These Ain't Ya Momma's Cloth Diapers

Would you believe me if I told you I haven't been updating my blog because every time I get on the computer I lose hours reading about/looking at/entering giveaways for cloth diapers?You should because I have become majorly obsessed. But fear not, I am finally making time to sit down and fill you in. I want to spread the love (the good, the bad, the ugly love) and share my new milestone on the path to granola.

Back when I was pregs my friend Erin asked me if I was planning to do cloth diapers, because she knew a lot of her friends back in California were starting to do that. "Uhhhh no," I replied, with a bit of judgement in my voice I'm sure. Cloth diapers were for CRAZY people on the west coast and there was just no way I was going to do that. Fast forward several months and enter my friend Christina, pregnant with triplets and planning to do cloth. I admit, I told people she was doing it and I told people she was a bit nuts. Through facebook, however, she shared a link for a group called the DFW Cloth Diaper group and introduced me to some girls who were doing it. I started reading blogs, websites, reviews, facebook discussions and that was the beginning of my very slippery slope into cloth diaper fanaticism. Seriously folks, I stayed up at night thinking about cloth diapers. And that's when I knew I had to try them out.

Stop reading for a moment and go google "clothdiapers." The insanity is unreal. First, you almost need a dictionary to even understand what most of these people are even talking about, not to mention some kind of decoder ring to crack the acronyms they use- AIO, AI2, PUL, H&L, LO, DH, etc. I was thoroughly confused and decided I needed some real life, hands on instruction to see if this would be worth my while. I went to Babies, Bottoms & More in Farmer's Branch to see if anyone could explain to me what the heck all this stuff was. The owner runs this business out of her garage basically, but she was very helpful and patient with me as I played 20 questions. Finally, feeling like I had a grasp on this whole thing, I decided to take the plunge into diapering.

Unsure of how this experiment would turn out, I decided to turn to Craigslist for my first purchase. That's right folks, I bought USED cloth diapers. The fact that I was buying used grossed me out to no end, but I didn't think it would be wise to blow money on brand new diapers when I wasn't sure if I would stick with it, so I bought some previously pooped on cloth. I found a great deal and purchased 6 BumGenius 3.0 pocket-style diapers. Much to my delight, the diapers reeked of bleach and were snowy white! It wasn't long before I was hooked and searching day and night to find great deals on more diapers. I have purchased many more since those original six, but they continue to be my favorite by far.

There is, however, quite a learning curve with using cloth. It has taken several weeks of figuring out how to get it on just right to prevent leaks and figuring out what to do with the poop. Most instructions I find online say to "shake the poop off into the toilet" and then throw it into the laundry. Well, pardon the TMI, but Will's poop isn't shakable at this point. You can purchase diaper sprayers that hook onto your toilet to assist in this matter but I went and just bought a detachable shower head to use, since my toilet is right next to my bath tub. This seemed, to me, an ingenious idea and I couldn't wait for Will to poop so I could try it out. My excitement soon turned to frustration as the shower head ended up spraying poop anywhere BUT the toilet and I ended up soaking wet! I now use a tiny squirt bottle and just hold the diaper over the toilet and spray and refill and spray and refill until all the mess is gone. It takes quite a bit longer but it works just fine and leaves me and my bathroom relatively clean. After the poop is gone I spray the diaper with Baby OxyClean and throw it in a bag designed to hold wet diapers until I can get it in the wash.

The laundry hasn't been nearly as bad as I imagined it to be either. Now that I have enough diapers to make it almost 2 full days, I only do laundry every other day. In some weird way that I can't explain, it's actually very relaxing. I daresay I look forward to dong my diaper laundry every other night. It goes like this: I put all the diapers in the washer and run a cold prewash followed by a hot wash with a tiny bit of Tide Original powder and follow that cycle with an additional cold rinse. Then I take all of the diapers and hang up the covers and throw the inserts into the dryer on low. The next day I put all the inserts into the covers and I am ready to go. It's quite easy and I haven't had very many staining issues and no stink issues at all!

I am proud to say that Will is now fully cloth diapered, even when staying with a sitter or grandparents or out and about! It took a while and I eased into it but what once seemed crazy and overwhelming is now just a part of life. I really don't think I could go back (although I actually am going to go back to disposables for our Disney World trip next week because the thought of carrying around dirty diapers in the heat at an amusement park all day makes me want to hurl). If anyone reading this is interested in more information about cloth diapering, let me know because it's my new favorite thing to talk about.