Am I even qualified to write a post about this yet? Most definitely not. But I'm pretty proud of myself. And I'm going to write one anyway. Cause I want to.
And before I go any further, I have to be honest with myself and all of you, probably the 2 or 3 people who will ever read this, about my intentions. Before our latest baby was born in June, my husband and I talked about cloth diapering. Mostly for money.
Because I'm a diaper snob. (Blame it on working in a hospital where we are spoiled by Pamper Swaddlers for all our newborns.) I compare all the other kinds of disposables I've tried to them. And they just don't measure up. Maybe in stupid petty ways that I wish didn't matter to me, but they do.
So, I was particular about buying an expensive kind of diaper. And I was about to have 3 in diapers. (My oldest boy potty trained a few months before our youngest was born. Although he still uses a diaper at night.) And I've had 2 kids in diapers for the last 2 years solid. Pampers are like $25/box and I go through about 1.5 boxes/week between all the diapered dudes around here. You can do the math if you want, because I'm too tired. And I'm staying up past my bedtime to write this post.......I'll just say that I've spent a lot of money. Too much.
And I'm not crazy about what's in a disposable diaper. I mean chemicals and stuff. I mean I'm not crazy about it, but I do still worry about what I put into/onto my kids. Wait......I said that wrong.....I probably am crazy about it. I do worry and obsess before I'll decide if something's right for our family. But at the end of the day, I'm not extreme about it. We're not as "natural" or "clean" as I'd like to be. But we're getting there.
Anyway, the point. Our baby was born, and we were too busy trying to breathe in our little newborn while we could, that we just didn't really talk about it.
And then there was the time we were at Meijer and I picked up a BumGenius diaper......$20 for one diaper?! I was looking for cheaper, and that certainly didn't seem cheaper.
But, I couldn't let it go. I felt like I had to try it. Once I start thinking about something, I can't make myself stop! Stupid girl brain. I mean, I knew we had to at least try it. For my sake. So that I could get over those stupid cloth diapers!
And before we decided to dive right in, I searched the internet (you know, the best place to get reliable information!) and read. A LOT. Honestly, it kind of grossed me out to think about washing poopy (why doesn't spell check know that word?! That is a word, right?) diapers in our washing machine. I mean, how clean can they get?! And then I watched a youtube video of some lady using a diaper sprayer. It looked like that thing blasted the crap out of the diaper (literally...sorry bad joke) so that just some big old poop streaks were left. I mean, I wash those out of my toddlers laundry all the time!
So, that was it. I was doing it. I tried to keep our expenses under $300. And then we made a pact that we'd stick with it until we'd at least broke even with all the money we put in. Which ended up being 3 months minimum once I did all the math. Like even if we hated it and only did it for 3 months, we won't have spent any more money than we would have if we were buying Pampers.
So, here we are.
And we're doing it!
We've still used a disposable from time to time, about every other day. (Yes, because I am totally counting. Although I have absolutely no idea why.)
Ok. So, what's worked for us??
Right now, our "stash" consists of 6 BumGenius Elementals, 6 BumGenius Freetimes, 4 Blueberry's. (Blueberry's are our "nighttime" diapers, because they just feel more comfy and seem more absorbent than our elementals.)
We use a diaper sprayer on the poopy diapers (even though I've read you don't need to if your baby is exclusively breastfeed). It just feels cleaner to me.
We spray the "dirty" ones and toss them in one of our PlanetWise wet bags. And for the wet only diapers, we just toss them directly in the bag. We have 2 PlanetWise wet bags. One large wet bag and one medium wet/dry bag. Honestly, I think we could use another large one. My original line of thinking was to use the medium one when we went out to store our clean and dirties. But right now, we only have enough diapers that we have to wash every day. So one of our wet bags is always in the wash/drying while the other is in use. And we just take a plastic grocery bag with us to use while we are out. Someday, like in 3 months, when I know we're not spending more money than we are saving, I'll order another bag. And probably a few more diapers too. Just so that we don't have to wash every night before we go to bed.
For washing: I'm using BumGenius laundry detergent. Because, honestly, that's the most overwhelming part to me. If you search how to wash cloth diapers, there's like a million different people with different things to say. And I felt petrified to ruin my expensive diapers. So, I figured I'd just go with the detergent made by the people who made my diapers.......seems simple enough. And I just didn't think twice about this. Like I said, if you try to read reviews, you'll kill yourself getting conflicting reviews and what works for one family/situation doesn't work for another. I do a rinse and spin cycle with cold water on a large load water level. Then 1.5 scoops of detergent (per directions) and wash in hot water (large load again) with an extra cold rinse. I lay out to dry.
