Cloth Diapering 101 Giveaway!
posted on March 20, 2009
UPDATED:
Holy hand grenades, people! I love how many of you are cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs cloth diapers!!! Many of you already cloth diaper, and it seems a sizable gaggle of you are inspired to give it a try!
Yes, I realize I just referred to the group of you in the same way I would a group of Canadian geese.
Ahem.
Anyway, there is still time to snag my cloth diaper stash. The comments on this post will be open until after Not Me! Monday, at which point I’ll pick the winner.
Good luck!
ORIGINAL POST:
The first time I ever saw a baby wearing a cloth diaper, I thought it was one of the strangest things I’d ever seen. Of course, I myself was cloth diapered by my mother as an infant (not when my mother was an infant, but when I was an infant…you know, in case that wasn’t clear), but my memory doesn’t go back that far. So when I saw a baby boy with the biggest, puffiest bottom I’d ever seen bulging out from under his pants, I couldn’t help but chuckle.
Who on earth, I thought, would put such a gigantic diaper on their baby, and then have to wash it when it got dirty, instead of using slim, disposable diapers?
Well, me, as it turned out a few years later.
We took a natural childbirth class when I was pregnant with Big Mac, and the other gals in that class were so darn earthy and green I could hardly stand it. Of course, I was earthier and greener than the average person, too, but I had never even considered big ol’ cloth diapers for our baby. Yet I was inspired once I became informed, so with Prince Charming’s blessing, I gave cloth diapers a try when our firstborn emerged. I was immediately smitten with cloth. And I have been and on and off cloth diapering mama ever since. (Off when I have a newborn, on when the babe is older, off when out and about, on when at home, off when I feel overwhelmed with the washing, on when I want to feel like Supermom, you get the idea…)
While this post will be far from an exhaustive resource on cloth diapering, you can certainly check out my other cloth diaper posts and do more research on your own. (Also, my search my blog by topic button in my lower left sidebar is now live and you can click on it to search for all sorts of different things…) After all, there are multitudes of reasons to cloth diaper (Not the least of which are financial savings and health concerns: bleached disposables contain chlorine and it’s fantastically awful for children’s sensitive parts to sit in chlorine for years as chlorine contains components that have been linked to cancer.) as well as numerous cloth diapering systems (Chinese prefolds and cover, fitted or contoured diapers with wraps, AIO cloth diapers: All In One’s, Pocket diapers…) and a variety of brands (we love Imse Vimse, Kushies, Kissaluvs and hand made wool soakers).
Cloth diapering is a diverse and wonderful adventure and I’d very simply like to share with you how we make it work in our family. So sit tight, here is Cloth Diapering 101…with a giveaway!
First, let me explain our stash. (This photo, however, is not our stash, just so you know. It’s a different stash of really nice brand new cloth diapering goodies that you could win. Keep reading!!)
I use contoured cloth diapers (that’s what you see in the left hand side of the above photo) and have a handful of cloth diapers with snaps, too (in the photo below). Covers (the printed cuties you can see in the right hand side the above photo) are a must so that clothing doesn’t get wet. I also use cloth liners and doublers (swatches of cloth that you add inside of the diaper to make it absorb more), stay-dry liners (these go next to the baby’s skin so that they don’t feel as wet before a diaper change) and disposable liners (these liners look almost like fabric softener sheets and lay inside the diaper when I think a bowel movement is probable….then I can easily drop the soiled liner with the bm into the toilet without needing to scrub).
I start by putting a diaper directly on the baby (here an unbleached contoured diaper is shown on Stellan). I don’t use pins or Snappis or anything to fasten my diapers together.
I’d lay a doubler or a liner in next to baby’s bottom if needed.
A waterproof cover goes on next. These can be reused when there is a wet or dirty diaper. Only the diaper itself needs to get washed each time; a cover can be used multiple times in a row unless it gets soiled or very wet. It goes on around the diaper…
…wrapping snugly around to hold the diaper itself in place.
A few of my diaper covers snap on, but this one, like almost all of my covers, has Velcro closures.
After it’s attached snugly around the baby’s waist, I check for spots where the diaper itself is peeking out.
See in the above photo how a bit of cloth is showing at the leg opening? That will get wet with urine and soak through to the baby’s clothing if it is not tucked in. Below you can see the leg opening is now leak proof.
The same thing goes for the top of the diaper, although in my experience, it is not as necessary to tuck the top in as well, as it rarely gets wet.
But you can tuck it in for good measure, if you want to. Voila! Diaper is on!
When the diaper gets wet, I put on a new diaper right away.
And what do I do with wet or dirty diapers? I have a few wet bags, including the one in the below photo. They are fabric bags, lined with a waterproof material that close with zippers. This smaller bag is what I travel with when out and about and using cloth, so I can store the diapers somewhere until we get home. At home, I have a few huge wet bags that I keep in the nurseries. Wet diapers can just get tossed in, while dirty ones need to have the bowel movement plopped off into the toilet first. I refuse to do a lot of scrubbing. I just plop off what comes off easily, and then set the dirty diaper in the big wet bag to soak until wash day.
I usually add water, a scoop of detergent, and white vinegar to the diapers, even as they are just waiting in the wet bag to be washed. And later, I wash them in the washer with more of the same (vinegar neutralizes the urine…it’s actually a fantastic natural cleaner for almost anything around the house). For extra soiled loads, I may wash the same load twice. Regardless, using a high water level when washing cloth helps to get them really clean.
Diapers themselves can be hung to dry or dried in the dryer. Covers, however, should just hang to dry. They dry very easily. Wool diaper covers like these below, hand made from old wool sweaters, that I used for Small Fry when she was smaller (Used over a diaper in place of a snapped wrap or Velcroed cover) are antimicrobial, don’t soak up urine, and need to be washed only rarely.
When they are washed, they need to be washed with a wool wash, however, and not in the washing machine.
Whew! It definitely sounds like a lot of work. And don’t get me wrong, cloth diapers are not as simple as disposables. But once we’re in the cloth diapering groove, it feels just as easy as using disposables. And knowing our sweet baby’s bottom isn’t sitting in chlorine helps me press through the transition.
Plus, Stellan is just so darn cute in cloth!!!
And now, you can have the diapers right off his sweet little bottom. Oh, okay, I’ll give you new ones and keep the diapers Stellan has already used.
Kind, I know.
That’s right, I’d love to encourage you to use cloth diapers, or to stick with it if you already do, by giving away a cloth diaper package that will make you wet your pants it’s so great. And that will make you wish you were wearing a cloth diaper! Either that, or that you had a Go Girl stashed in your purse.
Simply leave a comment on this post (feel free to talk about cloth diapering, disposable diapering, or to mention nothing about diapering at all) and have a chance to win tons of sweet Imse Vimse brand cloth diapering goodies!!!
A bevy of soft contoured diapers like the one I show Stellan wearing, absorbing liners and stay-dry ones, sets of unbleached snap diapers…
…and tons of organic cotton printed covers in all sizes, the same ones as Stellan is wearing in this post.
This could all be yours!!
Have you ever considered cloth diapering? Are you sold out on disposables? What would you do with this giant stash if you win? What did you have for lunch? Is anything else burning on your mind for you to tell me?
Leave a comment and maybe I’ll pick you to win all these goodies!!!
Happy diapering!
UPDATED:
There is still time to snag my cloth diaper stash. The comments on this post will be open until after Not Me! Monday, at which point I’ll pick the winner.
posted on March 10, 2008
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