Cloth diapering

I have learned a lot from reading pregnancy boards online for the past two years. One thing I was always interested in was cloth diapering (CD). These are not your mama's cloth diapers!

With the cost of disposable diapers for two babies in mind, I decided to try to tackle cloth diapering the girls instead. There is an upfront cost of several hundred dollars, usually, but then that's it. (Plus your water bill for the extra loads of laundry.) Tim just follows my lead on these things. ;-)

I surveyed twin moms to find out if they CD'ed and many said they did, and had very good results with it. So I mentioned online that I would be doing this. Within a week, one of my fellow November moms sent me a message that she would like to send me her cloth diaper collection. She had tried CDing with her daughter, and had loved it, but when they moved, the water in the new community changed so her daughter started developing rashes from the CDs. They had to switch to disposable diapers ("sposies"), she was sad to say. I offered to pay something for them, but she refused. She really wanted me to have them. There was no one else she would ever think of giving them to. I was thrilled!

Last week I received a box from her in the mail. The box contained eleven Bum Genius diapers, five small Fuzzi Bunz, and five Smartipants, along with a "wet bag" that you store the dirty diapers in until laundry time. When Tim got home from work, I showed them to him. He was relieved to see the velcro and snaps, as he wondered if they still used safety pins! Not for these fancy cloth diapers! He said that several people had told him that we were crazy to try it.



Many of the moms who do cloth diapering also make their own CDs. I'm not sure if I'll be motivated enough to do that, but there are patterns that people have offered me. We will still use the disposables as needed. They will probably wear sposies for the first week or two, as the meconium is very hard to wash out. And we do have a case of newborn diapers that Thomas got at one of my baby showers, so we will use those up. Sometimes they are easier to use if you go out of the house, or travel, or overnight, so we'll be playing it by ear what works best for us.

Tim also said, as he surveyed the collection, "Our girls are going to have big butts wearing these!" That's very true!