(Cloth) Diapering Help
The countdown is on. Wee will be here soon. HOPEFULLY not for 5 weeks soon though.
Dude cloth diapering research is overwhelming. I went into a store to talk to a person and serious I felt like I took 5 steps back as she told me all I learned as wrong. ACK.
Everyone has a varying opinion on the topic. People love what they love.
We have acquired 2 kinds of semiecofriendly (semi) diapers that are available in stores. I really dug the information about the Honest company but they make them out of wheat and I just don't want to "try it and see if she reacts" as some people have suggested! (shocked face) We have 4 Celiacs in the family, even if Wee is safe no one will be able to touch her diapers but me! OH hell no! (OK well only two of the Celiacs have tactile reactions but still. Best to avoid wheat. End of argument)
Earth's Best uses wheat too. blarg.
So tell me what you like and the why please. I figure a couple recommendations from you guys then I can research those because I can't keep doing it the way I was because I am driving myself insane.
I want to know what YOU love.... and why??
And if you use disposables (I refuse to call them sposies) which do you use.
Dude cloth diapering research is overwhelming. I went into a store to talk to a person and serious I felt like I took 5 steps back as she told me all I learned as wrong. ACK.
Everyone has a varying opinion on the topic. People love what they love.
We have acquired 2 kinds of semiecofriendly (semi) diapers that are available in stores. I really dug the information about the Honest company but they make them out of wheat and I just don't want to "try it and see if she reacts" as some people have suggested! (shocked face) We have 4 Celiacs in the family, even if Wee is safe no one will be able to touch her diapers but me! OH hell no! (OK well only two of the Celiacs have tactile reactions but still. Best to avoid wheat. End of argument)
Earth's Best uses wheat too. blarg.
So tell me what you like and the why please. I figure a couple recommendations from you guys then I can research those because I can't keep doing it the way I was because I am driving myself insane.
I want to know what YOU love.... and why??
And if you use disposables (I refuse to call them sposies) which do you use.
Comments
we use huggies pure & natural, we figured any disposible diaper is going to be bad for the environment, but we liked that these were chemical free and didn't have a plastic exterior like other diapers. the only problem we had with them was at night when the dood would pee so much it'd leak out the sides. so we use pampers night time for that.
For disposables we like huggies pure & natural, but also the regular huggies work well. We used to use Luvs because they're cheaper but they make MY skin break out (fragrances, maybe?) Everyone swears by Pampers but we get more blowouts with pampers.
As for cloth, like you said, everyone likes what they like. And there are MORE options since we bought ours 3 1/2 years ago. I will tell you I don't like bum genius... or really any with Velcro, because eventually the velcro stops working and diapers are not something you want to deal with clasps messing up. I thought I would love velcro but, alas, no.
What we love are smartipants one size diapers. (http://www.smartipants.com/) They're more affordable, and the great part is that they have an "opening" in the front AND back of the pocket so you don't have to unstuff them before throwing them in the wash - the insert unstuffs itself from the agitation in the wash. REALLY helps reduce the ICK factor for me. I think there are other brands now that have the "passthrough" style now, too, but these were the only ones when we bought ours. They've held up GREAT, too, and are like new with baby #2, after 2 years of use with the first.
Also, I'm pretty squeamish but it turns out what they say is true - your baby's, uh, stuff, won't gross you out nearly as much as another baby's would.
As a NB we used Thirsties fitteds with various covers. SUPER easy laundry when it was just breastmilk, seriously it was just like normal laundry. We had Wahmmies pail liners - two so one avail when the other in the laundry. We liked Rockin' Green detergent best though tried many.
When Em got bigger, we tried fitteds with wool or PUL covers, AIOs, you name it and our favorites were BumGenius. The ones with the removable liner and multi-sized. We used them from 2 months to 2 years and they held up amazingly well. Once she slept through the night we used Fuzzi Bunz pockets with a mix of hemp and microfiber inserts.
Once she started solids, laundry got more difficult. Rockin' Green was our hero. We also used those disposable liners. When she got to the age where she started potty training, we totally dropped the cloth diapers. They were falling apart at that point and she couldn't get them up and down herself. We changed to SeventhGen and Huggies Pure & Natural. Huggies outperformed SeventhGen. More absorbent, not as noisy, better fit.
