Happy Mother's Day/ Cloth Diapers

On Mother's Day this year, I was scheduled to work, and was very bummed about it. Alan had fun plan to take the boys to breakfast with his whole family and then the zoo. I love taking the boys, and I've been doing it less often because of the third trimester pregnancy fatigue.

 

 

That brings us to Mother's Day morning. I dragged myself out of bed at 5:05am, then checked my phone (charging next to our sink). Missed call & voicemail from work! They put me "on call".... so unexpected! Thank you interns at work that made this possible :) I tried really, really hard to go back to sleep, but at 5:40am I decided to do some dishes, laundry, and pack for the zoo. So no sleeping in this year, but at least I got to spend it with my family!

 

We took Superman (Matthew) and Batman (Adam) to the zoo. Capes and all.

The two moms of the group (me and Alan's mom) with the kiddos.

Adam & Matthew are so excited about babies. Here they are hugging a baby gorilla statue.

Superman cuddling with his mommy while sipping his milk. Even Superman needs some TLC :)

Feeding the giraffes with Daddy.

35 Week pregnant belly. (I am 36 weeks today)

And my Mother's Day present came today! Happy Mother's Day to me!! Alan gave me money to spend on cloth diapers. This is huge. Alan is actually very anti cloth diapers, so I have had a hard time buying all the supplies I need. With my "allowance" I bought:

• 2 Size 2 Thirsties Duo Wrap Covers
• 2 Sustainablebabyish One Size Snapless Fitted Cloth Diapers, Bamboo/Cotton (fits 10-35 lbs) These come with 2 bamboo/cotton inserts each.
• 2 toddler size Snappis
• 200 flushable liners

The covers and fitted diapers are for night time use. I wanted bamboo for night time, but didn't want to have to buy one of every size (they are not cheap). I finally found these one size bamboo fitted diapers... they are so versatile because they don't have snaps at all.. you secure them with the snappis and cover (or pins, but I am not brave enough to use pins). I plan to use them for the boys overnight until they potty train at night, which I am hoping will coincide with when Olivia grows into them/needs them. The flushable liners can be washed and reused until they are soiled, which is awesome.

I really think we are set on our cloth diaper supply now! In addition to these supplies We have:

• 3 Newborn Covers & plenty of newborn prefolds (all borrowed from my sister-in-law) to get us through day & night during the first 3 months
• 15 One Size Smartipants Pocket Diapers (for day time use (or night if she is still waking up frequently) for 3 mos-potty training)
• Cloth Wipes/Spray bottles
• 1 huge wet bag (gift from my sister-in-law :P)
• 2 travel wet bags

Excited for Olivia to get here!!

More Cloth Diapers

I think overnight I may have developed a slight obsession with cloth diapers. I almost want to have another kid just so I can get all the accessories I want. Clothes line, indoor dryer rack, diaper sprayer, wool covers for overnight, more diapers of different brands, etc etc etc. :)

I'm probably done with my cloth diapering purchases though. My boys are going to be 20 months in a few days, which puts then 4 months shy of 2 years. Which means, technically, they could be potty trained soon! (I think they will be late trainers though.. they don't care at all about dirty or wet diapers).

I got 3 Smartipants and a wet bag as my final cloth diapering purchases. So now I have a total of 5 diapers.

Of the two (Smartipants and Gdiapers) Smartipants are definitely my favorite. They are very Very easy to use, soft on the boys' skin and they fit my almost 2 year olds better (they are a bigger diaper). The Gdiapers are slightly cuter though.They are just the diaper (with a pocket) and an insert.
The pocket that holds the insert is open on both ends, which makes stuffing really easy.

There are lots of snaps for different sizes.

My favorite part is the insert agitates out in the wash. So for a wet diaper, you just have to throw the whole thing in the wet bag. Just as easy as changing a disposable. For a dirty, just rinse and put in the wet bag. No digging the insert out, unsnapping the liner or worrying about putting velcro back together.

So, so easy. Wish I could order a ton of these and not have to wash diapers so often. But maybe next time.. ;)

Alan does not understand my interest in cloth diapers, but I am having fun experimenting. Feels good to wash instead of throw away.

Cloth Diapering

My boys are 19 months and 2 weeks, and have been exclusively in disposables for 19 months and 1 week. That means I branched out last week. I have always wanted to try cloth diapering. I brought it up to Alan several times while I was pregnant, but the thought of dirty diapers was already upsetting enough to him, without throwing cloth in (along with most other new dads, and probably plenty of new moms too). Then we found out we were having twins, and we decided to concentrate on just surviving.

Last week (as I was helping my beautiful sister-in-law (who is planning to cloth diaper) register for her baby), I saw some G-diapers at Babies "R" Us. On impulse I bought two of them: blue and green (Green for Adam, Blue for Matthew - have to stay color coded). They can be a hybrid diaper; it has a cloth cover, and you can stuff it with a flush-able, biodegradable liner, or a cloth liner. I decided on the cloth liner, because I wouldn't really be saving any money if I had to buy the disposable liners. Plus I wondered if that was really cloth diapering??

They took their nap when we got home, and I was literally counting down the minutes until they woke up so I could try their new G-diapers on them. I rinsed the cloth inserts 6 times while I waited (per the instructions), and watched tons of videos on how to use them. They looked so cute on the videos, why couldn't my kids just wake up?? (I assure you this is one of the only times I have wanted nap time to be shorter ;) )

They finally woke up, and I got to try them on!!

They were so stinkin' cute! I think this is the main thing cloth diapering mommas need to mention to disposable mommas about the benefits of switching. See how happy Matthew looks:

Matthew showing us where his chin is located:
Adam rockin' his g-diaper:
Matthew showing off his new diaper:
Little G-butts:
So these are the only cloth diapers I have ever tried. But since I really, really like them, and they are not as hard as I imagined (even with dirty diapers, they aren't too bad), I have researched more brands. I feel like all of the cloth diapering jargon can be overwhelming. Having at least tried the G-diapers now, I actually understood what they were talking about. I think I may like other brands even better than these, but I am just going to show you how a G-diaper works.

It comes with an outer cloth cover (left) and a polyurethane liner (middle). Then you either buy a disposable or a cloth insert (right).

Strap the liner to the cover:
Stuff the liner with your insert:
And if you are really scared of poop you can add a flush-able liner on top of the cloth, which will catch most of the poop. Then you can flush that and wash the rest. I used these for the first few days, and I still use them if I think they are due for a major blow out. But they are almost like tissue paper, and it ends up getting wet and sticking to my boys, which I have to wipe off. It doesn't seem very comfortable. And it's not as soft as the cloth:
Yay, we're about to wear our G-diapers again!

I got Charlie's Soap to wash them, and if there is a stain that doesn't come off in the wash, I set them in the sun and that does it (you aren't supposed to use bleach).

So I bought 2 of these diapers, and I have been washing them twice a day for maximum use (because I love them). But my sister-in-law got a pile of cloth diapers from a friend, and she is giving me 3. And I ordered 3 smartipants diapers. That will be a total of 8, which MAY be enough for full time cloth diapering. (They go through 4 diapers a day each, and we may keep using disposables at night). You can actually reuse the cloth cover and the the polyurethane liner of the G-diaper, and just change out the cloth insert if it's just a wet diaper, so that may help spread out the diaper use. I will probably write about those new diapers too when I get them. I know I am trying this way too late, but maybe IF we have another baby, we can start earlier ;)