Making Diapers

I've been meaning to try for quite a while now and last week I finally did it. I made some fleece diaper covers (2 in 2 different sizes) and 2 fitted diapers. I could not be more proud of myself if I tried. I want to make sure I like them before making many more, but it was simple as can be, plus it allows me to use the prefolds I already have as inserts. I want to try a few more different types as well...but just making the ones I did I consider quite a triumph! I attribute it to my virus in my eye and the fact that I was avoiding being near my son the entire time my in laws were caring for him, so what's a girl to do. I needed something to keep my mind off itching my eye and going crazy (as my in laws do tend to do this to me) and sure enough diapers came out of it :) I think I'm in love. It allows me to change up my collection at a very very VERY affordable cost and takes away the urge to buy more diapers! A feat that I thought was insurmountable!

Night time....

I know I've been MIA for..well...a few months. Moving and not having internet are the main reasons. Ah well.

So I know that I have been a big proponent of not using the cloth diapers at night out of ease. Somewhere in my mind I had the notion that to use the cloth diapers at night I would have to buy something special or else my son (who is a fairly heavy wetter) would leak everywhere (truth be told I only have 2 sheets for his bed, both of which came in one of those bedding sets). I did NOT want to deal with the cleanup involved with a leaky diaper at night. Therefore, the first 6 months of his life I would use the cloth diapers during the day and after his bath would put him straight into a disposable diaper.

Looking back, the easiest time to use cloth at night would have been when he was a newborn. I mean I was already changing his butt every 2- hours anyhow, and he was exclusively breastfed (EBF), which meant I didn't need to do anything with poopy diapers. I wish I had seen the light then, and this was the time period where I went through the most diapers at night...now he basically sleeps through the night, meaning 1 diaper, not the 5-6-8 diapers we were going through before!

This weekend I got inspired. I was surfing one of the BBC discussion boards and a mom on there asked a questions. And the ladies, my virtual experts (ie more experienced moms than me) stated "Use what you have on hand. You don't need to buy anything fancy." Well...this statement inspired me. I thought 'Sure. Right. I don't have to buy anything fancy. I have been using this as a crutch to avoid going all in.' I looked at my husband and he basically told me I could do whatever I wanted, but I was also going to be the one to clean up any mess which may ensue due to the bug up my butt.

Saturday night was it. THE night. I put my Thirstie Duo 2 up to the largest setting, so it would accomodate the extra bulk. And man oh day! Did I ever have extra bulk!! I used a brown edged Green Mountain prefold with a Orange edged on trifolded inside. I then put a flip insert against my son and snappied it all together. Put it in the Cool Stripes Cover and I was set. And his butt was sooo large that his feet didn't touch the ground. I laughed and he looked at me with a look in his eyes that said "mom, you seriously expect me to sleep like this, I can't even roll into my favorite position!" I took a few pictures and called my husband to come in and look any my handy work. Well, he put his foot down. Said remove enough of the bulk so that your son will actually go to sleep. I hesitated, and removed the Orange edged prefold, really wanting the stay dry part of the Flip insert against my sons rear (I'm a big fan of sleep and really didn't want to give it up because I was trying cloth at night). Then satisfied with my work, into his fleece sleep sak he went (figuring if we did spring a leak, maybe it would salvage the bed). My son woke up at 4. I picked him up, felt his bed...DRY! Nursed him and back down he went. He didn't wake up then until 7. Success!! We did it!

I was so thrilled with my "discovery" that we repeated again last night. Again this morning: Success!My husband claims he'll still be using a disposable at night, but give me time and slowly I will rid my house of virtually all diaper waste ;) Then he will have no choice!

My lesson learned this weekend: You don't need to buy fancy diapers and doublers and such to use cloth at night. All you need you probally have on hand.

Traveling

I most defiantely cheated. Don't get me wrong, I love my cloth. But moving across the country and not having access to a washing machine really makes it hard to cloth diaper. My son has been in sposies now for 3 days :( And I am dying to get him back into cloth! I wanted to start back up this past weekend when we were camping, but the hubs said just wait until Monday morning, so here I am waiting for my son to wake up so I can put him in his cloth! Is it crazy that I'm sitting here staring at him chanting "wake up wake up wake up" over and over again. Especially considering I'm often chanting "nap time nap time nap time" over and over again throughout the day. Craziness! I really think I have a sickness.

So we are now half way through our move :) and staying with my mom until we can move into our new home. I am so excited to hang my diapers out on the line and get them some good sun, something I've been told is great for stains...which my prefolds most defiantely have!

