When we lived in another state, we discovered the recycling center and happily crunched boxes, rinsed out jars and cans, and looked for the elusive recycle symbol on every plastic thingamajig that came in the house. We shredded documents and heaped them into boxes. Our trash output was half of what it had been. I started researching cloth diapers, the ins and outs, what’s better, cheap or easy? Until my pregnant eyes were ready to bleed. What’s better for our baby’s enviornment, we wondered? Should we just go ahead and give it a shot? We started with prefolds and covers. I’ll admit it, I was afraid that I’d hate cloth diapering and not be able to follow through. As it was, I went into labor early, then we moved a week after the baby was born, so it took a month or so for us to get into it. Then we did cloth during the day and disposables at night for a while. I was relieved when ‘after dinner’ would roll around and I could slap a disposable on and not struggle with the prefolds. I was a new mom, a mom to a preemie, exhausted, in a new city, in a new state. I was also pumping milk every time the baby ate, as she had trouble learning to nurse. I had time for absolutely nothing else. After a while, it became routine, and when we had to get a disposable out I was less relieved and felt more guilty about the garbage. We discovered the Cotton Babies store was in our city! We found them and bought a couple more covers and a couple of the BG size smalls ‘just to try them out’ –soon I was reaching for those size smalls first! They were a lot easier, and even though I couldn’t reuse them like the cover, they were still pretty nice. Then the blowouts started with the prefolds, it was obvious our baby was getting too big, so we went back to the Cotton Babies retail store and splurged on 12 mediums. We struggled, should we get the one sizes? Would it be annoying to stuff them? At least we knew we could handle the same ones we had before. We still ended up running out, though, and she’d end up in a disposable overnight or a couple of them the next morning if I didn’t wake up and get them dried before she woke up. My husband started grumbling about her being in disposables (and I was the one who suggested cloth diapers in the first place!) because he thought they smelled bad with the powdery additive smell in them. You could also hear her poop from the next room because of the paper flapping sound! Eh hm, so we waffled a bit more, and then the Easter diaper email came out. My husband immediately said it was a sign and we should go get some. At first the stuffing was tedious, but now, even if I do it right at the table, the baby airs her butt out and sucks on her toes. Delight! Right now, we call them solids and stripes (the diapers, not her toes!) The solids are the medium sizes and the stripes are the Easter ‘eggs’. We like solids for travelling, because you don’t have to separate the inserts at someone else’s house, while simultaneously holding the baby still and trying not to ‘goopify’ someone’s bedspread or floor, you just pop them in the bag and be done with it. After some experimentation (and good, lord, yes, we moved, again!) we have a different washer and dryer and I’m trying to keep the solids and stripes in separate loads because they dry at different times, and of course the washing routine is just a touch different with different machines. I wonder if my husband realizes that eventually the mediums won’t fit and we’ll have to stock up on a few more one sizes or get large ‘solids’? Hmm.. We do love them for the convenience, and they are cute, we can slap a tshirt on her and take her to church and she’s just adorable. She was baptised that way, no socks, no frilly hose or shoes, just her nice soft cloth diaper underneath her Easter dress. My husband rarely wants to even think about disposables, we did use them during the move, and he hated every second of it. It was convenient at the time because nothing was sorted out yet (and we still have boxes everywhere) but we’re in a good routine again now and I’m not sure I could be any happier about our decision. Wait, I know, a cheery/cherry red and a dark purple, that would be fine on a boy or a girl, that would make me ecstatic!
