Butt covering update: What I know about cloth diapering (14 month edition)

So, the last time I talked about cloth diapers, our situation was a wee bit different.  Logan was 4 months old, he was still breastfeeding exclusively and we'd only been on the bandwagon for the time it took our little cherub to gain 10 pounds.

Fast forward ten months.  We made it!  It's been over a year on the cloth diapering front!  Remind me to show you the medal I was never actually awarded for faithfully changing and dumping poop three to five times a day for the last 14 months.  (Sidenote: that's a LOT of poop that is not sitting in landfills.  You're welcome, world.)

I know this gig isn't for everyone.  Truthfully, it didn't even used to be for me considering that we used disposables the first time through.  But it bums me out when people are all, eeeew, doesn't it gross you out to have poop in your washing machine?  Here's the thing: I so-ooo do not have poop in my washing machine.  Yes, that would completely gross me out, but the truth is that the poop gets flushed, as it's technically supposed to even if you are using disposable diapers.

The other myth that bums me out: I don't think I can handle dealing with poop all the time.  Here's the thing: 1) you'd better get used to dealing with poop if you ever intend to potty train your child, because, trust me... that poop is a-comin'.  Probably in the form of ooops I didn't tell you I had to poop and now it's in my underwear/pants/socks/upmyshirt/downmyleg from your sweet two year old.  Enjoy. 2)  The extent of my dealing with poop is typically this: open diaper.  Tip poop into toilet.  Flush toilet.  We don't have many icky sticky poop incidents at our house that require scraping, although there are a plethora of tools to deal with them should they occur.

Am I really qualified to make recommendations about cloth diapers?  Heck no!  But I can tell you what works for us, and why.  Here it is, in good, old-fashioned, teacher-approved bullet point format: the world of cloth diapering according to Melissa.

• We chose Rumparooz.  Why?  Because we like them, and they are a local company here in Colorado.  That was really the final nail for me, and it had absolutely nothing to do with the diapers themselves.  Also in the running were BumGenius4.0  - which can now be found at Target - and OhKaty because they have super adorable patterns and colors.  All three have the same basic premise: snap closure, microfiber diapers designed to grow with your baby, as well as inserts that help absorb all the ickies.  

• How are they different from disposables?  A disposable diaper relies on an absorbent gel to lock mess in.  One of the many things I love about cloth diapering is that babies are much less likely to get diaper rash, because 1) you change them more frequently and 2) that mess isn't locked in against their skin.  In 14 months, Logan has had only one case of diaper rash, and it was absolutely due to the fact that he was going through an I have to poop every 37 minutes phase.  When you poop that much, you pretty much get a rash regardless.  I've never had to use any kind of butt paste or diaper creme on him, and the diapers are super soft even after all this time.  

• Cleaning.  We use the most basic liquid Tide available.  No scent, no additives, no nothing.  It's different from our regular laundry detergent, but it works wonders on the diapers.  You could try all sorts of fancy organic blends, I've also heard of people making their own, or you could just schlep to the store since Tide is available everywhere.  We're super lazy, so we chose option C.  It works for us.  The sun is your best friend in cleaning a diaper, and the covers get sunned usually once a month to help get rid of any build up or stains.  I am happy to report that the stains we had initially from the breastmilk poops have entirely gone away.  Although our diapers look a bit more lived in these days, they are still fluffy, soft, and overwhelmingly stain free.

• Poop.  I can't vouch for anyone else who uses cloth, because people have created all sorts of gadgets to get cloth diapers poop free.  When they're exclusively breastfed, you can simply toss a poopy diaper in the wash and, since the poo is water soluble, it washes right out.  Once you start on solids, you have to devise a new strategy.  We've been really lucky, because we seldom have to do anything more complicated than dump a clump and flush.  Occasionally the diaper gets banged against the side of the toilet to knock poop lose, and every now and again I have to use some TP to help me scrape it out.  There are those who dunk the diaper, who have an attachment on the toilet, who keep a scraper... we've never had to go to any of those extremes.  My original plan was to use these flushable liners to help us dispose of messy dumps, but I've never had to use them.  

• Changing.  We've slowed down dramatically on the changing front.  Once Logan got onto solids and off of breast milk, I was able to go 3-4 hours between changings and his outfits are no longer wet throughout the day.  We are still using disposables at night; whether we need to or not remains to be seen.  It's become our habit and we're pretty happy with it.  