P.S. I also learned that when you're prepping your diapers for first time use, your suppose to wash the organic cotton ones about 5-7 times before they're absorbent enough to use on your baby. Supposedly they reach max absorbency at 10 washes. This I had read about. What I didn't know: apparently, the first couple of times you wash organic/natural fibered diapers, you shouldn't wash them with your synthetic diapers (read: my BumGenius Freetimes....aka almost half of my stash!) But if you're like me and didn't know about that little tidbit and throw all your diapers in the wash together, because you're so excited to try them on your cute little man, only to read online later that you shouldn't have done that.....well, I'm here today to tell you that, for me, it's turned out ok. I'm not saying your shouldn't prep them the way they're supposed to be. I'm just saying, if you're looking for reassurance that you didn't just destroy your new diapers, I didn't have any problems. So you can back down from your ledge....... :)
Cost: I bought our first 4 diapers at BuyBuy Baby and used a $10 off coupon. So total, those cost us about $70, plus tax.
I ordered 6 Elementals online from CottonBabies website. Using a deal where I could buy 4, get 2 free. That ended up just under $100-they offered free shipping too! They only had limited colors included in this deal, so I got the only 2 "boy safe" colors they had-but who the heck cares what color they are!
I found the best price for our BumGenius detergent and sprayer at Amazon. So, I ordered 2 more Freetimes, a Blueberry, and some wet bags to my cart while I was at it-I think that total was like $110-$120??
After using the Blueberry diaper, it actually seemed to be the most comfortable fit of all the diapers on him, so I ordered our 3 other Blueberry's from Blueberry's website, where I was able to use a $10 off first time order coupon directly from their website-so those were like $65 roughly.
I should've done a better job keeping track. But I think we blew our original budget by about $50--our total came in somewhere around $350. So, we'll just have to diaper 3.5 months to break even. No biggie!
So far, we've had a few leaks. Example: when little man woke for one of his night feeds this morning, I found him wet. I narrowed that problem down pretty quick though: I didn't have the insert tucked all the way into the diaper-it was slightly sticking out of the diaper in the back......so, I guess that's operator error. Which is honestly what most of our leaks have been from--like not tightening his diaper enough. Or not making sure that the Freetimes sewn in inserts are positioned correctly and inside the leg gussets. The only time when I think the leaks have been genuine leaks is when he nurses on his side, and wets, it's like before it has a chance to soak into the diaper, some of it runs out the top of the diaper of the side he's laying on. But our Blueberry's have held up overnight, and are heavy and soaked in the morning!
They are way bulkier than disposables. Like I can imagine it'll mean he'll be moving up pants sizes quicker than he would be if her were in disposables.
And I was initially worried about the red marks at the back on the diaper on his bum at first. From the back elastic. But I've come to realize it doesn't seem to bother him and I don't think it's uncomfortable. And now that I'm looking for it, I notice that my 3 year old often has these kind of marks from his underwear at the end of the day.
I don't think I've found a perfect diaper yet. I mean, there's things I like/dislike about all of our diapers.
Our Elementals are trimmer, big plus. They are also organic-like! But that also means they're not stay-dry. As in baby boy can feel the wetness against him. There's also nothing covering the PUL of the diaper, so at the sides where the sewn in inserts are shorter, the PUL touches his skin. He's not sensitive to it, but it doesn't seem like it's particularly soft or comfortable to me to have that against your bare bottom. The inserts are also longer than the diaper, especially when set to medium rise. Which means they fold/lay weird. Like with a wrinkle or fold.
Our Freetimes seem like the bulkiest diapers out of the 3. And the sewn in inserts are just weird. I like the idea of being able to fold where needed to add extra absorbency in the front for my boy, but like I said, it's a lot to try to keep laid perfectly and inside the diaper. These are also the hardest to spray out. They flop open in opposite directions....I inevitably end up making the biggest messes trying to spray these out.
The Blueberrys seem to fit him the best. I also like that the elastic don't leave any marks on him.....even in the back. They seem to absorb a lot too. Other than the one user error issue, we haven't had a leak in these even on the rare occasion that he's slept all night. I'm not crazy the fact that they're a pocket diaper and breast milk poop can soak through the liner and down to your insert. But in order to spray your insert out, you need to take it out of the diaper first. Thankfully, (knock on wood) he doesn't usually poop at night. Otherwise, that would mean holding a soaking wet with urine insert over the toilet to spray it out. Not my idea of a good time.
So, there you have it! Like almost anything in life: that first plunge is the hardest. I'm not hardcore in love with them yet, but I kind of like, like them.