So today I am back on my Save Money to Save the Earth kick and we'll be only using disposables at night. Hopefully this was one of the last real stretches of sposies that we'll have for my son's diapering lifetime :)

I'm doing this to SAVE money

It's a real sticker shock when you think hey, I'll just buy some cloth diapers and be done with it, this way I can save myself some money. And then you look at the price of the cute AIO and say holy cow I could buy myself a box of Luv's for that price. And yes, recently a friend had expressed her interest, stating she hated throwing away her money on disposable diapers, so she approached her husband about switching to cloth and when he saw the price of 1 diaper he was in shock and said they needed to discuss it a little more.

Well, I'll be the first to admit that I was slightly shocked too. The more I thought of it though, I came to the realization that while yes, for the price of 1 diaper I could buy a whole box of diapers, that I would be able to reuse this 1 diaper over and over again. So once you have 40 uses out of the diaper you've essentially used up one package of disposables. And that's only if you elect to using the fancy more expensive diapers.

I'll be truthful, the cheapest way to cloth diaper is prefolds and covers. Period. Yes, I was scared to try them to. But really, you have to deal with the poop anyhow and I rarely even touch the poop. With breastfed poop you just find a 'clean' corner and toss it into your diaper pail (I promise you the poop washes right out, no dunking required). And the folding is relatively easy. There are a ton of great tutorials on You Tube on how to fold and there are a million in one ways to fold. Just find the fold that works for you and your baby and run with it.

The start up cost may be a lot, but in the end you are really saving money. Since my son was born we have bought disposable diapers a total of 3 times. That's 2 of the packages and 1 box in the 9 weeks he's been alive. In order to defray the costs, since I started my research ridiculously early, we started buying a few diapers a month to work our way up to having a stash. The first month I bought a total of 5 dozen prefolds in different sizes from the site that was recommended to me. The next month I bought 2 covers from a second site. The 3rd month I bought 2 more covers and some g-diapers with the cloth insert from 2 different sites. The next month we bought my breast pump (which was more than 3 times what I'd been spending on diapers), so I took a break. Then my little bundle of joy arrived and I was ready to start. I have since ordered a few more things here and there, but spreading out the cost has really worked for us, and as we work up to nighttime diapering I plan on spreading out the cost and trying a few different brands of diapers.

And just think all these diapers are able to be used on more than one child.

If you are really looking at saving some money and you don't mind using used diapers then there is another whole world open to you. There are a bunch of swap boards where women, and I'm sure a few men, look to recover the loss of diapers that didn't work for them or no longer fit. And I've heard that you can get a great deal. I'm not a used diaper girl, as of right now. I look at as underwear. I wouldn't buy someones used underwear, so why would I put it on my son. And yes I do plan on using his diapers on any future children, but at least that's all in the family. Maybe it's a fetish I'll get over one day.

Another way to save money is to find someone who can make you some diapers. Or make them yourself! There are a ton of talented women out there on sites like Hyena Cart and Esty who make and sell there diapers at a much lower rate than the brands you find on diaper store websites. It's all a matter of looking, seek and ye shall find.

The one pitfall. Shopping is addictive. I am a total diaper shopaholic. I adore shopping and find myself filling my cart and closing my browser so I'm not caught. When I go back to the site and my cart is still full, I start shopping again and realize I can't afford my now $500.00 bill, so I clear my cart, forget what I had put in there. It must not have been a real need if I can't even remember it. And I'll be honest we've made it okay with out the extra grand of imaginary money that I could have spent on my dream stash. But when my husband gives the green light he has to reign me in. I'm like a man in an electronics store, I want everything in sight.

What!? I thought this was going to be simple!

What happened to the Gerber Prefolds and the plastic panty? When I first started researching cloth diapers (and I'm glad I did), I learned that the world of cloth diapering has evolved since the days of our parents and grandparents. I was pleasantly suprised to see that the diapers had pretty colors, velcro, and did not require a class in oragami to try to save money. Nor did it require pins, a strong selling point to my better half. But I was also very, VERY overwhelmed. What in the world were AIO, Pockets, AI2, Sposies (okay, so upon later reflection I realized this one I knew, it was my pregnant overwhelmed brain that really confused me), and a whole host of other 'kinds' of diapers. I thought this was going to be an easy decision. I'd get my cloth diapers and be done with it. Boy was I mistaken.

My best piece of advice, find a good support group, one with experience. That way you can ask your questions and have a place to find information. The internet is loaded with groups of women who not only possess the keys to your diapering success but are very crafty. They can not only tell you where to get the best diaper deal, a coupon, or what is the latest trend in diapering/laundry (yes that is another weird obsession I will discuss on a later date), but they can save you money on making yourself diapers, soakers, and inserts. They'll even sell them to you or help you to make your own!

So what are all these kinds of diapers? Let's try to demistify them.

