I am striving to raise our little guy in the greenest, most budget-conscience environment possible. For our family, this includes the two biggies: breastfeeding and cloth diapering. When Vijay was born, he weighed 7 pounds, 10 ounces. He lost some weight...as newborns do, but quickly gained it back and at our two week check-up on Monday, he weighed in at 8 pounds 10 ounces. What does this mean?
He is now big enough to start using the small
g-diapers. So we are off on our cloth diaper adventure. We started yesterday, and so-far-so-good. A few leaks here and there, but I am getting the hang of the fit and we are, as of this moment, accident-free today. I feel really great about our decision to use cloth diapers. Just seeing the waste from disposable diapers over the last two weeks made me feel completely ill. I know this is something I will need to remind myself of when I am grumbling over doing yet
another load of laundry!
Anyway...I wanted to know if there are any cloth diaper (especially
g-diaper) users out there. Do you have any tips, tricks or words of encouragement to share? Any and all help would be appreciated as we begin down this road!
***Just to clarify- We are using g-diapers with the cloth inserts, not the disposable inserts! Click here for details on cloth diapering with g-diapers.***
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He's precious. I've never gone the cloth diaper route, but 2 blogs I read have discussed them recently. Check-out:
http://hannahandlily.blogspot.com/
http://www.younghouselove.com/
If I recall correctly, both blogs discussed how many diapers they keep on hand, how they handle the laundry and other aspects to cloth diapering.
I tried the g diapers, and loved them, but ultimately went with the bum genius one size fits all because they lasted longer and I didn't need to change sizes.
Cloth diapering need not be all or nothing. We used cloth at home but disposables on the go.
Your baby will use about 8-10 diapers a day so if you only want to do laundry every other day, you’ll need at least 20 diapers - buy more diapers and a big diaper pail if you hope to do laundry less. We had about 2 dozen diapers for good measure and I washed diapers every 2-3 days.
Please please please pick up some diaper liners to ease in the clean up of poopy diapers once your baby is on solids (before solids, poopy diapers are water soluable, just toss the soiled diaper in the wash and all will be well). Liners are a god send and can be flushed or tossed quickly.
PS There's a stroller strides group local to us. I never went, but they meet up at 3 sisters, and there's a link in the KidoInfo resource directory to the website.
Hi! We use cloth diapers (Fuzzi Bunz one size) on our 5 month old daughter, and have since she was 10 days old. Honestly, we love using the cloth and the laundry hasn't been bad. I think you just get used to it.
I am not super familiar with the gDiapers, but with the Fuzzi Bunz it is not recommended to use diaper rash cream, so every time we change her we powder her with corn starch. It is so soft and keeps her skin looking and feeling great. When we use it regularly we don't have any problems with her getting diaper rash.
I would also recommend a diaper sprayer. It attaches to the back of the toilet and you can spray off any "chunks" that remain once he starts solids. Until then if you are breastfeeding all the poop is water soluble, just throw it in the washer. We do a cold rinse without detergent first and then a normal cycle on hot with detergent.
Oh, and one more thing, (who knew I had so much to say about cloth diapers) the sun has amazing powers of "bleaching" the stains right out of the diapers. If you are ever able to try to line dry them.
Good luck and congratulations on your beautiful baby boy.
One caveat about the gDiapers, which are cute -- is that they're not really 'waste free' unless you compost them. The flushability is nice for US in that we think we're putting it away where human waste belongs, but the fluff and stuff really just ends up in the filters at the water treatment facility and ultimately--you guessed it!--thrown into their trash. Still, it *is* a better way, probably than disposables. It's just not the perfection that their marketing sells to us... knowledge is good when making these decisions, right??
I'm a fan of the hybrid route, where you have cloth at home and 'sposies on the go, because I personally don't deal with the mess well. Heck, i've been known to leave a store (and a full cart, with apologies) and put a soiled baby into the car to go home and deal with #2 even with disposables, haha! (I really hate thinking about those gross germy diaper changing tables at most places, I admit it, and I always have super wiggly babies.)
He is SUPER cute in the gDipe, though!!
Thank you for all of the helpful tips!
Kristianna- Just to clarfy, we are using g-diapers cloth inserts, not disposable inserts. Check out the g-diaper site for more information on their cloth diapering system!
Congratulations- your baby is beautiful! I'm glad to hear you are using cloth on him! We used gDiapers with our twin girls 3 years ago, before they had the cloth inserts. I used regular prefolds in them, with a liner for flushing the poop, which made the laundry so easy! Also, prefolds are cheaper than the g cloth inserts and now we use them for moping, cleaning, doll blankets, pot-holder linings, anything I can think of.
Hooray for cloth!
We cloth diaper. In fact, I've been changing cloth diapers for more than two years now (and lactating for just as long). We don't use g-diapers. Or any of the popular name brands. I've tried some of them, but you have to find what works for you and your family. My two diapered sons wear Monkey Snuggles one-size bamboo fitteds with various kinds of covers.
One thing - if you have pets and/or carpet, I recommend staying away from hook-and-loop tabs as they tend to collect hair and fuzzies.
If you're ever interested in making your own cloth diaper friendly laundry soap, let me know. I've finally found one that does the trick for us.
