Cloth Diapering So Far...

So, somewhere along the way of pregnancy, I may have transitioned from a regular parent into a "crunchy" one. I blame my Berkeley/San Francisco roots :). In any event, one baby decision I made (and Ed supported without any real concern) was to cloth diaper. My sister had done a kind of cloth diaper hybrid (reusable cover with disposable insert), which introduced me to the idea. Cloth diapers are obviously attractive from a financial standpoint (which was a big motivator, with me taking the year off of work), but it also made sense to reduce waste and limit chemicals on our little one's skin, especially since I have very sensitive skin that he might have inherited.

With that in mind, we bought a supply of one sized diapers that should fit Evan from about 2 months until he's potty trained. As we neared our due date, I also decided on going cloth for the newborn phase and purchased prefolds and covers.

And, six weeks in? We are incredibly happy with our choice. Suprisingly, we've both been very happy with the prefolds and covers, even buying some larger prefolds when Evan outgrew his newborn sizes. Not only are the covers incredibly cute, but we have never *knock on wood* had any kind of diaper blowout, and no leaks at all in the prefolds. I thought the extra step of folding and fastening the prefold, and then having to put on a cover, would be too much of a hassle, but I think since that was all we knew from the beginning, it just seemed normal.

Evan has since started fitting into his Bumgenius OS (one size) diapers, which are working great, though can leak if they aren't fastened around the legs tight enough (or when we were still using a newborn insert - we've since switched to the big boy absorbency). While I really like these pocket diapers, they do require a bit more maintenance when doing laundry, since you have to stuff the diapers before you use them.

I see what they say now about having to be careful about getting swept up with buying new diapers. We're planning to get some more prefolds for our summer traveling adventures, which means we'll probably need some more covers, since he's growing out of the current size.

Laundry has really been easy so far, too. We need to do a wash every 2-3 days, mostly because of the number of wipes, more than the number of diapers. We do a rinse and spin, then a full wash with an extra rinse and soak. Thankfully, breastfed baby poop is water soluble, so we don't have to do anything special to the diapers before the go into the machine. It does require some more water use, obviously, but since a lot of water is required to manufacture regular diapers, it still feels more eco-friendly to be doing cloth. Then, we machine dry the prefolds and the pocket inserts (from what I hear, air drying the prefolds can produce some rough diapers that can cause chaffing, so we're sticking with the dryer). We air dry the covers, the pail liner, and the pocket shells, which all dry pretty darn fast in our 105 degree days. Then, prefolds go in a stack, and pockets get stuffed to be ready to use! Once he starts solid food, things will get a bit more complicated, but for now, things are great.

We're loving him with his little fluffy bum.