Cloth Diapers Explained

When I was pregnant, I knew I wanted to try to use cloth diapers for my little one.  The obvious choice for the environment, cloth diapers are SO much easier than I thought they would be - the difficult part was choosing which kind to buy.  Nothing I found online was any real help; there were so many choices.  I ended up kind of trying it all, and after diapering my daughter in cloth for over 10 months this is the scoop:

Once wet, all cloth diapers besides pocket diapers stay wet on your baby's skin.  If you don't want to be changing her diaper every 20 minutes, I'd suggest pocket diapers.  (I do still use pre-folds and fitted diapers with covers at home, when I don't do laundry and run out of the 15 pocket diapers we have).  Pocket diapers keep Baby dry by sucking all the moisture into the inserts, while the fleece lining stays dry against her skin.  They seemed gross to me at first, since you have to remove the inserts - which are full of pee - before tossing into the bin.  You just grab the end of the inserts, though, which is rarely wet, and even when it is, really no big deal.

A sprayer is key.  This contraption hooks onto your toilet, and you use it to spray off the messy poops.  First remove the inserts and toss them in a bin next to your toilet, then spray the poop off of the cover and toss that in the bin as well. (Get one or two wet bags to toss your diapers in when out and about).  Then, when you do laundry, dump the pail in, wash on hot with gentle detergent (I like caldrea in the blue sage or the neroli sea salt), and dry in the dryer or on the line.  

Part of me wishes someone told me to wait until my baby wasn't pooping 12 times a day before I started using cloth.  For anyone who feels cloth diapering might be too much work, or who has a lot (like more kids!) on her hands, I'd say wait to use cloth until your baby gets on the 1-2 poop a day program.  The pee diapers are SO easy, and spraying one or two poop diapers out a day is no biggie.  Once Baby starts eating solid food (at about 6 months) the poops become solid, so you easily shake them into the toilet nine times out of ten.

I like all the pocket diapers I've tried (bum genious 3.0, fuzzibunz, happy heinys), but I do think the fuzzibunz are the best.  If I could trade in all the diapers I have for what I really want right now, I'd have 18 hemp inserts (absorb so much, and are WAY less bulky) and 18 one size fuzzibunz diapers.  You'll need at least a dozen (18 would be ideal), but to be safe you can always just order a couple to try out and get more later on.  Each fuzzibunz diaper comes with a cotton microfiber insert, which works great, but is bulkier than the hemp.  I'd suggest sticking a hemp liner in each diaper underneath the cotton one if your little sweetie is a heavy wetter (like mine!)

Choosing to use cloth diapers is kind of like using a re-fillable water bottle instead of buying hundreds of the plastic, or bringing your own bags to the grocery store.  All of which I'm a huge advocate for.  If you want to take it one step further (I didn't do this, but my lovely friend Amrita told me about it!) you can buy your diapers used off of diaperswappers.com.  Even using them part time helps our planet so much!