Cloth Diapering pt 1

I don't know how many have been following my blog since Sweetness was born but we decided to cloth diaper after much thought and prayer. It took some time to convince the hubs, but once we started he was on board.
We waited till Sweetness was 1 month before we started. Just long enough for her to outgrow the newborn diapers.
We started with prefolds and covers and at first She flipped out every time she pee'd. Just like she did with her sposies. We took it slow and the first week we only did cloth during the day. And we didn't do cloth out and about much at all.


Now we use Cloth all the time. Unless we are traveling out of town for longer than a day or two. I tried Flip diapers and liked them at first. But sometime between the newborn 8lb size and the 12-ish lb range Norrie stopped fitting into them well. They started leaking around the legs. I tried stripping the inserts, drying the covers on high, nothing worked. Then they started fitting again till last month. All of a sudden though now they don't seem to fit right again. Hubby has decided he likes our pocket diapers better so we're selling the Flip's and going to be using the money to buy pockets.


Anyways in this time I've had lots of chances to play with a few different kinds of diapers. Right now the prefolds are my favorites. They are a great workhorse diaper and I'd recommend anyone have at least 10 prefolds and 2 covers in their cloth diaper stash.

And it's also true that it's good to buy used several kinds of diapers to know what you like. I wouldn't have know my feelings towards the Flips had I not bought them in the first place. When I heard about them I originally wanted my whole stash to be flip diapers. They sound great. And they work great for other babies.
Just not my little one.

I will say the covers (flip) work great over a snappi'd prefold. And don't usually leak. Unless the prefold needed changed and then she poops. Then well all bets are off. lol

I've heard many say they are a lot of work. And say "Oh are you STILL using cloth?" Why yes. I love my cloth. I love that my baby smells like a baby. She's cleaner and her skin is so healthy.
I cringe when I have to put her in a sposie. (Still haven't found a good way to use cloth while traveling more than a day or two. or while flying on a plane, etc)


Anywho I thought I'd talk about some common problems and ways to solve them.

First stains. 

Stains, Nothing works better than sunshine. I think a lot of mom's expect that they will wash with CD safe detergent and every spot will come out magically in the wash. Does this happen to our normal clothes? NO. Why would diapers be any different?
With our regular clothes WE use stain removers to get the stain out. But with diapers you can't really do that without fear that it will build up on the diapers and mess with their absorbency.
So what CAN you do. Easy. It's free and you have it nearly all the time. SUNSHINE.
Yes sunshine. I hear mom's saying it's too cloudy for them to sunthier diapers. I will say that a cloudy day takes longer but it is possible.
I put some diapers out on my porch rail to show how they looked before and after:

Here are all the diapers I have laid out to sun. I use pockets too but on this day the prefolds and inserts where what needed sunned.

This was the worst stain. These diapers are clean. They've been sprayed, washed on hot with soap, washed twice on cold with no soap. They are wet still as I find damp diapers sun better than dry.

Light staining on these and the inserts. Some I folded to make the most of the small space I have to lay them out.

Closeups...

Ok you get the idea. I did my diapers earlier in the morning and had these out by about 12 pm ish. I leave my diapers out all day since my back deck gets sun till about 5-ish pm in the winter. In the summer the sun is there almost till it goes down.

So the after:

All the diapers. Can you see the difference all ready?

The larger prefold on the far left still had light staining but it went away after I sprayed it with water and let it sun a bit longer. It dried out to fast to get out all on the first try.

No staining here.

Now lets say you've sunned your diapers and the stain doesn't come out what can you do? 

First try spraying with water again and leaving out longer.
Second, try dribbling some lemon juice on the diaper and leave on the sun.
Third leave out in the rain. I know that seems crazy but it works! I've gotten some stains out I never thought would come out with this method.

Lastly after sunning since my diapers drape on the rail I rewash them after I bring them inside. If they where on a line (hopefully soon) I wouldn't do this. Just toss in the dryer to kill anything that might have gotten on them outside. 

Any questions about cloth? Things you've always wondered? Feel free to ask and I'll try to answer!