Welcome to the First Annual Freedom of Cloth Carnival
This post was written for inclusion in the Freedom of Cloth Carnival hosted at Natural Parents Network by Melissa of The New Mommy Files and Shannon of The Artful Mama. This year’s carnival will run from Sunday, July 3rd through Saturday, July 9th. Participants are sharing everything they know and love about cloth diapering, including how cloth has inspired them.
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Our cloth diaper journey began when I was just a few months pregnant with RaeRae. Hubby and I knew we wanted to try cloth-diapering because it was good for the environment and better for the baby's bum.
Starting with prefolds...
We first started with prefolds from a local diaper service and covers that we bought on our own. We had received a gift certificate to get started so we thought we might as well try it. The diaper service brought us clean prefolds once a week and took away the dirty ones to wash for us. This was a great solution since we lived in an apartment complex with coin laundry. I started shopping around for covers on the web and reading posts on Baby Center in their Cloth Diaper Group. I participated in the Great Cloth Diaper Hunt in November 2010. I read as much as I could, asked questions on boards and facebook pages, and even had a few friends who cloth-diapered and gave me advice.
RaeRae will be 5 months on July 6th and we have been cloth-diapering her bum she was 10 days old. I would have started from Day 1 but I felt too overwhelmed with the demands of being a new parent and recovering from labor and delivery pains. When RaeRae's umbilical cord stump fell off at 10 days after birth, I felt ready to start trying the prefolds.
The first time I put a prefold on her bum was exciting yet I didn't like the "bubble butt" that it created. We got used to that quickly though. We still stuck with disposables at night time because we weren't quite confident with folding the prefold with a snappi when it was dark and we were tired from waking up every two hours for feedings. It took a couple of weeks until I felt ready to take the plunge to go cloth full time. It became easier with practice.
Prefolds were easy to tell when they were wet because all we had to do was just touch a part on the side of the diaper under the cover and if it felt wet, then we changed her diaper. We changed her diapers about 10-14 times a day then it reduced as she got older.
Let's try pocket diapers...
When she was about 5 weeks old, she started sleeping longer at night. I decided to try pocket diapers very part time to increase absorbency with extra inserts and to have that "stay-dry" feeling from the fleece. I slowly bought more pockets over time based on reviews and sales.
When RaeRae became three months old, I had bought enough pocket diapers to go full-time and stop our service. I also learned how to wash them using the coin laundry machines on our apartment complex. That is another story to tell, but to this day in a basic summary, we do a cold wash with no detergent, hot wash with Rockin Green detergent, then a rinse. The rinse is already part of the wash. Then I either line-dry everything if it's warm enough or put just the inserts in the dryer and line-dry the covers/pockets.
I fell in love with pocket diapers for their convenience and more print options. I still love them to this day. Our stash mostly includes bumGenius 4.0, GoGreen Pocket Diapers, and one to two of other brands. and I bought some unbleached prefolds to use occasionally though.
A few things I have learned about pocket diapers:
-Aplix is easier for my hubby, esp at 2 or 3 in the morning if she needs a change.
-One-sized pocket diapers are the best instead of sized options. They last longer and have more flexibility in sizing and absorbency.
-I'm trying hemp inserts along with microfiber for night-time diapering and it works well. But still learning on what works best.
New options?
We are now trying a couple of fitteds for the hot summer days although we still use pockets full time.
We have yet to try All-in-ones and maybe someday I will try one or two. We do have some hybrid diapers in our collection but they aren't my go-to diaper because I don't have a lot of the inserts for them yet.
Our cloth-diapering journey continues.
"Hi, my name is Jennifer and I'm a fluff addict."
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Visit
Natural Parents Network for the most up-to-date news on the Freedom of Cloth Carnival!
Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants on the following themes. Articles will go live on the scheduled theme day:
- Sunday, July 3rd, 2011: Cloth Related Recipes — Writers share their best cloth-related recipes and tutorials.
- Monday, July 4th, 2011: Choosing Your Cloth Style — Today’s posts discuss parents' individual journeys to finding the cloth diapering "style" that best suits their families.
- Tuesday, July 5th, 2011: Cloth Diapering Must Haves — Parents talk about the most important items in their diapering “stash” and why they love them.
- Wednesday, July 6th, 2011: Wordless Wednesday, Inspired by Cloth — We asked parents to share their favorite cloth-related photo with us and turned them into a fluffy Wordless Wednesday photo montage on Natural Parents Network. Link up your own Wordless Wednesday post there!
- Thursday, July 7th, 2011: Cloth Through the Stages: From Infancy to Potty Independence — Today’s participants explain how cloth diapering has served their families throughout one or more stages of their children’s lives.
- Friday, July 8th, 2011: Cloth Troubleshooting and Laundry Day — Seasoned cloth diapering parents share their best tips and tricks for handling common cloth problems and tackling the diaper laundry.
- Saturday, July 9th, 2011: Inspired by Cloth — For today’s theme, we’ve asked writers to explore the ways cloth diapering has inspired them to become "greener" overall.
