So last weekend marked the beginning of two seemingly unrelated events - the launch of our cloth diaper wipes and Little Man's foree into solid foods. Not sure that this was the best way to do things, but our life changes are often times born out of shear necessity.
We had decided to work our way through the disposable wipes in our stash before we started using the cloth version, and this gave us the ability to ease into the cloth diaper world. For some reason, and its completely lost on me now, it seemed extra gross to use cloth wipes when we were beginning this adventure, not to mention more difficult when it came to hitting the road. Looking back, thats just silly.
Around week two, it donned on me that the longer we used disposable wipes, the more likely it would be that someone, out or habit, or ignorance, would end up throwing one of the disposable wipes in our pail with the diapers. If you are reading this and thinking that that isn't the end of the world, then you clearly have never done it. To be honest, we never had either (knocking on wood currently), however, I can just imagine how this would go down. There would be me, an enormous pile of cast off lint roller tape at my side, as I attempt to remove all the disintegrated wipe lint from my entire diaper stash. Its just not like me to continue to tempt fate like that. Combine my over developed sense of fear with my practical side, and it just seemed like this was the next logical step. Transitioning to cloth wipes would mean that we could remove the other pail in the babes room; its sole purpose at this point was to catch used wipes. Also, as the stigma associated with using cloth, and the lack of knowledge on the subject, changed, so did my fear of the cloth wipe; realistically this isn't any more gross than what we were doing, and in fact, this transition has streamlined the changing process.
As I mentioned in my last post, I stumbled upon some cloth wipes on clearance, so I purchased about 40 wipes in total. All of mine are knit terry on one side and fleece on the other, and while I am not sure how these compare to the others (since they are all I have right now), I can say that these seem to work amazingly! The terry is great at gripping nasty messes and the fleece is wonderful getting into the nooks and crannies since its softer on the skin, and since we have started solid foods, they have really gotten a workout this week. Part of me is glad that these two events happened simultaneously because it gives me a realistic appreciation of the cloth wipe experience, the other part of me is thinking that it would have been easier to just go for it before hand….
Anyways, I am currently "making" about 20 or so wipes in the nursery at a time. I take a recycled Huggies wipes container and fold my wipes over each other to create the pop up effect. We started out just using some water to clean LM's bum, but that tended to leave him a little pink, so now I am diluting California Baby Diaper Area Wash 10:1; its really a wonderful cleaner - smells AWESOME, not too perfumey, does a fantastic job of cleaning, and because of the Tea Tree, Calendula, and Lavender oils, it has some anti-microbial properties. You could certainly use a spray bottle and make them as you go, but LM is already such a mover and shaker (plus, he seems to especially like the freedom that comes with peeing sans diaper), so I prefer to have the wipes locked and loaded.
I got a humorous email from my friend Heather…HI HEATHER…this morning and she was kind enough, if you find brutal honesty kind, and I do, to remind me that "all poop is not created equally." What I am dealing with right now is not an accurate representation of what we will be handling in the months to come. Also, I have been strongly advised to purchase some diaper liners, this is advice that I intend to heed.
I suppose I'll start with Gro-Via BioLiners first, but for now, off to make some baby food for LM's breakfast!
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