AIO. This stands for All in One and is exactly what it sounds like. It is the disposable diaper of the cloth diapering world in a sense, though you do spend far to much on these to throw them in the trash once they've been christened. They have an outer waterproof layer also known as PUL and an absorbant inner layer, often boasted that it is made of hemp or bamboo or some other super absorbant material. They close with snaps or velcro (also called Aplix or Hook and Loop, it took me forever to figure this one out, but trust me it's what us commeners call velcro). You put them on your baby's bum, change them like you would any other diaper, but instead of tossing them in the trash you toss them in your laundry pail. And your done, ready to repeat in 5 minutes when your little one decides he or she wants to poop because they just weren't finished yet.

Pockets. This works very similarly to an AIO. The only difference is that after you wash them you need to stuff the absorbant layer back into the diaper. That's it. The absorbant layer is either pulled out by you before being tossed into your pail or it claims to fall out in the wash. The benefit of this is that the drying time is reduced because you don't have all these layers stuffed into a PUL where air can't circulate around them.

AI2. All in Two. This is a pocket diaper meets a disposable diaper. You get to choose whether you want to use cloth or a disposable insert in these diapers. Many ladies like to use these so that they can use cloth at home and throwaway when out traveling. Why not buy some Pampers for when your going out of the house? Well then no one but you would get to see the cute bum, and the pretty diaper that you spent all of your tax return on. There are a couple different models of these and all have their pros and cons, as with any diapering system. I will say that this and prefolds and covers is most of my collection. I am in love with both the g-Diaper and the Flip. They fit my little man so well, and I haven't had many leaks at all (One that was so bad it required an outfit change for me and him, and it was on the first day I tried out that particular system).

Prefolds/flats: These are the diaper squares that you are familiar with. The ones that everyone thinks require the dreaded pins. Yes. They do require some folding. And yes, they do require a cover. But I will say this is by far the cheapest way to diaper. And the covers...well...we'll get to those. The difference between the 2 is the amount of folding. With prefolds your work is done, they have the absorbant layer and your only task is to get it adequately over your baby's cute little tush. With a flat you need to do the oragami and get it folded to a point where it can go around said tushie. Sound scary? And what about securing them? Well. Some swear by their pins. I'll be honest, these scare me to death. I tried them a few different times and ended up jabbing myself and having moments where I picked up J and had the diaper fall off (just like the movies). I'm more of a snappi girl. My husband will even change these with a snappi. It works like an ACE wrap. No needles, no fuss. There are a host of folds to chose from as well, and I'll save those as well for another day. We also use this method right now as J is still a newborn. And trust me it is far easier than it looks!

Fitteds: These are prefolds with the folding done. They look like a diaper, AIO or AI2 only without the PUL. Some fit with snaps or velcro already secured some require pins or snappi (diaperer's prefrence).

Covers. These are your plastic panty. Only you are not limited to a plastic panty any more. They are pretty, with colors and patterns and velcro or snaps to make putting on and taking off easier. They are made from a fabric called PUL (the same thing that is in the AIO, fitteds, and AI2). Many times you can take your prefold and place it in the cover and then just cover the bum.

Are you lost yet? That's it. Most all diapers fall into one of these categories. The biggest task is finding the diaper or system that works for you and your family (or the one you can convince your husband to let you use). No matter what system you buy it is an investment. You can buy new or used (though I will say I'm a buy new girl. I wouldn't buy some stranger's used underwear, why would I buy that for my son) and can save a lot of money on the used. You can even sell yours once your little one out grows it or save it for future children, the choice is yours.

Well, J is awake and getting shots today. Time to go put him in a g-Diaper with a cloth insert and get him and myself ready to see the doctor.

Epiphany

I came to a conclusion today. The world of cloth diapers is scary to those who are looking at embarking on the green road of cloth diapering. I decided to cloth diaper before my son was born, but I thought the world of cloth diapering was Gerber Prefolds/Flats, those plastic panties, and pins. But once I started my search for information on cloth diapering I realized that it is so much more. Needless to say I was confused, overwhelmed, and excited all at the same time. It would have been nice if my husband had been on board from the start, but I think he was indulging me during the research phase. I'm fairly sure he thought I'd give up, though, he was intrigued by those magic words when I said, "Honey, we could save a lot of money, that's money you could be spending on video games." Had he known then what he knows now he may have set his foot down and said no, because researching and shopping for cloth diapers and all things fluffy has become a quiet obsession of mine.

If you are in the same place that I was when I first started, not only is your spouse most likely thinking you are crazy, but so are your co-workers. I am pretty sure that their nay saying is one thing that spurs me on and keeps me in the cloth when I think it would be so much easier to put J (my son) into Huggies today. So know, you are not alone. There is a world of crunchy mommas and papas out there just like you.

I plan on writing from my experience and the diapers that I choose to use as my son grows up. Right now he is 2 months old so we are in the newborn stage. What makes me an expert? Absolutely nothing. I am in this learning boat with you and other mommas like you. Looking to save money where I can. Join me on this journey with hopefully more success stories than failures.