Diaper Diaries (Pt. 4)

Oct 12, 2009 by desiringvirtue

Real Life

So by now I am hoping that you are at least thinking about cloth diapers as a viable option for your baby. Sometimes however, it takes a little real life demonstration to truly communicate the simplicity of CDs. For that reason I want to take the time to show you how you change each of the diapers described earlier. I scoured the internet looking for the best and most helpful video footage of cloth diaper changes. Here is what I found:

The Prefold Diaper

You will notice that she uses a spray bottle with the wipes. I used this and it worked well, though it can be tricky when you have a squirmy baby trying to grab their poo while you spray down a wipe…! For this reason I began filling up a wipe dispenser (like the cheap plastic ones that come with disposable wipes) with water, a little soap, and wipes at the beginning each day. Doing it like this makes the wipes more accessible.

F.Y.I.: I am really wishing I hadn’t thrown away my wipe heater (I got sick of it when I was using disposables because it would just dry out the wipes). I think that one of those would work really well to keep the water warm for your little one’s bottom.

Notice that she just puts the soiled diaper in the diaper pail. That is because breast fed babies’ poo is totally dissolvable so you don’t need to rinse it or anything before putting it into the washing machine.

As you can see prefolds are especially great for newborns because you can adjust the size however you need to. A lot of times pocket and AIO diapers are a too big for  little babies. Because of the relatively small cost, it would be smart to get a couple dozen of these for the first couple weeks of your baby’s life (if you are going to do pocket or AIO diapers).

The Fitted Diaper

Ok, I think this guy is hilarious! His acting skills are oscar worthy. I think that fitted diapers are a great system. I am going to get some myself.

The Pocket Diaper and All-in-One Diaper

The only difference between putting on a pocket diaper and putting on an AIO is the insert. Most people put the inserts in right after cleaning the diapers, so when changing time comes you have the same basic process going on as with the AIOs.

Once you decide you want to use cloth diapers, the next step is choosing which kind you want to use. That choice comes down to how much work you want to do and how much money you want to spend. As you can see the pocket and AIO diapers are the simplest to put on, but they are also the most expensive. I will tell you that after using pocket diapers for a few of months I am confident that prefolds or fitted diapers would not be the horrific experience I had assumed them to be. I have all Fuzzi Bunz pocket diapers at the moment, but I am going to add some prefolds and fitteds to the mix soon so that I can go longer between washes and save a little money.

To go to the next post in this series, The Accessories, click here!

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