Diaper Duty Part I

As many of you know, we are going to use cloth diapers to collect Spike's lower end excretions. I can see your eyes rolling now and hear your thoughts about how we are never going to last. Well, for all of you old-timers who used cloth (or had no choice), things are very different these days. Take a few minutes to peruse www.kellyscloset.com to see how many options are out there!

Over the past 7 months, we (read: I) have done many many hours of research on several different sites, read hundreds of reviews, talked to many of my cloth-diaper-mom friends, and used different cloth diaper systems while babysitting. After all of this study, we decided on Pocket Diapers. These diapers have a colorful waterproof "PUL" layer on the outside and fleece on the inside forming a pocket in between. The pocket is stuffed with a removable super-absorbent insert which pulls the moisture away from the baby's bottom, through the fleece, and in theory leaves the baby dry and comfy. They fasten in the front with velcro or snaps, very much like disposable Huggies or Pampers. When changing the baby, the insert is removed and the diaper and insert are tossed in the diaper pail to be washed. Here are a few pictures of what I am talking about. We are using two main kinds of pocket diapers: Fuzzi Bunz and BumGenius! The major difference between the two is that Fuzzi Bunz use snaps and BumGenius! use velcro.

Fuzzi Bunz BumGenius!

Now, as you can see, these diapers are quite big for a newborn. However, they are both OneSize diapers meaning they adjust to fit all size babies from newborn to potty training. Here are the same diapers sized for an infant. The elastic in the legs and waist of the FuzziBunz shortens with button holes and the front of the BumGenius! snaps up to make a smaller diaper.

Fuzzi Bunz Infant Size BumGenius! Infant Size

Then both diapers are stuffed with an appropriate size insert (small in this case) and the diaper is ready to be used!

If one is washing their own diapers, they must have a limited supply (unlike disposables). However, TOO limited a supply means laundry every day, which we all know is not going to happen in this household. So I have compromised with what is probably way too many diapers, but we shall see. I have 20 One Size BumGenius!, 5 One Size Happy Heinys, 5 One Size Fuzzi Bunz, 9 size small Fuzzi Bunz (should fit Spike better as an infant), and one size medium BumGenius! (it was free).

Here's the works!

More to come! Part II: Washing