Cloth Diapers

This is a post about cloth diapers according to the way I use them. Erin asked me to share my system and here it goes.

Erin is the one who turned me onto cloth diapers. I never used them with my girls. I wish I had researched them and used them with all of my children. I love them that much. I use prefold cloth diapers with the velcro cotton blend wraps by Diaperaps. I bought the birth to potty training package. The only problem I had with this was that Jacob was 10lbs at birth and wouldn't fit the newborn sized wraps. No big deal. I also had trouble folding the diapers low enough to let his umbilical dry fully. So we used disposables (complements of the hospital) until that fell off.

I was very excited when the box of diapers came in the mail. I washed and dryed the diapers (according to the directions) about three times to fluff them and get them thick. When we started using them on Jacob, we had a problem with poop from time to time. He would poop with such force that he would just blow it out of his diaper. He did this with disposables as well. We figured out that we just had to rinse the wraps and reuse them until it was time to wash.
Once Jacob's poop became more solid we had no problem with blowouts. We use two wraps a day with our system. We typically lay one diaper in the wrap on the changing table, folded and ready to go for the next change while one is on him. We use the wraps until they yellow from his urine (usually when he wears them all night).

I use our old diaper genie to hold the diapers until they are ready to wash. I didn't really want to bother buying a new diaper pail. It works for us. When it is full, we tie it off and leave the bag of diapers waiting to be laundered. We have no problem with smell from this (until you open the bags to put them into the washer). We also do not use a sprayer like Erin uses. Most of the time Jacob's poop just flips off the diaper into the toilet. If it doesn't just flip into the toilet, I rinse the diaper in the tub. I change him and then take the diaper over to the bathroom to take care of the poop.

Right now, Jacob is in the medium size (getting ready for the large size) of the wraps. Doubling up for night time works well. We use the smaller-sized diapers folded in the larger-size for the doubling. I have 8 medium wraps and 4 dozen diapers. I wash the diapers and wraps about every 4 days. I just through them all into the washer, run a cold rinse cycle, wash them with hot water with a small amount of detergent and a small amount of liquid oxyclean, and run a second cold rince cycle. I throw the diapers into the dryer and hang the wraps. By the time the diapers are finished in the dryer, the wraps are dry (usually).

I hope this helps anyone out there interested in using cloth diapers. I also hope that I covered everything. Let me know if you have any questions.

And, for those of you who don't use diapers anymore, here is a little video of the kids being silly this weekend. It was funny to watch them all play the same thing together.