Our Cloth Diaper Journey: Our Experience(s)

We had the best of intentions.  That should count for something, right?  I know that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but this should be different... well perhaps not. 

We talked over cloth diapering everyday for months.  We discussed what kinds of diapers, what kinds of diaper pails, what we would do with Isabella as a newborn in diapers, etc.  We thought that we had all of our bases covered.  I was prepared with different websites with advice about leaking, smell, and broken diapers.  I logged countless nights on different sites researching the best places to go for troubleshooting our issues and local stores or support groups that might offer help.  I watched HOURS of YouTube videos on how to get the best fit around the legs, how to tell when the diaper was sized correctly, advice on wash routines, etc.  I was prepared.  Until I wasn't...

We decided before Isabella was born that based on what we read online about newborn poop that we were not going to use cloth diapers during the "newborn" phase.  Plus, when we got home from the hospital we tried one of our diapers on Isabella and it was obvious that they were too big for her.  She was 7lbs 6ozs when born and right at 7lbs when we left the hospital.  We re-tried the diapers again in about two weeks and they fit a bit better.  Be advised that one sized diapers are still going to look ENORMOUS on a newborn until they are about 10-11lbs. 

Day number one went fine, but we noticed a bit of a leaking issue around the legs.  Chalking it up to a fit issue, we decided to tighten the fit next time and moved on.  The next day it got worse and worse.  It seemed like every time that she peed she leaked out of her diaper and had to have a different change of clothes.  I knew something wasn't right.  I immediately logged on to a number of different websites.  I decided to strip our diapers, even though we had washed them like 3-4 times after we purchased them new.  We stripped them fully.  Same issue.  We did the "water droplet" test to check for repelling issues - that didn't appear to be the case.  We checked the fit around the legs - that didn't appear to be the case.  We did everything that we could think of.  Nothing seemed to work.  I was distraught.  I wanted this to work so bad.  I wanted to prove the naysayers wrong.  I was defeated.  My mother had started back to the disposable diapers during the days because she was exhausted with the different changes in clothes and constant wet spots. 

Every so often I would go back and try them again and it seemed like we never fully got rid of the leaking issues.  When we talked through it with some people they told us that it could just be that she pees too fast for the diapers to be able to absorb.  Now that she is a toddler, I know that it won't get any better because she holds it for so long. 

When Silas came along we wanted to give it another go.  This time we had a new plan.  We would get newborn cloth diapers and just start fresh.  We bought newborn BumGenius diapers and they worked awesome.  Even though he was almost 10lbs at birth they still fit snug and almost completely leak proof.  We used them until we could no longer squeeze his chunkiness into them.  We started using our cloth diapers that we used with Isabella and they worked with Silas, but no one was really committed to them.  We were already buying disposable diapers for Isabella so it didn't seem like that much trouble to be buying disposable diapers for Silas either. 

Until about 3 months ago ... Silas got this rash on his waist line.  It started looking like he just scratched himself with something.  I was thinking that perhaps he had something in the waistband of his pants that was scratchy.  So we washed it well and made sure to wash those clothes well that he had on.  I forgot about it because he didn't seem to be scratching it through his clothes.  Then about four days later I was dressing him after he had a warm bath and the rash looked AWFUL.  It looked huge and red and like enormous welts.  I immediately freaked out, but Corry talked me down off the ledge and told me that it was probably just the heat from the bath and that we should wait until it was a bit cooler before we did anything crazy. 

I checked him again before bed and it seemed better but it still looked like something.  I thought I would just have to take him into the doctor the next day.  About two hours after he went to bed he woke up screaming and when I went to get him he was burning up.  My kids don't regularly get fevers so I knew that something had to be wrong.  I took his temperature at 103.5 degrees.  Of course, by this point the only places open were emergency rooms because all of the minor medical places were closed.  We went and they said latex allergy for the rash and the fever was unrelated, but unalarming unless it continued for multiple days, got worse, or came with anymore symptoms but they felt that they two were unrelated. 

Latex allergy - less than cool.  However, lucky for us, we had the solution.  Cloth diapers.  We started using them that night and have been using them ever since.  The rash healed and hasn't returned.  We have had some small issues but we have learned a lot.  We have noticed that we have to be more diligent with checking his diaper than we ever did before in order to avoid leaks, but we haven't had near the leaks that we did with Isabella.  I can proudly say that we are cloth diapering parents. 

Our Cloth Diaper Journey: Accessories

So you've made the decision to cloth diaper?  Awesome!  What's your wash routine like?  Where did you get your wet bag?  How are you going to dry your diapers?  What is going to happen if your child gets diaper rash?  Ok don't panic.  I am going to walk through our experiences with all of these questions and hopefully you can learn from our mistakes. 

