Cloth Diapers

Dallascw, I thought I would start a new thread on cloth diapering... questions, tips etc. ect.

To answer your quesiton, we use BumGenius 3.0 and after using various other brands, I like Bum Genius - just because they are one size fits all pocker diapers and are soft and trim fitted. With liner do you mean inserts inside the pocket? Yes, I always use them and because Riya is a heavy wetter, I use two of them. Depending on what kind of a wetter your baby is, I would say every hour to two hours. The good thing is, although they wick moisture away from the baby's skin, the baby still feels some wetness so they don't like it (which I believe, is a good way to introducing them to potty training).

We exclusively CD Riya at home, but use 'sposies when we are out and about. Cloth diapers are a little pricey to begin with but save a ton of money in the long run and they are as good as 'sposies when it comes to being leakproof, and not to forget they are good on baby's skin and the environment.

 

Yes, I do wish these kind of diapers were available in India. It will make life so much easier. I was wondering... how do moms manage with cloth diapers while traveling or even at home? Do lot of moms in India now use disposables? Are they cheap?

 

So do you use CD at night as well? How many time you need to change liners at night?
Yes, we use only CD at night, stuffed with two inserts and don't change it until morning.

2.)How many diapers do we need to start with?
I would say buy 3 to 4 diapers to begin with and see how you like them. We have a dozen right now and I wash them everyday, but since they are expensive to begin with, I started with 6 first and really liked them, so I bought more.

3.)How do you wash cloth diapers ?
Pocket diapers that we use come in two layers, the inner fleece layer that wicks moisture and the outer PUL cover that helps with keeping the diaper from leaking, so it's really important that no amount of detergent residue remains on the diapers. To remove residues, I "strip' the diapers once a month (which I have explained below)

As for everyday washing, I put all her wet diapers in the diaper champ that we keep in the garage. And for poopy diapers, we have a diaper pail, basically a bucket with a hole in the bottom and we spray the poopy out into the toilet (we have a sprayer attached to the toilet, too,) DH and FIL fixed all that before Riya was born as we had already decided we wanted to cloth diaper Riya. Anyway, after I spray out the poppy I put it in the diaper pail. At the end of the day, I take out the inserts and load everything in the washer with a TIIIINY amount of detergent and wash it warm or hot with an extra cold rinse. Dry it in the dryer and stuff them and they are ready to use the next day.

Now, this is how I do it, every cloth diapering mom has her own washing routine and detergent preference.

Stripping the diapers - To get rid of the residues that collect on the diapers from washing everyday, I use a squirt of dawn dish washing detergent ONCE A MONTH(the regular blue bottle) while I wash the diapers. Dawn is very safe to use in the washer (remember how marine biologists use dawn to strip birds off of oil from oil spills in the ocean?) .

Cloth diapers, in US, come in all kinds of different ways, here's a link to know the other ones... Nicki's Diapers - Diaper Definitionsdon't get too overwhelmed because there's a sea of info on this stuff and there are some hardcore mammas who are very much into CDing and has all kinds of info, but I am very flexible to it, like right now Riya has a sposie on since I didn't get time to wash the CDs last night. And while we are out we use sposies as well.

I hope I didn't overwhelm you all, but if you need more info I'll try my best to help you out. Also, if you are still interested and want to see a pic of the diaper pail and the sprayer let me know.

Raj

 

Vanathi, they are expensive! Seems like CDs add a load of work to you. I agree with you on sposies though, even in this weather, I don't like to use them all the time.