Transitioning from Disposable to Cloth Diapers

When I heard that cloth diapering was still a thing in our modern society, my first thoughts were ‘how old-school’ and ‘ew, poop!’. BUT now that it’s been over a month since we transitioned from disposable to cloth diapers, my viewpoint has certainly changed! After using modern cloth diapers for the last month, I have some qualms, some happy advantages, and my husband and I both learnt some tricks along the way. Let me tell you all about our cloth diaper adventures!

 

During the cloth diaper workshop at the Baby Is Coming event this past fall, many misconceptions were corrected, and I felt encouraged to give it a try once my little girl arrived. As with all life-altering changes, the first few weeks went by in a flash so we were just using disposables for a little while until were were able to find somewhat of a routine. Once we established a bit of predictability, we turned to cloth diapering. We were gifted a handful of diaper options to try out by my mother in law: fitted with cover, cover with cloth liner, all-in-one, and prefolds. I’ll touch base on this later, but having a support system is vital to the cloth diaper adventure. I am glad we’ve been able to educate ours so far. Anyway, we had the opportunity to try out all of those different kinds, and our favourite BY FAR are the fitted flannelette diapers with the waterproof covers. Velco (hook and loop) are our preference, but the snaps work just great too.

 

The way that we have decided to do things is to stick to cloth during the day while we are home, because it seems baby pees every hour and we go through more than a dozen diapers per day. This means that by opting for cloth, not only are we saving money by the hour, but we are also contributing to saving the environment. However, the whole ‘fussing every hour’ thing gets really frustrating when you’re trying to sleep at night, so we have opted to keep using disposables at night to help us all get some rest. That combined with swaddling has allowed for us to get 5-8 hour stretches, and that’s a huge win in my books. We also have our diaper bag stocked with disposables for ease while we are out and about, and not having to carry around poopy messes (we aren’t ready for that yet). This means we go through two disposable diapers a night, and maybe a couple for each long outing–making it easy to buy one big box in baby’s current size and having it last the entire time (roughly 60-80 diapers for the month) before needing to buy more or upping the size. So far this has worked for newborn, size 1, and going through size 2 at the anticipated rate. Eventually we’d like to incorporate disposable into our routine when leaving the house, but for now we have found something that works for us. BUT we do keep the covers on while travelling as an extra precaution against poopslosions in the car seat!

 

We haven’t encountered any problems yet, but having a supportive family and caregivers makes all the difference! It’s hard enough to balance between staying home all day, every day and sticking to cloth (sometimes requires daily washes if your stash is small like ours)–there is no need to complicate things with needing to fight for others to fulfill your wishes. Several styles are really no different than disposable, so instead of the trash you throw them in the laundry bag. Showing the simplicity of the system goes a long way towards acceptance. Even my little brother was surprised at the ease in comparison to ‘regular diapers’.

 

If you have any questions, or want product recommendations based on my experience, feel free to leave a comment below.

 

Cheers!