Wash Routine
Here's another one of those things that differs greatly from house to house.  Every parent thinks that they have the wash routine thing down for the diapers that the use.  And they do.  No one else has your same exact situation - you may have hard water, or well water, etc.  I have learned from having a bad wash routine that once you have something that works then you stick with it.  We have had our fair share of issues.  Leaking, residual smell after washing, ammonia issues, etc.  We have tried about 4-5 different soaps, both liquid and powder.  We have used small company products and the largest cloth diaper detergent on the market today.  We have a top loader washer and neither hard nor soft water.  We have city water and don't get our water from a well.  After all of that, we have finally decided that this routine works for us: 

Dry pail (we flush the poop when it happens & remove inserts before putting them into the pail)

Cold rinse

Hot wash with Charlie's Laundry Powder

Warm soak with Bacout (this cycle includes a rinse)

Line dry

 

The only difference to this routine would be if we are running short on time, then we would throw the inserts into the dryer and still line dry the shells.  We have an inexpensive drying rack that we bought like more than 7 years ago from Bed, Bath, & Beyond.  It's small enough to be used indoors in our laundry room or outside in the garage.  This routine works for us - no smells, no leftover soap, no issues (knock on wood.)  We buy our Charlie's Laundry Powder from Central Market and our Bacout comes from Kroger.  You can find it at a number of stores though.  The Bacout works to kill extra bad bacteria and keeps our diapers smelling fresh. 

Our diaper pail is shown to the right from The Container Store from years ago.  I'm not sure what other people use this for but it works perfect for a diaper pail and fits most Large sized diaper pail liners perfectly.  A diaper pail liner is just as it sounds.  It's a bag that is designed to fit inside of your diaper pail to hold your diapers until wash day.  This prevents you from having to wash your diaper pail everytime you wash your diapers.  It should be waterproof on the inside and some sort of plastic-y feeling material on the outside.  Our current ones have a zipper on the bottom and an elastic drawstring on the top.  When we wash our diapers we dump the entire bag out into the washing machine and put the bag in with the diapers in the wash only.  Never in the dryer.  Our diaper pail liners come from any random company on eBay.  We bought expensive diaper pail liners originally and the waterproof layer on the inside separated and torn apart from the outside layer.  Inappropriate.  I figure that even if they come apart like the other ones that at least we didn't pay as much for them.  I think that we paid about $7.00 a piece for each one.  They come in like a million different colors and prints but ultimately this bag is going to hold dirty diapers; does it really matter what color it is?   Side note is that we wash our diapers about every two days, maybe a few hours outside of 2 days... we don't have enough diapers to wait longer than that and feel comfortable. 

 

 

Outside of the house

So, you got the wash routine down.  How are you going to deal with cloth diapers outside of your house?  I know several people who don't use their cloth diapers outside of the house, or on vacations, or when they visit certain relatives, etc.  We use ours all the time but it's necessary for us with Silas's latex allergy.  We didn't use cloth outside of the house with Isabella because we always had leaking issues with her and didn't want to pack an entire closet full of clothes for us when we went anywhere. 

 

We bought two inexpensive wet bags from Target when we first started our journey and they are still going strong.  I'm not sure what they were called or supposed to be used for but they are perfect for cloth diapers.  We have the kind that only has a pocket for the wet diapers and no separate pocket for dry diapers.  At some point, I will post a blog about our car organization when it comes to kid stuff, but the short of it is that we have a bin in the car that holds clean diapers and a change of clothes for each child.  We only do diaper changes in our car unless we are in places for multiple hours, so we don't need a bag that we can transport easily or anything like that in a diaper bag. 

 

Diaper Rashes

Say it with me: no conventional diaper rash creams are compatible with cloth diapers.  Any use a traditional diaper rash cream with cloth diapers can make the next week(s) of your life a living hell.  I'm not even sure how I would go about telling you to strip your diapers to make them use able again.  You don't want to do anything that will ruin the absorbency of your diapers.  There are some creams marketed as safe for cloth diapers, but I don't use any of them.  We use regular cornstarch baby powder (spare me the lectures please about the insane dangers of baby powder for babies) on our diapers.  Cornstarch baby powder is one of the safe diaper rash treatments for cloth diapers.   

 

I think that this covers the "accessories" for cloth diapers that we have.  If you have questions, feel free to ask.  We learn by questioning what doesn't come natural to use

Our cloth diaper journey: Types and our decision

It was definitely easier to decide to cloth diaper in the past because you didn't have near as many options as you have today.  It's easy to get overwhelmed in a sea of different options.  Snaps, velcro, and prefolds, oh my! There are three main decisions that you will eventually make as a cloth diapering parent: 1) Do I want my diapers to close via snaps or velcro? 2) Do I want my diapers by size or one-sized diapers? and 3) What type of diapers do I want to use? - prefolds & covers, AIO, AI2's, pockets, etc.  I will cover a brief overview below of each question and our decision about each. 

