Cloth Diaper So Far

The sewing room is in upheaval at present. The very large cupboard/wardrobe thingie I have long used to store my fabric is now needed elsewhere in the house so I have now have no where to put my material. It is all neatly folded and stacked (and I rediscovered some pretty amazing fabric I forgot I had) but it's going to be impossible to sew until I have figured out where to put it all. I am looking into wall-mounted storage right now and hopefully I can find something out that won't be too time consuming or too expensive. In the meantime, we can talk about diapers.

So, how is cloth diapering going? A few of you have asked. Perhaps some have wondered, not wishing to verbalize an interest in diapers, which are at best utilitarian and at worst gross and unconversational.

It is going! Rather well, I would say, but honestly it has become so routine I rarely think about it anymore. The few times I have used disposables I have had to pause and pick the disposable diaper out of the wet pail I threw it in by habit. I like cloth diapers. I don't feel all hippie and eco-friendly or anything like that, but they just make so much more sense to me than disposables. It's like using paper plates and plastic silverware all the time versus washing your dishes in between uses. It makes more sense to just wash the dishes.

The linen and hemp cloth diapers I made before Anne was born are still going strong, now that she is past 16 weeks. I had planned for the diapers to hopefully last her til 8 weeks so they are exceeding my expectations! Besides being a bit rumply they are as good as new and still fit her although I think that after Christmas it will be time to make up a new, larger batch.

The one thing that did not work out so well were the wool soakers. In the beginning, I carefully pinned the linen diaper around Anne's tiny little waist and the wool soaker just would *not* contain all the diaper. The soaker was either too small or the diaper too large or both but it is certain they did not work together the way I had hoped. Every time I changed her she was wet all the way through - the wetness escaping from the diaper that peeked out of the legholes and around the waist. It was disheartening.

I made some shaped diapers from wool flannel. They worked much better than the felted-sweater soakers but dampness still escaped from around the legs. I tried to figure out how to make a leg gusset to keep the wet out but it was very frustrating to me. Working on so small a scale is always challenging and I did not feel up to the challenge!

A Very Small and Very New Anne in her shaped wool cover -she was so tiny! Was this really only a few months ago??

My friend Jenny, who owns the business Gabi Sunshine, sent me two PUL diaper covers that she had made as a baby gift. I tried them! And guess, what? They worked brilliantly! I was in love. Plus the covers were just *so* cute!

Newborn Anne in her itsy bitsy cover from Jenny - look at those skinny legs!

For the next month or so I used the PUL covers and the shaped wool covers but I realized more and more the advantages that the PUL covers had over the wool ones. So when Anne received some designated funds for "diapers covers" at her baby shower, I knew what I what kind of diaper covers I was going to get!

Skinny legs no more. Miss Chunky Thighs fills out her new diaper covers quite nicely. 

Jenny made me 6 more covers for Anne and that is what we have been exclusively using the last month or so. I cannot say how happy I am with this arrangement. Now that Anne is almost 4 months old she is more predictable in her habits of excrement and I just simply fold the diaper and lay it in the cover and then put it on just like a disposable would be put on, except of course, the covers snap closed.

Jenny's workmanship is just beautiful and the covers will last us a long time. I'm so relieved to not have to worry about making covers myself. Give me a detailed historical frock coat to make any day, but never diaper covers!!! :P

So, that is, in a nutshell, our experience with cloth diapering so far. Those rare times when I do not have any clean pre fold diapers on hand I use those gauzy flat diapers and two of them folded together into a rectangle work just as well as the prefolds.

I will never go back to disposables.

Love,
Sarah

The Necessary Nappy

And so it came to pass that Sarah, who had borne David three sons, found herself again with child. Being weary of the country she had sojourned in the past six years, a land flowing with urine and feces known as The Disposable Diaper, she lifted up her voice and cried unto her husband,

"My lord, the day draweth nigh for me to deliver thy child. I beg of thee to give unto thy maidservant a goodly sum, with which I may purchase goods of linen and woolen cloth to wrap the bum of the child that I will bear unto thee. The customs of the people of this land are loath to me and the thing they call The Disposable Diaper hast irritated the bums of thy sons and would you have it irritate the bum of thy daughter also?"

