The Daily Life of Sweetpea[s]

Jana, that's awesome! I recently switched to cloth diapers with Aidan. It has been so easy, which I found really surprising. Of course, what makes it so easy is that I have hired a diaper service who comes once a week to pick up nasty diapers and to drop off soft clean diapers. I have a neighbor who tried the fuzzi bunz. She said that they were great and that it seemed like her son was very comfortable in them. She didn't buy any more of them, though, because they required a lot more work to wash.

So, anyways, I use cloth prefolds inside of some very very cute diaper covers. You should go to http://www.greenmountaindiapers.com/covers.htm#Bummisw and see the cute covers we decided on. We got two of the frogs, two of the cosmic or space scenes, and some plain white ones. The Bummis Super Whisper Wraps are just awesome! I can't say enough about them.

We tried out several others including: Nikky's, Imse Vimse Bumpy Wraps, and some different polar fleece covers and the Bummis fit Aidan the best. Apparently it just depends on how your baby's body is as to which works best for you. Aidan is narrow through the waist and hips so the Imse Vimse Bumpy Wraps did not fit him very well, but they fit our neighbor's kid perfectly.

Anyways, www.diaperware.com has the most selection of just about anyplace I've seen, but if you want to try out the Nikky's (which is the softest and trimmest I've seen) then you'll need to check out www.babybunz.com

The lady who runs www.greenmountaindiapers.com is a Christian and if you click on the cross or the icthus on her site it leads to a page with her testimony on it.

I should stop gushing now, but it's just so fun to find someone else who is interested in this stuff. Yea!
 

It looks like the address I sent you to in order to view the Bummis got truncated in the comment. So, the best I can tell you is to go to the www.greenmountaindiapers.com and click on the Bummis to see them up close.
 

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boy oh boy!!!! a real live friend to talk to about diapers! i actually do have one lone friend at church who uses cloth. she said that her baby doesn't ever get diaper rash except when she uses disposables on trips and such. i thought that was interesting

thanks for your recs. i will have to look back at your comments when i actually HAVE a child. :)

i have heard that one of the least expensive ways to cloth diaper is to use prefolds and covers. what do you think?
 

I can't speak from experience, but it sure seems like it would be much more expensive to buy all-in-ones over prefolds with covers.

Depending upon the baby and the baby's age, you go through varying numbers of diapers a day. At this point we probably go through 7 cloth diapers per day (and we use disposables at night....this is because Aidan sleeps 11 hours and we don't want him waking up because he feels wet...it took a while for him to learn to sleep that long, and I am afraid to mess with it). (oh, and a little aside: we used disposables for a year and never got diaper rash. I am now using cloth and have been fighting a small diaper rash for the past 4 or 5 days. Balmex is helping a lot, and it seems to be going away.)

Back to the main topic: if you bought all-in-ones you would probably need like 14 to 20 of them at least and that would have you washing every night. most diaper sites say it is best to line-dry the diaper covers as well as the all-in-ones. While the cover can dry overnight on a drying rack, I am not certain that an AIO can...it depends on the brand and the design...anyways, they can take a while. Also, if a prefold is wet inside a cover, then you can remove the prefold and then just pass a wipe over the inside of the cover and set it aside to dry until the next diaper change. then, when you come to that next diaper change, you can pick up that cover and re-use it. If you get lucky, and no poop ends up on a cover, you could go all day and only use 2 covers. Therefore, you wind up only needing to wash the covers every few days ( I would recommend buying 8 covers, maybe 10 if you just don't like to wash). So, not only do you have to buy more AIO's than you have to buy covers, but you have to use more water and detergent with them than you would with covers.

So, that's my very long answer to your question.