• How many?  I have two dozen, and it's a number that works fabulously for us.  When we have another baby to diaper, I will probably get 6-10 more depending on where we are in the potty training process with Logan. 
  

• Velcro or Snap?  Snap.  No contest.  Based on my exactly zero experience with velcro, but I hear the snaps are longer lasting and less hassle. I'm sticking with that story.

• Wipes. We're still using these fabulous cloth wipes from Charlie Banana.  Love them.  They come in sets of 10; I have 2 packs (20 total).  It's plenty, even though I do keep a box of disposable wipes on hand as well, simply because they're super handy.  We use far less disposable wipes than we did with Leah, though.  
  

• Costs.  We buy a small pack of diapers once every two months or so, as opposed to a huge box once every three-four weeks.  The revolving costs for us are 1) disposable diapers and 2) the cost of washing and drying our diapers, which is so minimal we don't feel it.  Maybe an extra $1-$3 dollars a month... and if I had to guess I'd say even that is a stretch (I read a statistic that says a load of laundry costs approximately  $0.16 each time to wash and dry.  Another stat says $0.11 to wash and $0.35 to dry.  I don't know the truth, but I know it's nothing in the long run).  The truth is, the cost of cloth is so minimal compared to the continual costs of disposables, it's not even a contest.  Particularly because for our next child, there's not going to be the huge start up cost of buying all those cloth diapers.  We spent $567 on the diapers, wipes, wet bags and other accessories necessary; we spent something close to $900 on Leah's first year of diapers, wipes, Diaper Genie liners and butt paste (she was potty trained right at 3, if that gives you any reference).  For us, it's a no-brainer.

I'm sure there's things I've missed here.  So how about you?  Cloth or disposable?  How do you run the clean bottom express?

What I know about cloth diapers (4 month edition)

Although I was a bit fearful of using cloth diapers when I first considered it, I'm so glad we pushed through.  I've learned a few things along the way, besides the fact that they're super cute and provide a never-ending diaper supply.  As a certified expert (of four months), I'll now share. 

My model has some wicked awesome leg chub.

They're totally not disgusting.  Really - and I would tell you 'cause I would think so.  Since Leah has been on and off the potty training boat, I've dealt with poop in all kinds of forms, locations and consistencies.  Clearly Logan isn't pooping the solids poops yet, meaning we haven't had to deal with cleaning them out before tossing diapers in the wash.  Although the Class 5 Hazardous Substance (aka breastmilk-poop) stains don't come out completely, the diapers stay soft and smelling good simply by washing them according to the manufacturer's directions.   I should add that most people recommend sunning the stains out, and I'll cop to the fact that I'm too lazy and Logan is still eating too frequently for me to do this effectively.

Storage.  This is one of those things I worried a lot about, needlessly.  What would I do without my precious diaper genie?!  I bought a simple flip top garbage can from Target and lined it with a Planet Wise pail liner, which come in tons of delicious colors.  Leah liked the avocado and the orange, so we click-click-clicked them into our basket.  They get washed along with the diapers and it works as well as the diaper genie without having to haul long tubes of poop to the trash three times a week.  For clean diapers, I just pop them ready-to-use in the same wicker basket I used for Leah's disposables. 

Wipes.  It dawned on me after I bought the diapers that if I used the same disposable wipes I used with Leah, I'd have to throw them away separately, and since I had no diaper genie it would be in an open-top trash can when they had poop and pee on them.  Not my favorite idea.  So, after a bit of research, I found these awesome wipes from Charlie Banana.  They are awesomely soft and have cleaned up many a newborn soupy mess.  A squirt of Diaper Area Wash (available at Target) helps the process, and we're good to go.

On-the-go.  We have two wet bags purchased from Etsy that we rotate and store in the diaper bag for when we're out and about.  A wet bag is that special place a wet/dirty diaper goes so it can make it home.  While Leah was potty training (an effort we've given up for a while), it was also effective storage for wet panties, jeans, socks, and anything else that wound up in the line of fire.  If we'd had one the first time around, we would also have stored dirty bibs, forks, bowls, etc. in there.  Like a chump, I used disposable ziplock bags.  Truthfully, I can't say enough good things about them... every mom ought to have one in her artilery.  Plus, they're UBER cute and come in all kinds of shapes, patterns and sizes and they're machine washable (bonus!).  See exhibits A and B.  Ooooh, and C.  Seriously, I could do this all day.  They're addicting.  Amazon is a good resource, too. 