And her husband pitied the woman and said unto her;

"Let not thy countenance fall, woman, for the request you have asked of me has found favor in my sight and I give unto thee this sum to purchase cloths of linen and wool. Go with a cheerful heart and do this thing which you have asked. Only do not burden thy husband with intricate sayings of the construction and designs of these garments you will make, for such words burn in my ears and befuddle my mind and is like the talk of foolish men unto me for I understand it not."


And so Sarah went and took the sum and purchased the cloths of linen and wool and made diapers for her child.

Okay, seriously, I am *completely* sick of disposable diapers! I have no idea why I did not try using cloth diapers with the boys but I think it is because I was so young, and everyone I had ever known used disposable diapers. My mom had hinted in the past of a Dark and Terrible experience she had once had using cloth diapers on me and I had become terrified of the dim unknown world of cloth diapering. I envisioned a pee soaked mass of fabric and baby every time I changed a diaper.

One by one the boys came in quick succession. I didn't really have time or the resources on hand to look into cloth diapering more. We were on a tight budget and the few cloth diapering sites I did look up boasted what seemed to me to be very high prices - definitely out of our price range since we could not afford all that up front. But after Malachi, we had a three year break. In that time, I had educated myself. And so when I found out I was pregnant last winter I knew for sure I would try cloth diapering this time.

It took me forever, however, to decide on what style of diaper and cover and what materials to use. There is so much information out there it is literally overwhelming! I came to rely most heavily on the personal experiences and recommendations of friends who have used or are currently using cloth diapers and balanced that against my personal preference for simplicity and historic significance.

In the end, I decided to make prefold diapers and use wool covers. I decided to use linen for the prefolds since in my experience, linen is highly absorbant and incredibly soft once it is washed enough. I liked the idea of wool covers since wool is my go-to "miracle fabric" and has natural properties that make it exactly suited to cover a diaper. And wool and linen happen to be two of my favorite fabrics, ever!

I used the prefold diaper sewing instructions from this site: DIY Prefold Daiapers and made them with linen from Fabric-store.com. For the soaker pad, I ended up going with hemp fleece (which is really a blend of hemp and organic cotton) and used only 4 layers of fleece instead of the 6 layers called for in the pattern.

For the soakers, I used the sewing pattern and instructions here: Katrina's Quick Sew Soaker Pattern. I purchased a gorgeous 100% lambswool sweater from the thrift store and washed it several times in hot water to shrink it up a bit. I also dyed it with a packet of green dye to get a more deep blue-green color instead of the light blue and gray it originally was (it was a mans sweater). The finished soakers are not girly at all, but they are nicely gender neutral which is fine with me since I really do hope to have one or two more babies before I am done for good. (who wants to be done with having darling sweet little babies at age 26? Not me!) I really loved this soaker pattern. It was so quick and easy to make. The only part I didn't like was sewing the tiny leg cuffs into the leg openings but beyond that, a piece of cake!

In the end, the linen diapers ended up costing me around $3.50 each to make. The soakers, since I was able to get four of them from the one sweater, cost about 50 cents apiece. Not bad! I detest math but I did some calculations and assuming 10 diaper changes per day and use of these diapers and soakers for approximately 8 weeks, it is actually much less expensive to use the cloth diapers instead of the cheapest-of-the-cheap Wal-Mart Parent's Choice brand of disposables (which is what we mainly used for the boys). I presented my findings to my husband and I think he was happy. He is not at all sure about using cloth diapers but he tolerates the idea and indulges me, which is all I ask. I guess we'll see how these work once Anne gets here.

Love,
Sarah