A Fresh Start

Little Peachy's diaper rash had cleared up over the weekend so it was back to cloth diapers yesterday. Back to cloth diapers and back to the diaper rash. At least it was easy to determine what is giving her the rash. Only one day of cloth and the red, bumpy rash was back all over her little bottom. She is in disposables, again, while the rash clears up, again.

I decided that the cloth diapers must be harboring bacteria. I washed them all today and have them hanging out on a drying rack in the backyard. Yes, I am being a rebel and breaking our neighborhood covenants to save my daughter's sore bottom. Got a problem with that?!!

I am hoping this does the trick. I would hate to have to go to disposables full time. I put a lot of work into the cloth diapers and have spent some money on the process as well. Another reason that I don't like disposable is that she is always leaking out of them. I would much rather have poop on the cloth diapers than all over her clothes, my clothes, and whatever she happens to be on at the time.

Green Baby

(Shlebs, I picked the monkey ones for you!!)

We have officially started cloth diapers in our house. (Well, somewhat officially. We use them during the day when we are at home. Maybe someday I will be brave enough to use them at night and when we are gone for an extended period, but for now I am happy being partially green.)

I washed them for the first time today and all went well. There were a few that needed minor repair work due to fraying, but I should have that taken care of after the first few washes.

I have to confess that the title of this post is a bit misleading. We are not doing cloth to necessarily be green, although it is an added benefit. To be honest, I cannot really tell you exactly why I decided to take on the whole cloth diaper project. It was something that I knew I could do and I knew it would save us money. I guess that is as good of reason as any.

See how happy our green baby is to be in cloth diapers?

Create-Your-Own: Cloth Diapers

As promised, here is some more information about the cloth diapers that I have been sewing. I know that you have all been waiting with baited breath.

Cloth diapering our babe has been something that I have been considering since I found out that I was pregnant. Seeing that I will be a stay-at-home mom, it is feasible for us. I have my green moments here and there, but that is definitely not the driving force behind this train of thought. While it will be nice to save money on diapering, that was not the impotace either. It is just something that I wanted to try. And so, I am. Since I am not 100% committed to the idea, I didn't want to invest too much initially. I figure after we try it on for size and decide that it is for us, then we can take the plunge and buy some of the "real" cloth diapers sold out there. If you come from the old school method of cloth diapering, you should really take a look at what is available today. Gone are the days of folding a yard of fabric to keep your babe dry. Cloth diapers come in many shapes and sizes these days. It is a bit overwhelming when you first start looking into it.

For now, I am going with sewing my own cloth diapers. I started with a google search and found oodles of information on how to sew a cloth diaper, what fabric to use to sew a cloth diaper, different styles of cloth diapers, and patterns for cloth diapers. One day I was chatting with one of my preschool parents who was also expecting. Low and behold she was also planning on sewing her own cloth diapers. She brought in some of the ones she had made up and gave me some of the patterns that she had printed off the Internet. She even came to my house to help me get started after I confessed to her that I was having a hard time biting the bullet. And that is all that I needed to be off and running. Here is the stash that I have created so far.

Most of these are made with the Wee Weka pattern. A few are from another source that I will not name here as I paid for what I thought was going to be a book and turned out to be some pdf pages. Not so happy about that one. And some are Rita's Rump Covers. (Gotta love the names out there.)

Here is a close up of the diaper all folded as it would be on a baby. (Sorry, no cute baby to model it yet.)

Here it is opened.

These are called pocket diapers (or nappies if you are from the UK, which must have lots of cloth diaperers because many sites refer to them as nappies.) That means that there is a pocket that you insert a liner or soaker into. The liners have created so far are just cheap wash cloths folded over three times and stitched together.

I plan on making some more out of the flannel scraps that I have left over from the diapers.

These are not covered diapers or all-in-ones, so I had to figure out what I was going to use for the covers. Some site recommend a fabric called PLU (I can't remember what this is short for, but in essence it is a water-proof fabric.) However, this fabric is not cheap and not sold in regular fabric stores. Fleece and wool are also recommended, but they would simply be water resistant, not water proof. So, I ended up ordering good, old fashioned diaper covers like our moms used. I found some new ones on Ebay for a reasonable price. (I ordered too many, actually, so if you are in need of some 0-3 month diaper covers, let me know.)

When we registered this weekend we registered for a stainless steel garbage can with a foot operated lid to be our diaper pail. I need to find or make a wet bag to go inside. Then when I am ready to wash the diapers, I will just take the wet bag out and into the wash with it all.

I didn't make any newborn sized diapers. I figure that they are only that size for a little bit of time and it wouldn't be worth it to sew enough diapers for each day to make it worth the time and effort. So in the beginning we will use disposables, but once we start with the cloth I will let you know how it is going.