Do I want my diapers to close via snaps or velcro?
Ok, so in cloth diaper world it's called aplix or hook and loop, but it's velcro to the rest of the world.  I know that at first glance the lazy person in me was like 'Sign me up for the velcro, duh!' strictly because of perceived ease of use.  However, after a bit of reading I found mixed reviews and saw a lot of questionable pictures of the aplix after a certain amount of time and it looked seriously janky.  There were several instructional videos on how to replace the aplix but I knew that I wouldn't be interested in doing that.  There were a lot of good reviews on the snaps from any company that we researched and from what I read and saw on YouTube it looked easy to replace a snap should it break off or come loose.  We decided to go with a majority snaps and a few aplix diapers for when my parents watched Isabella or when we were feeling lazy at night times or something like that.   The picture at left is a BumGenius aplix diaper from http://www.fullcirclebaby.com .  I would have used one of our diapers as a model but we don't currently own any aplix diapers.  The diaper to the right is a Kawaii from http://theluvyourbaby.com - at any time at least a third of our stash has been a Kawaii diaper.   

Do I want my diapers by size or one-sized diapers?
This one seemed like a 'duh' moment as well!  Why would I choose to re-purchase my entire cloth diaper stash three or four times throughout my child's diaper years?  One sized diapers typically have two to three rows of snaps where you can control how tall/long the rise is, along with one or two rows of hip snaps.  They are usually advertised by the community as 'from birth to potty training'.  I have an issue with both ends of that spectrum because my kids have both had less chunkier thighs and just didn't work as a newborn in one sized diapers.  Also, the other day we tried to put a one size diaper on Isabella and at approximately 31lbs she had exhausted the limits of that diaper.  You can see how big the Kawaii goes in the picture above when none of the rise snaps are being used and this is the same diaper snapped all the way down: 

 

You can also look for some brands (not sure of the brand on this diaper or the site that we bought it from) that offer the cross over snaps to make the waist even smaller:



I am going to spend a sentence or two (or ten) on FuzziBunz in this section because I have some familiarity with their system.  FuzziBunz offers a unique (I don't know of many other systems that offer this - but I'm certainly not a cloth expert!) system in that instead of rise snaps they offer the user the ability to size the diaper by moving stationary buttons into different button holes on an elastic band placed inside of the diaper.  At first glance this seems daunting.  The elastic band has numbers on it near the holes and you have to get them sized correctly for your child in order for the fit to be correct and for the diaper to not leak.  The good news is that your child only has to sit still for this process one time and then you should be able to size your diapers the same as that one.  Once Silas gets too big for that one size I go in and just move the buttons up one hole and it seems to work out well.  In the pictures, the back elastic is being sized, but there are also elastic bands along the leg holes as well.  One sized FuzziBunz diapers seem trim to me on our son - these are my favorite diapers. 

 

 

Conversely, sized diapers are usually more trim than one sized diapers and offer some babies a better fit because they are based on weight.  You will also have to take into account though your babies thighs and waist to ensure that you are getting the proper fit.  Even though we were originally against a sized diaper we now have more than 5 of these in our stash.  They are convenient if you want to avoid the 'fluffy butt' that some diapers give the babies or if you need a more trim fit for something.  I like them but they definitely come in second to one sized diapers for me because you don't get as close of a fit with sized diapers, at least with my children.  You can see in the diaper below that there is no insert so the diaper is shaped a bit funny but a sized diaper only has the hip and waist snap rows and not the rise snaps.  This is a FuzziBunz size small.  My 23lb son can still wear this diaper comfortably. 

What type of diapers do I want to use?

• Prefolds are the typical cloth diaper that any lay person knows as a cloth diaper.  Most everyone has seen a prefold if you have seen those Gerber diapers.  These are usually flat white square pieces of material that you fold differently against your baby's skin depending on their age, gender and fit. You put these on your child, fix with a pin or Snappi and cover with some type of outer layer.  I know that some people don't use a pin or a Snappi but I don't know that I would feel comfortable with that unless the cover was tight.  This outer layer can be lanolized wool or a PUL cover.  There are other options I am sure, but I am most familiar with those two. 
• Pocket diapers are the most popular type of diaper, in my opinion.  They are in the same shape as a disposable diaper.  They have a microfiber, hemp, or other type of insert that fits inside of a pocket that opens in either the front or the back of the diaper.  These are easy to use and you can usually surprise a cloth diaper naysayer with one of these to show how easy a cloth diaper really is to use!  Our entire stash currently is pocket diapers with microfiber inserts. 
• AIO diapers have the insert built into the 'pocket' part of the diaper.  These are the easiest to use but take FOREVER to dry, especially if you are line drying.  We have had some of these in the past and the extra dry time wasn't worth the ease of use. 
• AI2 diapers are a similar system in that they have an insert and a cover, however, different in that the insert actually touches your baby's skin instead of being in a pocket.  You can re-use the cover, provided that it doesn't get soiled for multiple inserts.  You can change out the insert when you change your baby's diaper. 

The breakdown of our current stash is this:

• 13 Kawaii one size
• 8 One Size FuzziBunz
• 3 one size BumGenius with snaps
• 3 'no name' one size diapers
• 4 Medium Perfect Sized FuzziBunz
• 3 Small Perfect Sized FuzziBunz

There is also at least one diaper hidden in our car. 

Next: Cloth diaper accessories and the continuation of our story.