I am resurrecting our much-neglected blog to share a bit about our decision to cloth diaper our little girl in October and to help folks who are interested in helping to better understand what we need to get started.
After much thought, consideration, and a TON of research Joshua and I have decided we would like to cloth diaper our children for economical and environmental reasons (See http://www.thirstiesbaby.com/customer-center/cloth-diapering-101 and http://wellnessmama.com/3692/why-cloth-diaper/).
If you're like me a couple of weeks ago, you have no idea how to go about cloth diapering or even what is needed to start. There are several different styles of cloth diapers that vary in price and it was extremely confusing to try and make heads or tails of what might work for our family.
For those of you sweet people out there who are getting us a shower present and are interested in helping us start our diapering collection that we will use for our future kids, I've tried to make it easy for you. I have put all of our diapering items on one Amazon registry with assigned priorities to what we really need versus what is nice to have.
To be completely transparent, though, our initial strategy is this:
1. For the first week or so we will use disposables until our baby's meconium passes. (If you're not a parent and have no idea what that is-- I recommend NOT looking it up, it's pretty gross)
2. After that, we will primarily use OsoCozy Cotton prefold cloth diapers (size 1) with a Snappi and a Thirsties Duo Wrap Cover (See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2i5bi4KJRw). All of those are on the amazon registry. Essentially, you change the prefold diaper every change and the diaper cover every 3 or 4 changes (assuming it doesn't get dirty). The plan is to do this for the first 3 months or the duration of my maternity leave.
** Side note: We envision ourselves cloth diapering in our home when we are taking care of our kid (probably about 80% of the time) but we are not stressed about 100% cloth diapering. When we travel or other folks are watching our kid we'll probably use disposables.
3. After I go back to work, we're not sure how easily our childcare will be able to support cloth diapering SO I also registered for some thirsties Pocket Diapers. These puppies are essentially like disposable diapers (i.e. no folding or covers, etc). You just wash and re-use which makes it easier for folks who are not familiar with folding the cloth diapers. You can also add extra inserts into the pockets for more absorbency overnight.
The trade off is price-- they're a bit more expensive and can only be used the one time before washing. We plan to still use prefolds and covers in our home on nights/weekends which is why I registered for the OsoCozy Size 2 prefold diapers for when our child gets bigger.
I've also included some accessories on the registry that will help us get started:
- Various sized wet bags for keeping diapers while on the go
- Special diaper cream that can be used with cloth diapers
- Cloth wipes-- because if you're washing diapers why not just throw in the wipes too? That way we don't have to have two separate disposal pails.
- Wool dryer balls (can't use dryer sheets for diapers)
- And of course laundry detergent for all the laundry we will be doing!
SO that's what we're thinking for now. But who knows the future? We'll just have to respond to life's challenges the best we can and revise our strategy accordingly :)
If you have any other questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to us!
