I can’t believe that my parenting “philosophy” has changed so much since I first became pregnant. First the natural birth and exclusively breastfeeding, and now cloth diapering. I definitely haven’t changed as part of a “fad” though, I’m merely being pragmatic. Our little girl is quite the pooper, and that has translated into a constant diaper rash and going through about 3 boxes of diapers a month. That’s approximately 75 diapers per week. Yeah, and when we were using Huggies, that was about 25 cents a diaper. We have since switched to the Target brand, which is about 15 cents a diaper, but still. We’re talking 10+ diaper changes a day. It adds up. After reading about the benefits of cloth diapers, we decided to give it a shot. We ordered a trial from Jillian’s Drawers where we get 9 different types of cloth diapers to try, in a variety of brands.

Today we went through 6 different styles of diaper, plus 1 diaper cover. I’m definitely leaning toward the all-in-one’s and the pocket diapers, which basically work just like a disposable except they are super soft and you can toss them in the wash. Oh, and some have snaps that adjust the size of the diaper. I was mostly worried that they would be huge and bulky, but I put a onesie on her in the afternoon and you couldn’t tell the difference! I was quite impressed. And the rash appears to be clearing up, but I don’t want to jump to conclusions just yet, since it seemed okay this morning too, after being in a disposable all night long. At any rate, it did not worsen!

I’ve got to say, it’s only been one day but so far I’m really impressed with the ease and quality of the cloth diapers. The only pain in the butt (no pun intended) part was the prewashing for the Bummis Tots Bots brand. Parker hasn’t even worn it yet because it required to be washed and dried separately THREE TIMES before use! I could have washed the prefolds with it, but Mike and I looked at them and we both laughed at the idea of putting them on a wiggly baby. (Prefolds are the old school type of diaper, that requires a pin and some origami lessons.) I’m planning to keep using them as much as possible over the next week and we’ll see how it goes!