Cloth Diaper Obsession

I have posted here and there about my severe love of cloth diapering, but I don't know that anyone knows just how DEEPLY involved I have become with it.

It all started with a little conversation Jared and I were having on the way home from our first trip to Babies-R-Us. We had just spend some time looking at all the crap that they put in baby wipes, and much to our dismay, there wasn't one brand (even the ones that claimed to be "natural") that we were willing to put on our precious new baby.

In the car on the way home I said, "I want to cloth diaper the baby." And got a resounding, "WHY?." I touted the money that we would be saving by doing it, and I even claimed that using a diaper service would be cheaper than using disposable diapers. With a diaper service, we wouldn't have to clean the diapers ourselves.

After extensive research, I was in over my head, and I had no idea what to do. It turned out that using a diaper service was just as expensive as regular diapering, and the cover options were, well, many. What was I to do?

I finally bought nontraditional covers and decided that we would buy 12 weeks of diaper service so that I could get used to having a new baby before taking on a lot of laundry.

After 12 weeks, I had a blessing come into my life. It was my friend Julie, and she had successfully cloth diapered 2 of her kids. She lent me some diapers and pushed me in a new direction and I started to branch out into those overwhelming other forms of cloth diapers.

My favorite new diaper was the AIO or the All-in-one. These are the types of diaper that you just put on and take off. You wash the whole thing. There are no inserts, no twisting, no nothing. They are as convenient as putting on a disposable. They come in cute prints and are easy to handle.

However, I would come to find a new love. A love that has consumed my cloth diapering world so much that I have thrown all other things out.

That love is the wool cover. Wool has so many wonderful properties for diapering that I couldn't list them all here. They are naturally waterproof and naturally antibacterial. They don't take on a smell even when they have been peed in. They smell nice always--like lanolin. The wool feels wonderful, not like an old itchy sweater, but like something soft, something I would like on my bum. Most importantly, they are adorable. I can knit them or make them from wool fabric to snap on.

Daphne loves my wool diapers (you see, they are MY wool diapers). I have taken to making them. I have the cover down really well. I have made enough now, that I know what I am doing. They are really nice and Daphne likes them a lot. I am now working on the inserts for them. You see, wool can't make an AIO because you can't wash wool really like you do other fabrics, so I am making wool-in-ones. That is, wool covers with inserts that snap in and can be removed. It is the best of both worlds. I can have cute covers that are perfect and wonderful, and I can have inserts that snap in.

The cloth diapering world is so much different looking to me now than it did in the beginning. I am so glad that I walked down that path, so glad.

I plan to post photos of some of the covers I have made, to share. I am going to sell them too, so I want to get good photos before they have to go.

Chris