Changing.  This has been our biggest hang up, since Logan takes his dooty duty very seriously.  He has to be changed every 2 hours, and is sometimes wet after as little as an hour.  It is routine for me to change his outfit 2 or 3 times a day.  I've also begun using disposables at night, simply because he was always waking up wet and I'm not the kind of mom who wants to change him once or twice every night until he's potty trained.  Rumparooz gives you the option of adding a second insert, which helps, but it makes the already-large cloth diaper almost unmanageable for a tiny baby (or even my not-so-tiny one), and he and everything around him were still wet by morning.  Before switching to a disposable at night, I was doing laundry every 36 hours.  Now I can go about three days, which is a HUGE difference and worth the price of admission in my book.  I also put him in disposables if we're going to be out in the cold for any extended period of time, just because I don't like the idea of his littly tushy being wet when it's freezing out.

Washing.  Cloth diapers need a cold cycle rinse, followed by a hot cycle and an extra rinse.  Again, it's recommended that the covers are line-dried to help remove the stains, which I skip.  They can be machine dried on delicate.  I'll let you know if that impacts the longevity of the diaper, but so far, mine are fluffy, soft and very, very lightly stained.  To keep them nice and fluffy, I use these dryer balls which seems to really help the entire drying process.

The best part?  The best part is that I'm not on the endless hamster wheel that is buying diapers.  We've spent a grand total - including all the stuff I just mentioned - of $567.29.  Yes, that includes two packs of disposables for night-time.  If I had to guess, I'd imagine we've spent at least tripple - maybe even quadruple (gulp) - that on the big girl's diaper habbit so far, and Logan's bill isn't going up any time soon.  The other best part is that the cloth diapers hold in newbie-poop so much better than disposables.  We have never yet had a "#3," which is the term we came up with for when the diaper isn't enough.  Yes, I have more laundry to do, but I have a lot less spot-treatment due to a leaky Huggies. 

So that's that so far.  The poop on cloth diapering.  Questions? Comments?  Concerns? 

What I know about cloth diapering

1. It always helps to have an assistant when washing diapers for the first time.  Especially if that assistant has new Dora underware she picked out all by herself and wants thrown into the mix.  Because, you know, it's important to be included, and two year olds are great at keeping things organized.

2. It is perfectly acceptable to text Auntie Jessica in the middle of her work day to ask her 17 questions about how to wash cloth diapers.  When she doesn't text back (um, what could possibly be more important?) right away, the next step is to call the store where they were purchased and bother them (twice).

3. The polka dots are my favorite.

4. I won the daughter jackpot, because Leah is a great helper and helped me organize, fold and put away the diapers once they were washed.  No, that really happened - to the very best of her two-year-old ability.  She was totally stoked about it. 

5. Cloth diapers are ridiculously soft.  If they made them in  adult sizes, I'd wear them instead of undeware.  Like, for reals.  I may or may not have tried to bring one or two to bed with me, before my husband informed me that was a little weird. 

6. It feels really, really good to know that Peanut has clean diapers.  Washed, put away, ready for his tiny tushy. 

So, to sum up: going into this cloth diapering thing, I know pretty much squat. 

Casey keeps laughing at me, 'cause I'm a little anxious about making this switch.  I don't know why I've convinced myself that I can ruin either the diapers or the baby, but I'm pretty sure catastrophe is not out of the question on the butt-covering front. 

Stick with me kids, because we're going to do a little on-the-job learning! 

(And I can't really ruin the baby, right?  I hear they're pretty durable; I'm 1 for 1 on that front so far...)

There will be diapers

There will not be a nursery, designed with loving care.

There will not be new bedding, picked out by a mommy who knew it was "the one."

There will not be a brand new crib.

There will not be hoardes of new clothes, because, let's face it: Auntie Jess already had a boy. 

There will not be a house to call our own.

But, as of today, there will be diapers.

And because I want to make sure that there can be a mommy at home full time, we're going a direction I never, ever imagined we would go.  You may be looking at the last diapers we'll ever buy. 

Yes, we're going green.  Or - more likely - brown.  After a lot of research, we settled on Rumparooz, which have a fabulous reputation in the hiney-covering department.  I'm not gonna lie, I'm a little nervous about this new adventure. 

At the same time, though, it gave me such satisfaction to pick these babies up!  With everything else so up in the air and the arrival of this baby coming up so quickly, I have horrible guilt over all the things Leah had in place which he will not.

But, by golly, he will have diapers.  And three people who love him to pieces.

What else does he need, really?