Monday, March 23, 2009

First Night in Cloth Diapers

This weekend, I got (from my sister) my part of our diaper order. You can read about my cloth-diaper-decision-making-process here. So, last night was our first experience using Bumgenius cloth inserts in gdiaper covers.

I am using these on my just-turned-three year old daughter, Sadie. She is only wearing a diaper at night, so I thought this would be a nice, slow way of me becoming acclimated to the process before the baby comes along.

Being away for the weekend threw Sadie for a loop. She didn't sleep well (her first attempt at sleeping in a sleeping bag) and therefore, was quite a mess on Sunday. As we loaded into the van to leave my sister's she was crying and had the most pathetic expression on her face, not wanting to leave her Pop and Gram. I moved to the back beside her and held her hand. She sucked her thumb and within minutes she was asleep. She slept the entire two hour drive home.

Once home, she was once again a mess. I hesitated to try the new diapers on her last night for fear that because of her mood, she'd refuse anything new and different. Thankfully, I was wrong and she was thrilled to put on "new diapers". The fact that they are soft and orange probably helped.

On the Bumgenius website, they recommend using two washable liners for toddlers since they have the capacity to fill their diapers more. After I had a good look at this liner, I thought one should be enough- it was large and appeared extremely absorbent. We put the new diaper on Sadie and she went to bed around 7pm.


Here is a gdiaper cover (size L) . If it looks a bit backwards, it's because the velcro tabs wrap to the back, instead of the front, so little hands can't pull the cover open as easily.


This is the gdiaper cover with it's plastic liner (each cover comes with two of these liners). The four corners easliy snap into the four corners of the cover. They are the high-tech version of rubber pants.


Here is one of the Bumgenius washable inserts. If you look closely (or click on the picture for a better view) you can see a series of little snaps. These allow you to adjust the length of the insert so that these inserts can be used in ALL size covers (for all size babies).

Here is the insert folded and snapped to fit the cover.

Here is the cover with it's liner and insert, ready for a sweet little rear end.


Sadie woke up around 8am and as soon as I entered the room, I asked her how her diaper was. Before she would answer my question, she said, "I hidin", like she says every morning. She lays in her crib, in full view, but has her hands over her eyes. I pretend to look for her, find her and ask her again about her diaper. "Big poopy", she replies. Nothing like breaking me in right away.

I lay her down and cautiously start removing clothes. Her pajama bottoms are dry. Nothing is leaking from the gdiaper. I slowly open it and find it completely saturated with pee and full of poop. The plastic liner had the tiniest bit of poop on it, but the cover stayed completely dry and poop-free. Success!!

I swished out the washable liner in the toilet and plunked it into a bucket in our upstairs tub that I had filled with some Seventh Generation detergent, white vinegar and warm water. A little more swishing and rinsing of the liner under the tub spout and I was done. The gdiaper starter kits come with a swisher and an s-hook to hang the swisher from the toilet, or in my case, the bucket (we don't use our upstairs tub regularly). I am planning on adding inserts to this bucket throughout the week and then washing the small load of them.


The gdiaper plastic liner is hanging over the tub spout to dry. Soiled insert in the bucket, soaking.

First night, a complete success. The few minutes of extra time it took were well worth it knowing I kept a disposable from being disposed of. Even though we are at the very beginning of our cloth diaper adventure, I'm sold. Thanks, Em:-). Pin It

3 comments:

  1. I'm so glad it was a success!!! Its good to know that they can handle a 3-year-old overnight :)

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  2. I'm reading this now, 2011, and wondering how you liked the gdiapers as you went along. I used some from a friend and I wasn't so fond of them. Everything got soiled every time, so I was constantly washing out the covers and liners. I use regular old fashioned cloth diapers with a doubler/soaker at night with rubber pants over all for my toddler.

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  3. Margo,
    We really, really liked them until M's poops became looser. Then we had some trouble with them soiling the insert (of course) and liner every time. It never leaked all the way out, which impressed us greatly, but it was more work/required more liners. We toughed it out for quite a while and recently switched over to Nature Baby Care which we compost ourselves.

    She's 20 months and starting to potty train, so I'm hoping that before too long we'll be done with diapers altogether:-).

    ReplyDelete

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