So here we are - First Time Parents!!! We had our son and are on our way to a wonderful but scary adventure. We had all our stuff organized and ready to go!
Before our son was born I had mentioned to my husband that I wanted to use cloth diapers. For three reasons, great on the environment, our budget and for the baby! My husbands initial reaction, No Way!!! I told him that it wouldn't be that bad. After talking to some friends and doing some research he finally came around. Now, when we first dove in to the cloth diaper arena I had no idea of the "technology" that was out there for diapers today. My thoughts were the old fashioned way our parents did, you know, the pins, vinyl diaper covers and wet diaper pails. So, this is the road we initially traveled on. But it didn't last long.
We bring our son home and for the first two weeks of his life we used the disposable diapers that had the cut out for the belly button, because I didn't want the cloth diapers to rub or hurt that area. After that we began our cloth diaper adventure. I attempted to do the old fashioned diaper and pin method and stuck myself twice!!! My husband and I agreed that this was not going to work. After doing some online research, I found a store about an hour away that sold other type of cloth diapers. I was still on bed rest so I sent my husband to this store to get some new diaper supplies. He came home with a unique way to do cloth diapers, he had bought a velcro diaper cover and he had something called a snappy. So we gave this a try. Everything seemed to work okay, except for two things, my son kept "springing" leaks, the diaper cover and his clothes were getting all wet. I also discovered that the "teeth" on the snappy was coming through the diaper and scratching my sons skin. I told my husband that I didn't like this "system" and he was also getting tired of having wet hands and having to change the baby's clothes every time he picked our son up. Not to mention my son was quickly out growing the diaper cover he had bought. So we muddled through until I was off bed rest and could make the hour trip to the store with him. Before our adventure to the store I emailed a couple friends who I knew were using cloth diapers on their little ones. I was then told about these diapers called BumGenius, Flips and Fuzzibunz. So I did some more online research and off to this store we went. I liked the fact that not only were these diapers great with this velcro and snap "technology", but the diapers also grew with the baby. We could buy them once and be done. This idea appealed to both of us. However, when we got to the store we didn't realize how expensive this new diaper technology was. After talking to a sales lady and looking at all our diaper options we came up with a bright idea and system that would work and fit our tight budget. In the end we ended up buying 10 of the BumGenius velcro diapers. We used the 10 genies as I call them as diaper covers. I had already had 36 some pre-fold cloth diapers at home. Below is the system we developed. (I will try and do a how-to-video later, because it's easier to show you than to explain) but here it goes.
1.) Take a genie, put in the newborn insert.
2.) Take a regular pre-fold cloth diaper and lay it long ways and fold it into thirds but so that the heavier absorbent section is in the middle.
3.) Place the diaper with the folds face down in the genie, for a girl you want the excess in the back and for a boy in the front.
4.) When it's time to change the baby, all you need to do is remove the cloth diaper and replace it with a new one until the genie either gets saturated from pee or you have a poopy diaper. :-)
There you go, no more wet hands!!!
More info. to come later. :-)
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