So our one month experiment in cloth diapering had turned into an all out obsession. For those of you who are on the fence about trying them or can't image that this could be the case, I am not joking…consider yourself warned. Before we even make the transition, there were many, albeit one-sided, conversation on the subject. If you were curious, my husbands harassment is where the title of this blog originated.
For those of you who don't know about my neurotic ability to turn even the simplest decisions into overly complicated, overly complex, too thought out, and stress full, life or death situations whereby an inability not to over think the most minute detail takes over, consider yourself blessed. The rest of you can image how much research was really done, and after clocking entirely too many hours in front of a computer screen researching what diapers would be the best for us, and let me tell you there are some choice now, we decided on the Gro-Baby/Gro-Via system for day time and pocket diaper for night time.
I had only intended to purchase a few diapers, but when I went to BumRite diapers they were clearing out all the Gro-Baby diapers to make room for the re-branded version (Gro-Via). This was too good a deal to pass up, so we ended up with the beginning of a pretty decent stash…6 shells, 20 soakers, and 6 boosters. I also ordered two FuzziBunz pocket diapers, for night time. When I placed my order, I was naive enough to think that was old the diapers I would need (and want). While I waited for my order I researched what soap was best for washing…no fragrances, dyes, or optical brighteners. Charlies soap was available locally, so we grabbed that and waited.
So, my box showed up with our new fluff and I was blown away by how soft it was. I mean this is the first thing that you notice…the difference between these and disposables! These guts of the diapers needed to be prepped, which is basically washing the oils off of the organic cotton soakers so that will absorb water instead of repel it. Now, I am way to practical to be doing a bunch of small loads of just diaper parts, so this took me some additional time. I was determined to do these with the other laundry for the house. Finally they were ready, so, off we went.
Day one, not so great. I am so glad we decided on a Saturday launch date, cause I would have NOT wanted to take this show on the road. There is a major learning curve when you switch to cloth, I assumed that going in, but the first day is really demoralizing. You spend all this money on diapers, its really an investment, and you want them to work. They leaked, we had trouble with the fit, every time Max peed his shell and outfit were soaked in the font, and number two was worse! Aaron was looking at me like, oh nice work, these are really worth the trouble, glad we did this. Not a great start, and to make matters worse, I had sworn we wouldn't be doing TONS of extra laundry, but at the end of day one we had produced a load of baby clothes, one dirty changing table cover (word of warning, have the diaper ready to put on the baby, don't take the cloth diaper off and count on having 2 minutes to stand there fumbling with the insides and prepping a new cover-especially with boys), a rug that needed to be clean, and we were down more than half of our diapering supplies. So, after we got our "night time" diaper stuffed, and got Max ready for bed, I went ahead and started our first load of dirty diapers. By the way, it was with great hesitation, but much resolve, that we decided to CD at night. See, Max sleeps well at night-not great-but pretty darn well. He goes a minimum of 5 hours, so we needed this sucker to, well, suck it up! Well, around roughly 2A Max woke up to eat, but first there was a diaper change, clothes change, and change of sheets. (In case you are wondering, YUP, we put on the other FuzziBunz diaper, just call me a glutton for punishment.)
Now I would like to be able to tell you that then next couple of days were amazing, that we quickly figured things out and were fully embracing this new lifestyle, but that would not be the case. Lots of laundry was done, Aaron had decided in his mind that CDs would not require touching the pee soaked insides (this is not the case by the way) and I was terrified to leave the house with out a few extra changes of clothing. And mind you, at this point we were still using regular baby wipes, we hadn't even decided to tackle that logistical challenge yet.
Finally, when we were taken to our limits, about to call quits on this whole adventure, day 6 was SUCCESSFUL! Now, looking back, I am not sure why it hadn't occurred to me at the time, but the reason we were having leaks is because the soakers were not absorbing as well as they should…novel i know. See, we use a HE front loading washer, and while its great (and better for the environment :P) it doesn't strip the oils off the cotton as well. Our washer didn't need the 5-8 washes recommended, no we needed to wash our soaker pads 10-12 times to reach full absorbency.
Looking back seems like a lifetime ago. The more we use the pads, the more they seem to hold. Max loves them, and his occasional bouts with pink bottom have become history. The other quirks that go with diapering have become second nature as well--the difference in how clothes fit him, the look of "front butt" when he wears a pocket diaper, the need to plan ahead when leaving the house, the transporting of soiled nappies to and from work, and the blank stares you get when you change his diaper in public--it all seems to be worth it since its better for the environment and his bum!
Anyone considering trying it, be sure you are willing to stick with it for awhile while you figure things out…PROMISE it gets easier! I am glad we had promised ourselves to sick with it for four weeks, it made us work the hitches out instead of jumping ship.
Now, on to the next thing - cloth wipes. I was at Edelweiss in Boonsboro on Thursday and they were clearing out their diapering supplies, so I scored 4 packs or cloth wipes for nothing. I'll let you know how it goes. Also, ordered a Gro-Via shell set and shell on Friday. They published a coupon code for a free shell with purchase of shell set in Mothering Magazine. GroGreen! Can't wait to review these!
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