Well, this title is a lie because its ALL ish when it comes to diapers lol!
But mommy jokes aside, I recently received a lot of messages asking about my experience with cloth diapers after I posted a video to my IG stories of Edison playing (If you haven’t already, check out my instagram!)
So I figured I’d do a blog post were I can get a bit more in depth and address my thoughts all in one area.
This blog ISN’T for shaming families who decide to use disposable diapers (we all have different needs as families) and I’ll highlight fact from fiction from personal experience as much as I can. There are a lot of myths floating around out there and I would like this to be as educational as possible.
Lastly, the world of cloth diapering is extremely vast! So this post isn’t intended to be an exhausted guide, but more of an introduction. If ya’ll would like to see a mini series on all the advice I have on cloth diapering, then just let me know =]
Cloth Diapering Isn’t Hard. Mostly.
Back when I was pregnant and shared with folks that I planned to cloth diaper exclusively, people in my circle looked at me crazy.
The older women in my family who all used cloth on us, told me it was a hassle, especially without a diaper service. All my young mom/dad friends said that of the people that they knew who tried, that they all gave up within a month.
But, Stephen and I still wanted to give it our best efforts and 5 months later, here’s our take: it’s slightly more work than disposables, but not that much more work.
When most people think of cloth diapers, they think of the pre-folds (which oddly, I love) with the safety pins and stiff plastic covers. But there are many options for cloth diapers nowadays.
Most people who cloth diaper enjoy using a one step systems. These are convenient because they are basically like disposables–everything you need is already together. And when it’s done, all you have to do is throw the whole solid diaper in a wet bag to wash later.
I personally enjoy using pre fold at the moment for the feeling of added leak security (this is just a feeling, I have zero proof to back that up). These do take a bit longer to set up. However, when I timed out the difference, pre folds only took me about 30 seconds longer than disposables.
In my opinion, the hardest part of cloth diapering is the washing that comes after, because in general, I don’t like laundry, and I don’t want poop everywhere.
And if you’re not properly prepared, you will be dealing with FRUSTRATING amount of poop like we did, until we got on game.
Use a degradable liner that catches the poop.
I’m so happy to say that I no longer spend my evenings rinsing poop down the toilet. All I have to do is toss the liner away (Don’t flush them, heard horror stories about that) spray the diaper down with safe stain remover and then toss it in the wash. Done.
Keep in mind, we aren’t on solids yet, which is a game changer. I’ll update this when we get there.
What No One Tells You
Just like the liners above, there are things you should know and have on hand for cloth diapering, but no one really tell you about. So I’m going to disclose all of that here.
When you first get your cloth diapers, you’re going to want to wash them. Not because they’re dirty, but because you want them to get as absorbent as possible. If you plan on using cloth from the very beginning, I would recommend only washing them once. Little babies don’t pee/poop enough to leek though a diaper, but you’ll go through A LOT of them, so they’ll get their fair share of washes in and they’ll be plenty absorbent for later on.
If you’re looking to be frugal (we defiantly were) aim for one step systems or covers that will take you from infancy through potty training. We bought a pack of 6 all-in-2 cloth diapers from Amazon for $30 and were able to use them on Edison from 3 weeks, and they’ve been adjusting to his changing body well.
You can’t use petroleum-based creams with synthetic fiber cloth diapers. The petroleum seeps into the material and then repeals liquid away ( the opposite of what you want). Even with my natural fiber diapers, I just prefer to use cloth safe creams on Edison anyways because his bum bums seems to enjoy those much more anyways. Alternatively, coconut oil is also safe to use on the little butts with cloth diapers, or so I’ve heard as the oil does not bind with the fibers and stop it form becoming absorbent.
Lastly, you’re going to want to find a good method to strip the poop stains from your diapers. This isn’t really needed, but those stains can get unsightly. For us, we rinse our diapers with a stain striper once a month, and then always hang them to dry in the sun. This proesses basically bleaches the diapers for us and leaves them nice and white
I hope this blog helped to answer some of the questions you might have had about cloth diapering, or that you found some of my advice useful.
As I had stated earlier, this post is meant to be more of an introduction into cloth diapers more than anything else. In the near future, I want share with you some of my favorite methods and brands for cloth diapers, but for now I wanna know this from you:
Do you think you’ll try cloth diapering? Or are you already doing it?
What do you enjoy about cloth diapering and what do you just the about it?
