Our journey of cloth diapering.
This blog post documents my experience, what I liked, learnt and did I have to tolerate any mess.
We made a very interesting choice with diapers. We went for the trending "cloth diapers" for our Bubu. Its trending but not popular with majority of parent population. This blog post documents my experience, what I liked, learnt and did I have to tolerate any mess.
To start with, cloth diapers are not like they were made when you were growing up. Today all cloth diapers are leak proof. Infact, they are exactly the same as a disposable diaper with the only difference being you rinse + reuse instead of throw.
Disposables are easy … use it and throw it, don’t deal with the mess. But with every shortcut like for example heat-n-eat food, there is a price you pay. This decision actually puts a load on health and the environment. Here is my list of reasons that motivated me to cloth diaper my Bubu and I hope it motivate you too.
#1 Eco friendly
These are some of the facts I got to know about disposable diapers and it really made me re-think my choices.
27.4 billion diapers that end up in landfills each year (only in USA imagine the world)
Disposable’s can take 500 years to decompose
These reasons were good enough for me to start making the consideration. I did use disposable in the first two months and at night but I will tell you why at the end of the post. Let's get back to the point I was making first.
#2 Gentle on bum
The materials and chemicals used in disposable diaper like Sodium Polyacrylate, Phthalates, Tributyl Tin, Dioxin have been linked to negative health outcomes to name a few obesity and even cancer.
As a parent we read every label, but why do we miss the one on diapers.
Cloth diapers on the other hand is just cloth and the layer closest to the skin is cotton, hemp, bamboo or fleece. Doesn't that just sound like cloth diaper was made in heaven.
#3 Looks adorable
Have you seen the design on cloth diapers, dots, flowers, fruits and the bright pop of color. At least something is making the diaper change fun.
#4 Cost effective
Its one-&-done buy, cost wise. You may have to pay a big chunk upfront as they cost anything from $7 -$20 per diaper. But it saves you $1000 - $2000 in 2 years.
You can use it on multiple babies or sell it or donate it. It is getting reused for sure.
Now for some myth busting. These are some myths I heard but with some research + reading blogs and peoples experiences none of these myths were true. Today I can vouch for it myself, as I have experienced this diapering for almost 2 years.
#5 Change period
It’s a myth that you have to change them more often than disposables. Cloth diaper can hold 3 hours of peeing. That’s exactly the same amount of time disposables are recommended to be changed. Disposables can hold more hours of pee but the materials used in it and the ammonia from the pee can give a rash if you don’t change every 3 hrs.
As you may have leaks after the 3 - 4 hour mark, you will become diligent to actually change the diaper and not try to get your money’s worth if the disposable diaper is relatively dryer. That means, “being diligent” is helping your baby’s bum. We never saw a diaper rash in Bubu's whole diapering journey. Touch wood.
To maintain the absorbency of the cloth diaper you will have to use more natural bum creams like cold pressed organic coconut oil, instead of the chemical laden store bought ones.
So now you are doing two things to keep that Bubu tush healthy.
#6 Washing myth
"Cloth diapers with poop are disgusting who is going to wash them."
It's not as bad as you think.
The fun part is the diaper need to be lined with a liner. This is sold separately. There are many options on Amazon and it’s the best quality and still low price. They are made of bamboo which means they are sustainable, breathable, soft, organic, natural.
This liner catches the poop, if it’s a pee diaper it goes to waste. All you do is flush the bamboo liner with the poop. Rinse the diaper with high intensity water hose in your toilet you get a contraption for this or just wash it in the bathtub like we did and pop it in the washing machine. This whole process takes 1-3 mins. It's worth your baby’s bum.
Of course there are going to be accidents like the liner may move, but that is only 0.5% of the time. One of the other things that changed for me personally, I started looking at digestion in a whole new light. To give you context I am super organized and always want my home to be neat, clean etc. Cloth diapering changed my outlook towards poop, and even relaxed my extreme cleanliness.
You put in all the effort to eat right so your BM will be best for the baby or you prepared baby-food with all that yummy nutrients you added. So, poop is the result of digesting all that goodness. I valued every poop that came out.
There are many options in cloth diapers like pre-folds/flats, fitted, pocket and all-in-one. I went for all-in-one BumGenius. I brought 12 and used it 3 months to 2.3 years (until Bubu started Montessori). We washed our diapers regularly so, 12 were more than enough. So 4 - 5 diapers were used in the day and washed that night. To maintain absorbency, the washed diapers need to be line-dried, they cannot be tossed in a dryer. They are thick so can take 24 hours to dry in winter. But as we had 12 in total, we still had 7 diapers for the next day.
Now coming to when I used disposables. Only at night we used the 12-hour disposable version for my sanity as my Bubu woke up every 2 - 3 hours until he was over 1 years old. As a mom who was sleep deprived, I needed some grace to survive. In the newborn phase we tried but the BumGenius was too loose on the waist, that’s the only reason for the first 2 months we did not cloth diaper but used disposables instead.
My partner was really not into diaper changes, let alone the idea of cloth diapers. Another thing to add here is, I was working, which meant during the weekdays 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM my son's nanny supported cloth diapers. If you have help from a nanny or family it is easily and definitely doable. If you are in the same boat as me, my experience can be a motivation even if you are more concerned than your partner about your environment and your Bubu’s bum.
Hope this helps build trust and affinity towards cloth diapering as a option and more of us parents take this on.
If you liked this blog post, you might enjoy other blog posts that talk about what to buy for baby, why I feel it’s a good buy, how we used it earlier and how we use it now. As there are a lot of baby product’s I have broken them down into categories and written separate blog posts on each. Click on the category you want to explore.
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