Diapering Advice for New Moms

Alrighty!  We have made it to almost 9 months of cloth diapering, which I guess makes me a  slight expert.  I was waiting for pictures to be developed at Walgreens and the cashier noticed Colby was wearing cloth and struck up a converstation with me about diapering.  She was happy to finally meet someone personally who uses cloth instead of just hearing about it on blogs.   Today one of my friends emailed me for advice on which type of cloth to use and the ins and out of cloth so I thought I would share my advice with all.  Sorry to bore you if you have no desire to use cloth diapers, don't have a baby, or just think it is plain gross.

DIAPERS:   Flannel diapers are quite easy and cheap to make.  I've made some that are just old t-shirts with towel inside.  they sound really back roads-but they work great and are pretty soft.  We're still on the cloth diaper train right now and he's been on solid foods for almost 3 months and it isn't too bad and it is actually a bit easier since they don't go all over the place like when he was just on milk-and he only goes like every 3-4 days so solids aren't bad at all and I just have a rubber spatula I keep in the bathroom in a cool whip container to scrape them off and then I use a Lysol wipe to clean the scraper.

 There are several routes you can go with cloth diapers and we are just doing flannel homemade ones with covers.  I use thirsties covers which you can order online at target or amazon.  I did buy two bumgenius diapers-these you stuff them and they snap up to different settings so you don't have to buy different sizes.  These are alright and the fleece liner wicks the moisture away better than flannel so you can leave them in wet diapers longer.  One of the mom gals I know uses softbums-they are a Minnesota based company and she apparently only uses 4 a day for her girl-they look pretty nice here's the website:  http://www.softbums.com/  If you want to go the expensive diaper route you will probably need 12-18 ish at 20 dollars a piece.  The cheap route is the diaper covers are 12 dollars a piece and the flannel diapers or they can be made out of t-shirts and towels which I have done as well-are practically free. 

24-30 Flannel Diapers or so (Colby is still a super pee-er so we have to change a lot of diapers)
4-5 small/medium diaper covers
4-5 Large ones
Diaper pail=cat litter bucket with lid-it keeps the stink in and it fits about all his diapers before I need to wash
Pins-we did pins at the beginning but now we just set them in the cover and velcro it up-seems to work well-so I wouldn't even bother with these
Wipes-you can use regular ones but I've done some flannel or baby wash clothes too-just in a tupperware with water and or baby wash and some baby oil-you can find lots of recipes online

Next time around I'm going to buy some flat birdseye or gauze ones from Target because they are super soft for the newborn butt and circumcision. 

Laundry is easy too-sometimes I do a soak in cold then a cycle in hot with extra spin and half the detergent-or I just run a cold cycle with detergent then run a full cycle in cold to get out all the suds.  Sometimes I throw in some vinegar in the wash too for an extra boost. 

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