Cloth Diaper Carnival #4: How the Obsession Began

A bucket full of diapers in the bathroom and one soaking in the toilet is my first memory of cloth diapers. It was the early 80's and they were for my brother, who is 4 years younger than me. My first experience with cloth diapers, other than wearing them myself or seeing them in the bathroom, was with my niece Lily. My sister was a single mother trying to save money. She mostly used cheap Gerber prefolds and plastic pants. Although, she received 2 Sugar Peas and a couple of extra inserts to go with them as a gift. Her journey only lasted a few months in 2005, until she could afford disposables on a regular basis. My memories and knowledge were basically unchanged.

When I found out I was pregnant with my son, January 1, 2008, we kept in pretty quiet until we heard a heartbeat. Once we began telling family, several of them immediately asked if I was going to cloth diaper. I considered it, but I didn't think my husband on board. My mom had agreed to watch the baby once I went back to work and encouraged me to at least use cloth part of the time.  Then she saw something on TV about g diapers, so I started doing my research on them. I was convinced this was the option for me.

I wasn't sure how much we would be able to use the g diapers because they were pretty expensive, I needed another option. So we visited the Healthy Baby Boutique in Newton, KS. It is about 45 minutes from where I live and at the time was the only resource in the central and western part of the state. Kendra, the owner, was so helpful in explaining things, but I was so overwhelmed. I had no idea there was so much to learn about cloth diapers! You would think that would have motivated me to read up on what she was talking about, but no.

We started basic with prefolds, pins and covers. I also got some Mother-ease one size fitteds, which I didn't really like until recently due to the extra bulk. When we brought him home from the hospital, we had the diapers they gave us. We noticed that Tate was always red wherever the diaper touched. So we tried a different brand of disposables with the same results. We were also having horrible leak issues with the g diapers, not to mention a clogged toilet because our bathroom pipes run at a weird angle. That was when we switched to 100% cloth, 100% of the time and never looked back (well, at least I haven't!).

At about 4-5 months, Tate started to outgrow the infant prefolds and covers. I had done more research this time and was pretty sure I wanted to upgrade what we were using. My cousin, Camille and her mom, Karen raved about bumGenius after similar dissatisfaction with g diapers. I was still on the fence because I was comfortable with what we were doing. My mom got Tate his first bumGenius' for Christmas and gave them too him early. I was still nervous, so we got a some medium covers for the next size of prefolds we had.

After we tried them, I was hooked and asked for more for Christmas. That upgrade opened a can of worms that I never knew existed! I became a fan of bumGenius and Cotton Babies, the company behind the diaper, on Facebook. They began advertising giveaways on Twitter, so I signed up having no idea the obsession that would come with it! I began reading about other cloth diapers on blogs and finding other mama's who were CDing. There are so many different cloth diapers out there from WAHM (work-at-home-moms) on Etsy to bigger companies like Cotton Babies and FuzziBunz.

Be sure to check out Dirty Diaper Laundry and read other stories about how others first learned about cloth diapers.