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Yes just reading this heading half of you will think I've gone a little crazy...and that's ok :) my family does too. My husband and I pride ourselves on trying to be healthy, live a healthy lifestyle, we often watch documentaries on health, wellness, and bettering the environment. We use glass water bottles, I almost ALWAYS bring my recyclable bags to the grocery store or get paper, and we try to do our part in being aware of our carbon footprint. Anywho, we watched a documentary that was showing all of the ways we can help contribute to a better environment and less overall carbon emissions, it was saying that the biggest proponent of carbon emissions is deforestation, and industrial agriculture. I was honestly surprised because we always think it's car pollution and all of the things we're told; save water, recycle, etc. and it went on to give ways in which we can alter certain things in our lifestyle to do our part. So, it said that filling our landfills with items that never break down (i.e. plastics) is huge, so plastic water bottles, plastic containers, plastic bags that you get from pretty much EVERYWHERE are all over our planet.
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One of the points brought up that really hit me though was disposable diapers. That was certainly never something I questioned when I had my son & daughter. I was young and uninformed on a lot of subjects at the time, but I never even considered there being another way to diaper your children. So, I was interested that they said from birth until potty training age, kids go through on average 8,000-10,000 diapers! I knew it would be a lot, but I didn't have an actual number in mind, so just multiply that by the number of kids you have. All of those diapers since their inception (the first being in 1948) are now sitting in a landfill and just taking up space. They will not likely EVER break down and decompose, especially in recent years with plastics and chemicals being introduced into them,for more 'wicking away moisture' and those cute little blue lines that tell you when to change your baby's diaper, because apparently we are too lazy to be able to check? Well, we weren't even pregnant with baby A at this point, but I told my husband that I'd like to give cloth diapers a try if we ever had another baby. Now that I was armed with this new information I couldn't just blindly ignore it, especially when I would be contributing to the environment long after I'm gone from this earth, but my children & grandchildren, and so on are still here!
I started doing a bunch of research to figure out cost, what brands are the best/most reliable, & what kinds of cloth diapers are out there, how they work etc. Surprising to me, there is a ton of information out there because in recent years, I'd say about the past 5-7 years, more parents have been made aware of the need to start changing some of our 'convenient' ways. I will include some great websites that have all sorts of information at the bottom in case you are also interested in looking into cloth diapering.
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There is more of an upfront cost to supply yourself with the necessary tools for cloth diapering, but in the long run you save on average about $2,500 on diapering in the end. There are also fewer, if any, diaper rashes associated with cloth diapers, additionally a suggested association with earlier toilet training due to kids being able to feel 'wet'. Yes there is the 'ick' factor that comes with cleaning up the mess, but you're only kidding yourself if you think you won't come into contact with that at all with disposable diapers, or during potty training! There are also other items that are there for the convenience of clean up, but we'll get to that!
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What I ended up going with was what is called an all-in-two cloth diaper. Which basically means there are two parts to it. The diaper part that catches the pee or poo, and then the diaper cover, that is waterproof and keeps the mess off of the baby's clothes, blankets, etc. There are multiple ways to to accomplish the all-in-two diaper, multiple brands, different methods for the cloth part that actually goes on baby, and then the outer shell cover comes in several brands as well. I read that it was a better idea to go with a few different types of covers & liners at first, so you can decide what works best for you and baby, and then get more supplies from there!
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The 3 diaper cover brands I am starting with are GroVia, Thirsties, & Flips. GroVia & Flips are both a one size fits all diaper, they have snaps on the front to adjust to baby's size from newborn to potty training. Thirsties has two sizes, the size 1 is for newborns up to 15 lbs, and then they have a size 2 for up to 35 lbs I believe. These also have snaps on the front side of the diaper cover to adjust to baby's growing size, and they start out a little smaller than the GroVia & Flips, so I thought it would be good to get a couple of these for those first few weeks. The diaper liners I am going with are 'pre folds' which basically looks like a small dish towel & is similar to what our grandparents used. There are no more safety pins to mess with however, they now make these little diaper fasteners called 'Snappis' and that's how you keep the diaper together. And then each of the brands came with their own liner or insert that I ordered that is a little less complex as far as how you prep them.
This weekend I decided I was deep cleaning the house, and I should also have all of my cloth diapers prepped and ready for the baby. Just like brand new towels, the cloth diaper has to be washed several times before it has reached a higher level of absorbency. My prefold diapers are all 100% unbleached cotton, and then a few inserts were a mix of cotton, hemp, bamboo, & microfleece. Any natural material is supposed to be washed & dryed at least 6 times to reach full absorbency before use. They will continue to become more absorbent the more you wash them as well. Some of the other diaper inserts were microfleece as well as the diaper covers, so I washed those altogether, about 6 times as well. The difference was, I didn't have to dry these each time in between washes.
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| GroVia on the far left, Thirsties in the middle, & Flips on the right |
1) Cotton, Hemp, Bamboo & Natural materials I washed on HOT with just a couple of tsps of detergent the first 2 rounds. I washed & dried them 6 times back to back in between my other laundry. This is supposed to help rid the diapers of natural oils that the materials contain and make them more absorbent.
2) Microfleece liners & Diaper Covers I washed together on WARM with a couple of tsps of detergent for the first 2 rounds. The diaper covers aren't absorbent so they just needed washed once, and then hung to dry.
I will definitely do an updated post once baby A is here and we have been using the cloth diapers to give an update. All of the blogs I read had somewhat the same general consensus, they were nervous at first and weren't sure if they could stick with it, but after using cloth diapers they said they'd never go back! They were happy with the outcomes, and said it wasn't as bad as they had originally thought! I'm hopeful we can get the hang of it pretty quickly, and I'll be sure to let you know how I like our different diapers and the different inserts as far as ease of use, and absorbency in a future post!
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This picture is showing how the Snappis work on a prefold diaper, and this would then be covered by the diaper cover. Here are pictures of the clean up equipment that I bought to help keep the ick factor to a minimum. First off, the diaper sprayer, is essentially a hose that connects to your toilet tank & uses clean water that you spray the diaper off with into the toilet to be flushed away! But don't you spray poop water all over? I'm glad you asked, not if I have my handy dandy spray shield! But won't your hands get covered in excrement? Not if I'm using my awesome little diaper dawgs!
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| diaper sprayer |
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| spray shield |
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| diaper dawgs |
thenaturalbabyco.com
babygearlab.com
diaperjunction.com
Happy cloth diapering to the other brave parents out there looking for more information! I hope this was helpful, feel free to leave comments & horror stories below!
www.beachbodycoach.com/DRJENNCHICOINE
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