Cloth Diapers

People keep asking me how the cloth diapers are going,so I figured I might as well let you all know that we're still loving them! We had to use disposable for the first few weeks until her umbilical stump fell off, but we've been 100% cloth since then. It's actually kind of fun! Most of the time we use prefolds and covers, but at night we use pockets.

Does that sound like Greek to you? Basically, a "prefold" is a big square piece of fabric that's been prefolded and sewn together so it's super absorbent. Then it's held together with a plastic thing called a "snappi," so you don't have to use pins (like in the old days). Here's a photo of a prefold and snappi that I found online:

Since a prefold is just 100% unbleached cotton, you then have to put a cover over it so it's waterproof. We've been using the Thirsties Duo Wrap covers, which have worked *great.* (FWIW, I much prefer the covers with the snaps, as the Thirsties velcro/aplix seems really weak to me.)  This website shows how to fold a prefold and put on the cover.

At night, however, we've been using pockets. The prefolds work great during the day, but they get soaked through in about 3 hours. And since I don't want to be getting up every 3 hours to change Rose each night, we've been using a double-stuffed pocket. What that means is we take a pocket diaper and then add an extra layer to the pocket to make it super absorbent. Here's an image explaining the pocket diaper:

We've been using the bumGenius 4.0 pocket diapers, and they've been great! I actually bought a few other brands (Oh Katy, FuzziBunz, RumpaRooz) before Rose was born because I heard that not all pockets fit every baby well. All the other ones that I bought have leaked, but we've never had a problem with the BGs. (I'm still holding on to the other ones though, just in case we have problems with the BGs down the road.) So now we've been slowly adding to our stock of BGs, especially since those are the diapers we'll be use during the day once Rose is in daycare. (Oh, and FWIW, I've been enjoying the BG velco/aplix because it's easy to get the fit right on our tall lady, although about half our stash is snaps since I hear that toddlers can rip the velcro off easily but they stay "stuck" in the snaps. Just thinking ahead for the days when her dexterity is more advanced...)


Well what about the laundry element, you ask? Well, I'm lucky to have an awesome husband who does all of our laundry - his clothes, my clothes, sheets and towels, and now Rose's clothes and diapers. He's awesome. But since he's going to be out of town for several days next week (more on that in an upcoming post), I had to learn how to do the diaper laundry. Uh oh.

But actually it's not that bad! Everything gets tossed in to the washer with an extra rinse cycle, we use special cloth diaper laundry detergent, and then the covers get hung up to dry while the prefolds go in the drier.  They even look pretty while they're being dried.  :) So if you're thinking about using cloth, I'd be happy to talk your ear off about how much we love it!