Another Postcard from Shirley: Cloth 101

Before I start – I just want to say that yesterday I had an absolute blast with Anna taking all these pictures. I’m thrilled to be her Mama and to be privilege to be able to take her pictures day in and day out! I took 186 pictures in exactly 50 minutes. The diapers had just finished up in the dryer and therefore were still warm. She was such a happy kid snuggled up in the freshly washed diapers. I figured the diapers will never be that clean again so I should take full advantage and get lots of cute baby pics.

Cloth 101:

After numerous months of researching, six weeks of using the diaper service, and bugging friends for their opinions, I still felt totally overwhelmed by all the cloth options out there. So I just dove in head first and bought some diapers. As previously mentioned, we’ve had fantastic luck using prefolds. There is a little less laundry this way and it is much cheaper. So we stuck with prefolds. I paid just over a hundred dollars on three dozen diapers. To get three dozen all in one diapers or pocket diapers, I could have easily spent 4x that. Maybe even 5 or 6x that. Anyway, I decided to get organic cotton prefolds that are 4x8x4 ply. Organic because they are softer and let’s be real folks, the combo of our sensitive skins can only leave Anna with super sensitive skin, so the absence of all the chemicals is a bonus. Going organic did bump the cost up a little but still very inexpensive in the end. We bought the medium size which is 14-29 lbs from Green Mountain Diapers. From what I found, GMD had 4x8x4 where most other diapers were 3x6x3. The price difference was nominal for the extra layer. It is quite possible these diapers will get us to potty training. They will probably be a little bit big for now but big means extra absorbency and without getting too graphic we need all the absorbency we can get! :) I’m currently researching doublers but that’s for a whole other post.

Prefolds require the use of a waterproof cover. On the recommendation from a friend, I registered for Thristies. We have 6 that we use on a rotating basis. With each diaper change, the diaper goes in the pail, and the cover gets reused. That’s the beauty of prefolds, we can reuse the covers a couple of times before it has to be washed. Actually, we typically rinse the covers after two or three uses and then throw it back in the rotation for another round before it goes in the wash. Of course, if there is an exceptionally dirty or wet diaper, we immediately change the cover and soak the dirty one before it goes in the wash. The cover is the fun part of cloth diapering, in other words the colored part! We have covers in a few different colors – including orange and purple! Sometimes the color shows through Anna’s clothes but it’s just a color and not the cartoon character from the disposable which you can also see through clothes! So if you add the cost of the covers to my total investment we are up to roughly $180 for the next two years on diapers… pretty good if you ask me!

Our cloth diapers arrived on Monday and I’ve been washing them since to prep them. Cotton has natural oils that keep the fabric from absorbing liquid, so I’ve got to get rid of the oils. 4 or 5 washings in hot hot water should do the trick. I’ve also been drying them on high heat to shrink them up a bit. Prefolds are flat when brand new and they quilt up with use. I should have taken a picture of before but I didn’t, surprised right? These pictures are of afterwards – see the quilting? Notice the red stitching on the edge? The company I bought from uses a different color for each different size. So if you have more than one child in diapers you can quickly tell which diaper fits which kid. Maybe that will come in handy some day…who knows? To test if the diapers are ready, I poured some water on them. The diaper soaked up the water instantly – perfection!

As for washing, I did buy a special detergent but it’s not a requirement. Most mainstream detergents coat our clothes with “stuff” to make them look brighter and stay fresh. This “stuff” would eventually build up enough on the diapers that they wouldn’t soak up liquid like they should. Right now since Anna is exclusively breastfed, I don’t have to do anything special with her diapers before wash day. Breastfed poop dissolves in water! Neat, huh? When we introduce solid food in a couple of months (already?!?), we will have to rinse the diapers and flush the poop down the toilet before they are tossed in the diaper pail. This isn’t that much different than what should happen with all diapers including disposables since it’s illegal to throw poop away and not flush it down the toilet. I was surprised to read this on the outside of one of the disposable diaper packs we bought when we first brought Anna home. It makes sense because it needs to be treated properly in the sewer but who knew? Anyway, there are diaper sprayers you can hook to the back of your toilet or you can just dunk them in the toilet a few times. I’m not sure exactly how we’ll do all of this since it is still a few months off. (Future blog topic I’m sure.) Back to the diapers at hand, since I prepped the diapers without detergent, I ran the diapers through the wash one last time when the detergent got here, and now we are ready to diaper!

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Like we thought, the diapers are a good bit bigger than what we had. The diapers we had from the service were about to be too small anyway. Anna (like her Mama) seems to be in between sizes so it was too small or too big and we opted for too big. She’s a nursing machine so she’ll fill them out soon enough! It took me a try or two to get the diaper on because I wasn’t sure what to do with the extra. Once I got it figured out the next few diaper changes were routine. Yes, she’s had a couple of diaper changes since I started this post. She nurses almost every two hours during the day and gets her diaper changed that many times and more. See, why I’m all about the cloth? Saving money one diaper change at a time!

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Ok so we’ve been through five diaper changes in our diapers and all is well, as expected. I really like how soft they are compared to those of the service. Allen changed a diaper when he got home and it took him a try or two as well to figure out what to do with the bigger diaper as well. He actually had a really good idea so now I’m copying his style! :) Nothing else to report yet. My first wash day will be Friday – so expect more diaper chat then.

Speaking of wash day, I’m going to track my electricity and water bills to see what impact cloth diapering (CD) has on them. Pray for sun because I’m going to use it to help dry diapers as well as remove stains. **Edit** Allen doesn’t think we will really be able to tell a difference in our bills because I’m at home now throughout the day using more electricty than when I was at work. Now that I think about it, I might not be able to tell a difference in the water bill either. Since Anna was born we do so much more laundry without even counting the diaper loads, so we’ll see.