, most prefolds can be pre-soaked (I think), which is great. Prefolds are also cheaper, and the ones I use are about $18 or $19 a piece (unless you buy in bulk).

Anyhoo, here is my washing routine: If a diaper is wet I put it directly in the pail. I store the diapers in the sealed plastic pail and remove the insert from the shell right after I change them, so I don't have to touch them later. When he poops, I dump the poop in the toilet (now that he's on table food) and spray off all remains into the toilet with the Bumgenius diaper shower (essential). To wash, I just open the pail when it's full and dump it directly into the washer. I scrub the entire pail and lid every time I wash a load of diapers. For the diapers, I do a cold cycle with detergent (All Free and Clear) (edit 1/2/13: All FC should be military version, not regular version. I changed to Charlie's Soap and turned on our water softener) and a rinse. I then do a warm cycle with detergent and two rinses. Then I do 1 to 2 more rinses. All the rinses are to ensure that the pee and other stuff is completely gone. This also ensures that the detergent is out, which allows for maximum absorbency. Then, I put the inserts and cloth wipes (another money saver :) ) into the dryer, and the shells I put on a drying rack. They are usually dry within half a day. Thus, a load of diapers takes about 8-12 hours at the most to go from dirty to clean and ready to wear. They smell perfectly clean. If a stain remains, I put the insert wet in the sun and it is gone within 3 hrs. Usually though, with that much rinsing and washing, no stains remain :)

It may be a lot of work, but don't worry, there's always help!

What I LOVE about the brand I use is the liner between the insert and the baby's butt. Carson has had only ONE almost-rash in 9 months of using these. The wetness is taken away from him. Carson's lack of diaper rash could also be the fact that I change him pretty often. And that's another great thing about cloth diapering. It doesn't matter how often you change them, because it won't cost you any more money! yay! You may wash a load a few hours sooner than you otherwise would, but since you signed up for it in doing cloth diapers, that's no big deal.

We invested $400 initially but have only had to buy 3 or 4 small packs of disposable diapers for trips to see family, etc. So while the initial cost of cloth diapering can be a lot, it's a great thing to do if you have a baby registry for your first child or something. I had a registry at everythingbirth.com for cloth diapers and accessories.

diaper pail I use. nifty, with a "lock" too.

Speaking of accessories... A lot of people do wetbags instead of pails for their diapers. I decided to go with a pail because again, I thought before I had Carson that a solid pail would keep out the odor better. I don't know if this is true, but I found a "nappy" pail that came with a mesh bag that was made by Bambino Mio. The mesh bags could be washed with the diapers, but the elastic in them fell apart and I eventually just ditched them and put them straight in the pail. For outings, I keep the diaper bag stocked with grocery bags.

this attaches to our toilet and sprays the poop for us. Thus, I don't touch his poop much! PHEW

As mentioned above, an accessory I love is the diaper sprayer that Bumgenius makes. It attaches to your toilet water line and uses clean water to spray water at high pressure to get the poop off. Traditionally, you scrub it off by hand, but I wasn't really wanting to do that either. So the sprayer does it for me :)

I love these cloth wipes. 

Other accessories I use are cloth wipes. Thirsties have been the best brand of cloth wipes for me. The easiest method seemed to be having a spray bottle, spraying baby's butt with a solution, and wiping it off with the wipe. (Carson doesn't mind the spray, I guess he's used to it since it's all he's known) I then store wipes in the pail and wash them right a long with the diapers. I made my own solution of one part water, one part baby oil and one part baby shampoo. It smells great :)

So, diapers are dirty and stinky no matter how you do 'em, whether disposable or cloth. If you can stomach it, I'd say give cloth a try. It sure has saved us lots of money.

I also just recommended the brands I like and use, but there are dozens of brands of diapers, wipes, pails, wetbags, detergents, etc etc. and they are all AMAZING. There are cheaper brands than I used as well. We were given lots of money with our son (our firstborn), so we invested in the nicer stuff.

I've been doing this ever since I've been a mom, so I really don't notice it any more. It's really easy to function like this on a daily basis, believe it or not.