Diaper Fun

When I was about to have my daughter, I knew that I wanted to use cloth diapers so I went through a diaper service. This worked out well, except that it was expensive and the company randomly went under without telling us, leaving us with dirty diapers and no idea what happened. I knew that I at least needed to wash the diapers I had and, low and behold, washing my own diapers was not that difficult once I got over the ick factor, so since October, I have been washing my own diapers and it has worked well for us.

One of my friends is pregnant and has been excited about these new-fangled all-in-one cloth diapers, and I was skeptical. With my prefolds, I just kept reusing the plastic pants and changing the diaper part. My life was already so easy with the Snappy - why would I need a cloth diaper that I would need to change the entire diaper? Wouldn't that make laundry that much more difficult? Also, there are some brands that have way too many snaps on them. How on earth would I know which snap attached to which, for what purpose, and what if the snap came undone? Then there was the whole poop factor, which I did not know how an all-in-one would react to. This wonderful, amazing friend let me borrow her stash of large diapers (she won't need them for a while and they were already bought used,) for me to try, and I LOVE them.

First of all, though I do have to wash the outer layer most every time I change her, it really isn't any more than the regular prefold and sometimes when it is just pee, the liner can be removed and the diaper is still good. How? This fabric is amazing. The first time I put her in these diapers, I kept checking to see if she was wet. She never was, so I thought, "Great. The time I put a nice diaper on her, she refuses to pee." I finally changed her anyway, and the insert was sopping wet but the diaper was completely dry.

The snaps are still a bit of a problem. She wiggles way too much for me to buy a diaper that grows with her because I can barely get the four attached before she starts flipping, so though I like the Wonderoos and Happy Heinys' open slot to load the insert, I won't be buying this style. I will say, however, that not every diaper has snaps. The Bum Genius is really good about a few snaps to adjust the rise and Velcro around the waist, and Happy Heinys has a style that really fits her well with Velcro.

The poop ended up being a reason to get these diapers. Because the material wicks the moisture away, cleaning these diapers was a dream. Well, at least compared to washing a prefold.

There are some drawbacks:
1. Bottom Creams: I think everything can be solved using Boudreaux's Butt Paste, but it stains and has Zinc Oxide. Zinc Oxide limits the absorption of the diapers, and nobody wants to see a brown stain on a diaper - even if it is from the cream. The good news is that most babies in cloth diapers don't get diaper rash very often, but last week she got a pretty bad one from some paper diapers and we had to use the Butt Paste. If anybody knows of some cream that doesn't have Zinc Oxide, we would love to know it!
2. Out and About: Generally speaking, we don't go very far for very long, but one of the drawbacks to a non-disposable diaper is that they don't get thrown away. You do need bags to carry a potentially poopy diaper around.
3. Heavy Wetters: Her sitter tries her best to keep her diapered in the cloth, but my daughter pees constantly in the morning making it very difficult to keep reusing these diapers. What I usually do is keep a prefold in the diaper instead of the insert, or just use my pre-folds in the morning, and put the nice diapers on later.
4. Traveling, Baby-Sitters, or any change of a routine: As passionate as I am about saving the environment one diaper at a time, others are not quite there or their housing situations are not used to babies, much less a cloth diapered baby. I think these could potentially end up solving this dilemma, but we will see.

I found a magazine that had a really good article about diaper options; here's a link:

http://www.mothering.com/green-living/diapering-naturally

My husband wondered what was in it for my friend - here we are shamelessly using her diapers. I hope to compensate this friend of mine eventually with my wealth of prefolds and all the new diapers I will buy because by the time her daughter gets to be my daughter's age, I won't need them anymore.