We used cloth wipes with the peri bottle from the hospital with a mix of water and a touch of baby wash. We used the same cloth wipes the entire time and still use them in our bags for runny noses and such. Found great ones on Etsy for cheap. When she was on solids, a few terry ones were great for the scrubby action.
We never did a diaper sprayer, but it would have been helpful once she was on 100% solids and having normal adult poops.
We had one issue with yeast, and did disposables for a week and it cleared up. Stripped the diapers, changed detergent and all was fine after that. We used California Baby and Grandma El's products on her bum and no issues with the CDs.
I loaned my NB stash to two different mamas and sold them after on CL. I sold all the wacky fitteds and wool and fancies I got sucked into being on The Bump's EFF board on CL. When she potty trained, I took all the beat up diapers and put them on Freecycle and the ones still in good shape as well as leftover liners, pail liners, etc. and gave to a coworker. So the cloth was totally worth it to me.
Novel over!
Okay So.
It's already been mentioned but I'll say it again - stay away from Velcro because it will turn into balls of frustration. Literally. Balls.
Snaps are the future!!!
We have a stash full of Sunbaby diapers - CUTE pocket style diapers with fleece inside and microfiber inserts. I love them because they are freaking ADORABLE (seriously - just look at the prints - Hello Kitty? I die.) and because the price is right ($5-6 per diaper, free shipping).
We have just under two dozen diapers - I wash them every 2-3 days. I take them apart before washing (urine = no problem, poop = a quick rinse in the toilet or with a sprayer [honestly, I use our detachable showerhead and it works perfectly] to get the solids off), wash them with a couple towels on the "whites" setting and with my homemade laundry soap (super simple and affordable but there are LOTS of options for that), and either just throw them in the dryer or hang them to dry (totally dependent on time).
We've been exclusively cloth diapering for over a year now and I can definitely say I love it - and we'll be continuing with any future kidlets! :)
Hope that helps :)
http://www.modgblog.com/2011/04/01/this-post-scores-me-at-least-20-hippie-points-when-i-get-100-i-get-free-birkenstocks/
I've actually read all the cloth diapering stuff to see what the big deal was...very educational. Hope it helps a little.
As far as brands, we've used Happy Heinies (sp?), Fuzzy Bunz, Olive Branch Baby (can only find them used now), Thirsties, and a variety of Etsy/homemade covers. My favorite style is pocket, hands down. After doing the tri-fold/snap/Thirsties covers with our first two, I needed to make it easy on myself with our third child. Pockets are so easy to whip on and whip off (uh, not literally, haha). And we don't even un-stuff ours when we throw them in the wash. Everything just happens to separate in the wash.
Let me know if you have any questions, seriously! I don't know anything about eco-friendly disposables, but I had to do all my own 'research' with cloth diapers, since none of my relates or friends ever used them.
citizenhappy [at] gmail [dot] com
i actually just came across this really great blog post this morning which was really insightful on the methods of washing/diaper laundry bags, etc. hopefully it will help you!
http://www.dailygarnish.com/2013/01/cloth-diapering-a-one-year-update.html
we have decided to just stick it out with one brand instead of buying a bunch of different ones. 2 of my friends swore by bum genius so i figured i woudnt reinvent the wheel and bough the same kind. ive been using cottonbabies.com and watching their SECONDS SALES. ive spent $110 on 10 one size BG diapers so far which is pretty good!
It's really not very icky at all. In the newborn stage, the poop is washable and once they're older, get a sprayer for the not-so-solids and the solids just tip into the toilet.
We use a wetbag liner inside a small-ish (10 gallons, maybe?) trash can and then just turn the bag inside-out into the washer. We did this complicated washing routine until we realized that turning our hot water heater up a smidge gave us clean diapers with just one wash.
We use them when we travel and when we go out and on the rare instance that we do use disposables (like when we all had a stomach bug), we gripe about the chemical smell. We did try the GroVia disposable inserts with some GroVia shells and those work well.
And cloth swim diapers? Seriously, can you get much cuter?!