It's My Way Or The Highway!

Whew, what a day.  But one more thing on my to-do list ... Cloth Tushie Tuesday!








So, tell on Grandma, Dad, or the Babysitter, who did you have to get on board with cloth diapering, and how did that go?

One advantage to being a single mama - I don't have to share parenting decisions with anyone.  Sure, I usually elicit some input from my parents - they live 5 doors down from me, and are involved with my Wee One on pretty much a daily basis.  So many of my parenting decisions do affect them on some level, and I do seek their advice on most things.  But the beauty of it is - we don't have to agree.  We don't have to come to consensus.  We don't have to make joint decisions.

I didn't have to have anyone else agree to co-sleeping, or when to teach her to sleep in her own bed.  I didn't have to have anyone else agree to extended breastfeeding, or when to try to wean (which is totally out the window btw when she wakes up in the middle of the night and I'm dead tired.  Or she has the hiccups, whichever.)

And I didn't have to have anyone else agree to cloth diapers.

At one of my baby showers, several of my female relatives made fun of me for saying I was going to try cloth diapers.  I got "yea, we'll see how long THAT lasts" quite a bit.  My mom, however, was very supportive.  She used cloth diapers with me when I was a baby, since I had skin that was too sensitive for the new Pampers that were coming out.  (I guess that's genetic, since the Wee One has it too.)  She had a diaper service for a while, but I'm sure she did her fair share of diaper laundry.

Now, she was a little stuck in the past, since she kept shopping for "rubber pants".  I had explained all about covers, and shown her some of the ones I bought.  She still insisted that I needed some "rubber pants" to go over the diapers.  I think she finally realized ... they don't make those anymore.

When the Wee One was born, I had some continuing health issues.  At the time I lived about 100 miles away from where I live now.  Once the baby cleared her first week checkup, my mom packed her and I back to Mom's where she could take care of us.  I packed the cloth diapers.  I was intent on trying the cloth diapers.  Problem was ... my baby was tiny.

Nothing fit her.

So I used sposies for about the first six weeks or so.  Except when we went to family gatherings, because BY GOD they were going to see cloth diapers on my baby if it killed me.

Finally, she was big enough for the covers I had.  I was trying to do some funky jelly roll folds, and it wasn't quite working as well as I'd hoped.  My mom was changing a diaper, and she did this really cool fold, where she lined the diaper up with the back of the cover, then laid the baby on it, then she folded the front into thirds... it was like magic!  I was watching a diaper magician!

Of course, I totally thought she knew what she was doing.  She had cloth diapered me, after all.  She later confessed that she was just trying to get the diaper on the best she could, and she didn't really know what she was doing after all.

That's how I put diapers on her for a long time, tho!  (Now I just tri-fold, it's even easier!)

Now, she has done some funny stuff.  She put a fitted on the baby once with no cover, and wondered why her clothes got soaked.  She bought a package of Pampers a few weeks ago because there were no diapers in the diaper bag - because I had left a huge stack of them on the chair in her living room that she walked past and totally didn't see.  So she has backups now.  But she started out very supportive of my choice to cloth diaper, she has been a trooper with trying the different kinds of diapers that I bring over all the time, and she's even done some diaper laundry (but she's knows I'm pretty particular about that.)

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When I was first looking at daycares, I knew I wanted to try to find a daycare that would use cloth diapers if I could.  My Wee One's bum is so sensitive, and for a while she would get a rash if she even LOOKED at a disposable diaper.  If she had to spend 8 hours a day in a sposie, I'd be fighting a rash constantly, I knew.

The daycare I was most interested in was a very nice, well marketed, very expensive daycare.  I did the phone interview with the assistant director, and asked her about cloth diapers.  At the time, they did not have any children at the center using cloth diapers (now there is another family that does), but she said as long as it was a "one-piece" diaper that they could just take off her and replace with a clean one, that would fit with their "diapering procedure".  I told her all about the zippered hanging wetbag, and the diapers just get tossed into the wetbag, and they would go home each day with us.  I was SO glad that daycare would be on board with cloth diapers.

I wrote a little explanation about cloth diapers for her primary caregiver in the creeper room, and showed her about the diapers.  I showed her that when she takes off the diaper, she can just put the velcro on the laundry tabs, and just throw the diaper in the wetbag.

Unfortunately, she's used to using disposable diapers, and has her own little routine.  She rolls the diaper up and sticks the velcro to the outside of the diaper, just like you would a sposie before throwing it away.  She then pulls her latex gloves off over the diaper, so it becomes a little latex-covered ball, just like she would a sposie.  This girl is NOT deviating from her routine!  Only, instead of throwing it in the trash, she throws it in the wetbag.  Usually.

So when I get home every day from daycare, I have this:

A bag full of latex-covered diaper balls.  So I have to take the gloves off of each one, swish the poopy ones, and put them all back in the wetbag until laundry day.

But hey, my daycare uses cloth diapers, which many do not, so I am totally not complaining.  Maybe just a little.

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I do have some tells, though.  When I was first using cloth diapers at their house, I had put a load of diapers in to wash.  My wash routine starts with a cold rinse with no detergent.  I went and did something else, and came back for my father to tell me in a very proud way that he had helped me out - by putting the diapers in the dryer!  They had only had a cold rinse, they hadn't even been washed with detergent, and he was drying them on hot!  There were some stains that ended up setting in the prefolds, but I tried not to make him feel bad.  He was so proud that he was helping with the diapers!  After that he wouldn't touch them!  Poor Grandpa!

A family friend had watched my girl with Grandpa one day.  She said that she had changed a diaper, but it didn't feel wet, so she put it back on her.  It was a pocket diaper with the stay-dry fleece liner, so while the insert was soaked by the time I got home, it didn't feel wet to the surface, so she just used it again!  Now I tell folks when they watch her to just go ahead and change her diaper every couple of hours, "even if it doesn't seem wet"!!

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Do you have a post about getting someone on board with cloth diapering?  Link up and tell us your story!  Follow @funkymamabird or @MommieV1 on twitter and see what we have in store for next week!