On another note, I have noticed that all women my mother's age who talk about cloth diapers all had much more difficult experiences than we have to have. For one thing, the diaper service is only a little more expensive than disposables per month (and maybe cheaper in the long run, as babies who use cloth diapers tend to potty train sooner than babies in disposables). For another, there's no need to use diaper pins anymore (unless you really want to). Velcro has revolutionized the cloth diaper world. Another problem they had was how the plastic pants they put us in were not breathable at all and thus caused lots and lots of diaper rash. Most AIO's and diaper covers today are tons more breathable than anything our mothers had. (I think the reason Aidan has a rash is because he must have pooped at the beginning of a nap and then slept in it for an hour and a half...not something he usually does...disposables would have helped to remove the wetness of that from his skin, but he still would have had poop next to him and disposables can't entirely solve that either).

So, enough already, right? Yeah, sorry for going on and on. Again, it's very fun for me to have someone who is interested. =-)
 

I think I would have to see yours in action, Kells, before I was convinced. I do, however, buy prefold diapers from www.clothdiaper.com to use as burp cloths for Plaid Orchid. They don't have velcro, so maybe these are different from what you are using. I have a sample that I washed to display how soft and quilt-y they get, and I've been dusting my furniture with it. =)
 

Hey, Linds,

Before I used cloth for Aidan's diapering needs, I used the prefolds as burp cloths myself. They were awesome for that. The Burp cloths I found in other places were narrower and did not necessarily protect my shoulder from spit up as well as using a prefold for a burp cloth.

Anyways, in response to your comment: it's not the prefold that has the velcro, it's the diaper cover, but since the diaper covers fit so trim over the prefolds, you don't have to pin the prefolds under them. Our parents had plastic pants, which were pretty roomy and if they had not pinned the prefold diaper underneath the plastic pants, then the prefold would not have stayed close to the baby's body at all (resulting in yucky yucky mess everywhere). This is not a problem anymore. Some people still really want to pin their diapers, and some who don't want to use pins will use "snappi"s to keep the prefold all together underneath the diaper cover.

Sometimes I use a Snappi, but not usually.

You could google "Snappi" and see what I'm talking about.

Anyways, don't worry about me pressuring you to do cloth, because I would never do that--but if you're ever interested in it, let me know. I'd love to talk some more about it.
 

i like diaperpin.com for an ad nauseum description of products, as well as links to sites.....my boss here at school cloth diapered her now-grown kids, and she still (after about 20 years) uses the prefolds for cleaning rags!!! those things are tough.
 

Kellsey,
Balmex can ruin dipes, so be careful! Using fleece liners will help wick moisture away when you can't change and ruining a small cut of a yard of microfleece is not nearly so bad as ruining dipes. My dd doesn't normally get rashes in cloth, but I also don't use PUL covers that much (wool or fleece is my preference, or coverless fitteds at home). The more breathable, the better. Also, using coverless fitteds ensures she gets changed as soon as she pees, which also helps! I do use Bummis SWW and MotherEase Airflow PUL covers on occasion, and pockets with PUL (FuzziBunz and Wonderoos) at night, but at least half of the time she's in more breathable stuff.
 

ooh, i'm interested, too, to hear from the Knowing Ones on this topic. i fully intended to use cloth until I got put on bed rest, had a C-section, and just generally lost the will to do anything even moderately complicated for a while. and now the day care won't take them anyway.

I remember my mom using cloth with my sister, pins and all, and it wasn't really a big deal at all. And now, from the research and from these testimonials, it looks like it's even easier. ...just not so easy to advocate for it when you're feeling yecchy.

Soooo...hopefully next kid.
 

You can definitely spend as much or as little as you want with today's new fangled cloth diapers... I am pretty moderate. Not as frugal as some but certainly not as spendy as many. We will have spent about $400 upfront to cloth diaper two children, which is pretty darn good considering we were spending more than $40/month in disposables. I use a mix of all different types of things and I like that a lot. I can do trim when I need to, I have high absorbency options, I have cheap diapers as back-up, etc.

I just finished buying my newborn stash for our babe due in less than 6 weeks, and the little fitted diapers are SO cute and soft... *sigh*