Diapering Options

Diapers! They are synonymous with babyhood. Synonymous with parenthood.

For some, there is a decision that needs to be made before baby comes... will we use cloth or disposable. For others it's a no-brainer... "of course we'll use cloth." For still others, disposable is all there is... no one uses cloth anymore, right?

When we were expecting our first, I was excitedly planning to use cloth. I had a big bag of hand me down cloth diapers from a friend (cleaned of course). I read tons about how to do it, how to clean them, etc. I still wasn't completely sure, but I went for it.

When we brought Tornado home, we used the newborn diapers we had part time, but put him in cloth the rest of the time. It was gross, but I did it. I was saving us money and I was excited about that. I didn't have anyone to teach me or to watch first hand, so I really never felt comfortable with how things were going, but I did it anyway. I hated dealing with the poopy ones, but I did that too. We used the disposables when we went out.

After a while, things were just too hard. It had been several months, life was busy, Tornado wasn't gaining weight. I had to switch to pumping all breast milk and adding cereal to it through a bottle to increase calories. He was spitting everything up and we hoped this would help. This new system meant that I was almost constantly pumping, cleaning pumping supplies, prepping bottles, bottle feeding, or washing bottles. And when it was done, it all started again. On top of it all was diapering and laundry. When my grandmother offered to pay for disposables, we decided to take her up on her offer and we never went back, even when she stopped sending money almost a year later.

When Sweet Pea was born, we didn't even think about it... with my schedule and a 15 month old, disposable was the only option in our minds!

Now here we are. Tornado, 3 and a quarter, began waking up dry this week. He's been in underwear overnight 5 nights in a row. There are accidents, but overall, I'd say he's night time trained! Finally! Sweet Pea, 2 this month, has been day time trained for more than a month now. Again, there are accidents, and more than half the time she poops in her underwear instead of the toilet, but out of diapers during the day just the same. That means that we are down to 1 diaper a day... disposable. In all honesty, the convenience of that one disposable diaper a day is pretty nice... especially since there is usually poop in it in the morning.

Our big goal was to have Tornado night time trained and Sweet Pea day time trained before the baby came. I'd say we're there already. We set the goal for both monetary reasons and convenience reasons. It will be so nice not to have multiple littles in diapers!

So what are we going to do this time??? I'll tell you, cloth doesn't look quite so bad these days with all the wet and poopy panties I've been dealing with lately. What's the difference really? Somehow it doesn't seem quite so gross. And on this side of experience, I wonder if it would be easier.

There is one other option that I had never heard about before this past Fall. About 6 months ago I stumbled on something called Elimination Communication. I was reading an article about it which led to a blog which shared first hand experiences. I found it very interesting... and maybe a little crazy. None of it mattered much though since we weren't planning to have anymore babies in this house. So that was it.

To be continued...

Have you heard of Elimination Communication???

Labels: Getting Ready for Baby, Raising Children

posted by ~Babychaser~ @ 7:14 AM