on cloth diapering: an early review

ED: this was written when Charley was itty-bitty. Truly though, our feelings on cloth have not changed much. and since the writing he hasn't used any more disposables!!

Charley doesn’t like disposables

What I wish I knew before I started cloth diapering

When we found out we were pregnant, it was an easy decision to make – we knew we wanted to cloth. Inundated with all the kinds of diapers available, service or no service, we were overwhelmed with the decisions of how to cloth. With many hours spent reading books, blogs, and talking to friends, we finally made the decision to go with Best Bottoms. The easy “how” we made that decision was to say that we liked that they were local (they are Wisconsin-based too!), adjustable sizing, and a few good friends used them and raved (the power of word of mouth!). So we made the trip to Madison from Milwaukee Memorial Day weekend to purchase our starter set of Best Bottoms. And not a day too soon, as Charley made his appearance the next week, two weeks prior to his due date!

 

We chose not to cloth in the hospital. Charley is our first baby and we knew we would be overwhelmed at the large number of decisions we would be making right away as well as the amount of “stuff” we needed to care for our lovebug. I worried that we would have a hard time keeping track of all the supplies in the hospital for our couple day stay. So into disposables it was. And it went fine. But as soon as we made it home, Charley was plopped into a cloth. He looked adorable and outrageous. The adjustable diaper covered about 2/3 of his petite torso. But he was happy and so were we. And the system amazingly worked! He was above 7 lbs. upon discharge but just barely. But still we had no leaks with the diaper on the slimmest setting. They were magnificent.

When we went to the pediatrician’s office for his first check-in and check-up, she noted some surprise that he was in cloth this early. Then she mentioned that we needed to watch his umbilical cord to make sure it dried out completely. Usually when in disposables, caregivers are able to fold over the top of the diaper to leave the cord open to air, to dry and fall off. However, in the Best Bottoms we were unable to do this. She said we may want to use disposables until the cord completely falls off. We persisted for a few more days with the Best Bottoms, but our collective worry got the best of us. He’s now in disposables.

We’ve since found out there are other options for newborns – including newborn covers with a cord dip. But given the state of chaos our lives are currently in due the shifting of the center of our universe, we went with the simpler option: disposables. All in all, I would say Charley doesn’t like them. For more than the majority of his diaper changes since we switched back, he has waited to pee and poop until the diaper was off of his body. It’s made for some interesting diaper changes in the middle of the night! We’ve also noticed he is getting a little bit of irritation in his diaper area, which was one of the major reasons we were opting to go with cloth. Ah well, breaks my heart a bit, but I keep telling myself it is temporary.

If we had known we might have better prepared and bought a few newborn covers. Now we are just waiting for the cord to fall off, with baited breath, so we can return to using our cloth diapers. We are only 1 week into life with Charley and each day we’ve learned new things. I’m sure there will be much more to learn, but in the meantime, the adventure rides on – we look forward every day to seeing where it takes us.