Best of luck!
AH! could he be any sweeter? :)
I'm going to be having my 1st baby in the next couple weeks and am looking forward to cloth diapering, too. I think we're going to use prefolds with thirsties covers, but I have a few different all in ones and I'm trying not to buy too much before I figure out what works best for us.
Adorable! I love how well those diapers seem to fit his little bum! We cloth diaper, too. Our two year old is now potty trained, but we are adopting our second in December and plan to do it again. We used pre-folds and thirsties covers, which worked great for us.
Have you invested in a potty diaper sprayer? I think that was the #1 best thing we did--keeps your hands much cleaner and reduces the *argh* factor.
No other advice, just stick with it!! We used disposables as our son got older and when going out for a long excursion or when flying, to keep things simpler. You definitely get used to the cloth diapering experience, and it's actually quite rewarding! Think of all your saving--your wallet and the earth!
Oh, here's a link to the diaper sprayer on cottonbabies.com in case you don't already have one!
http://www.cottonbabies.com/product_info.php?cPath=37&products_id=1228
used only cloth 28 years ago....for economic reasons rather than environmental. The laundy is not a hurdle in a family of three; I think our (grand)mothers with laundry for 8 could complain.
The worst part is going potty in the middle of the night when "someone" left the soiled nappy in the toilet! Check before you flush.
And that is more toilet talk than anyone needs to hear
Hi! My little munchkin is 5 weeks old and we've been gdiapering her for about 3 weeks. We use the sposies at night and when we leave the house, but we love our gdiapers!
We are using regular prefolds as liners...much cheaper than the gcloth inserts. I'm with you on the learning curve- they work great as long as you get the fit right and change baby regularly. We only have leaks due to user error :)
Congrats on your little bundle...he's adorable!
We are loving cloth diapering! (wish I had done it with my 1st, too)
I second the toilet sprayer tip & using the sun to bleach out stains. Also having about 24 diapers so you don't have to do the laundry every day.
We were having some major leakage problems, but adding a hemp liner at night did the trick.
I've been cloth diapering on the go & it works for us. We just throw a small wet bag in the diaper bag.
Congrats on your lovely baby!
When my son was born 7.5 years ago, a company called "Real Nappies" had just started up here in Edinburgh and they were piloting the scheme in the maternity unit in the hospital.
It was a really good system: you got given a certain number of plastic outer wrappers to keep, and a supply of a certain number of the cloth innards. Then on the very inside you placed a fully biodegradeable gauze lining.
So, when the baby does the toilet, if it's solid you just lift up the gauze liner and flush it down the toilet, poo and all.
The best bit, though, was that the company supplied a big plastic bucket. You'd dump every dirty cloth innard in there, and once a week they came to take the whole big bucket away to wash it all in their industrial washing facilities.
The bin didn't even either as the lid was so tightly fitting - it was great! So when they took the dirty stuff away every week at the same time they'd leave a consignment of clean cloth innards for you to use over the next week.
I can't remember how much they charged but I do remember it was a good bit cheaper than buying disposable nappies, but the environmental aspect was really the biggie.
To be honest, if I'd had to wash these nappies myself? I don't know if I'd have stuck with using them for the whole time.
Oh, and sizing was never an issue because you just told them when your baby had grown big enough to move up to the next size.
And my boy never once got nappy rash either. And in a couple of years of me using those nappies, leakage only happened once. :-)
What really disappoints me is that the company stopped trading because of lack of demand. I guess too many people here didn't care enough about the environment to use it which is a real shame, and also very embarrassing. I mean, how difficult IS it, if someone else is doing the washing for you?!
Your blog is a sharing blessing for me... who, at forty, is five years done with diapering and nursing. Your son is peace personified, but this will be short-lived - only in the best of ways. Thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing your lives with us!
Congratulations, he is precious!
I used cloth diapers 20 years ago, so It's been a while.
If I re-call I had two in diapers at the same time and by the time the third child came around I started to use disposable once in a while to ease up on the work load.
Good on you for your commitment!
Happy mommy days!
Oh! Congratulations!!! What a little cutie. We use a variety of hand-me-down cloth diapers though we do use disposables occasionally too (it's just easier when traveling etc., so I try not to get hung up about it). Sometimes, before she started rolling all over the place, I used to let our little one just hang out on an old towel too. It's good to do if the baby develops any skin sensitivities.
I've been a blog reader for awhile - and subscribed to Uppercase magazine thanks to you! It's kind of funny that diapers are what's getting me to comment for the first time! We have four children, now practically-grown, and used cloth diapers. Definitely did the cloth at home and disposable out and didn't stress about it too much. And I didn't find the laundry aspect too hard - I actually enjoyed folding the warm, soft diapers straight out of the dryer... there was something very satisfying about it!
Congratulations! He's beautiful:)
We did cloth prefolds in whisper wraps. Then added g diapers when they came to Canada a couple of years ago. As I was researching 'potty training', I found a book called "Diaper Free! The Gentle Wisdom of Natural Infant Hygiene"
by Ingrid Bauer. It is a beautiful book and worked wonders and I so wished for another baby to start diaper free from birth:)
Good luck on your journey!
xo
Do you think you'll go with cloth/gDipes again with your second son?