What I love most about gDiapers:
- No chemicals/unnatural ingredients on my baby's bum - I
realize that millions of babies have disposable diapers on their skin 24/7 for
years and years without any problems.
However, I strive to be as natural as possible so I do sleep a little better
at night knowing that Heidi doesn't have any (or at least as many) unnatural
materials absorbing into her body.
- Carbon footprint/reduce waste - Obviously, being someone
who considers themselves "green" this is huge. I love knowing that we are contributing less
to filling up the landfills and I'm glad my baby's poopy diaper won't still be
around in the year 2300.
- Diaper rash - did you know that cloth diapers reduce a
baby's chance of getting diaper rash?
It's true! I'm not even sure that
Heidi has had a full blown diaper rash outbreak yet! We have had a few times where she looks
red-ish but it usually goes away completely overnight.
-
No monthly expenses -
This is a BIG one. (This almost
deserves it's own post I think it's so important!!) I think that there are so many people who believe
that they can't afford to cloth diaper their baby. This is SO not true. I personally feel like between disposable
diapers and cloth diapers, you at the very least breaking even with cloth
diapering one child. Now if you use your
cloth diapers on future children that's when you really start
saving
money! (Here is a
blog I came across
where someone actually sat down and did all the math!) The big difference for me is that with cloth
diapers you are paying for it all up front (with the exception of the added
loads of laundry) as opposed to spreading it out over the course of several
months/years. I am a
"rip-the-bandaid-off" kind of person, so I am TOTALLY okay with
getting the cost of diapering out of the way all at once. We have never had to sit down and re-work our
budget to add in the monthly expense of diapers and wipes. (Since I have breastfed Heidi since the day
she was born almost 1 year ago, at this point we still have
no monthly baby
expenses. I can't express how GOOD this
feels!) Along with this "no monthly
expense" thing... Not
once have I ever had to call Ryan on his way home
from work and say "Hey can you stop and pick up some diapers!! We're almost out!!" I LOVE that that has never happened. Sure there have been a few times where I had
to grab an insert out of the dryer or I was a little behind on the wash and we
had to resort to a disposable diaper until the laundry was done, but we have
everything that we need right here.
- Less leaks/blowouts - it seems that the few times Heidi
has pooped in a disposable diaper it has blown out of the top (up her
back). I also have friends who use
disposables exclusively who have also run into this problem...I suppose we
could blame it on the brand or size of diapers or something BUT it still seemed
to happen too frequently (at least enough to reassure me that we made the right
choice with our brand of cloth diapers!)
That's not to say that we never have leaks or blow outs, it just seems
to happen pretty rarely. When Heidi was
pretty little, we had several leaks pretty close together. I freaked out and immediately thought we had
made a mistake and that the cloth diapers were't effective and we had wasted
all this money etc. etc... I purchased 2 different types of BumGenius cloth
diapers to try those out because I still wanted to try cloth but I thought
maybe we had just picked a bad brand... ANYWAY.
I finally took a step back and realized that leaks/blowouts are normal
and ARE going to happen regardless of what kind/brand/type/color/size diaper
your baby is wearing. However, if it is
happening a LOT then maybe it is time to explore more options. Also, by trying another brand/style of cloth
diapers, my faith and confidence in our decision to use gDiapers was
reaffirmed. I truly feel like gDiapers
works best for us.
Ways to save $$$ on gdiapers:
- Buy prefold inserts (as opposed to the gDiaper [or other]
brand microfiber inserts) - Green Mountain Diapers sells 12 organic preemie
size prefolds for $18. ($15 if you just
go with plain white!) This is
significantly less than the $33 for 6 inserts that gDiaper sells. Keep in mind - preemie sized inserts fits
into small gDiapers and newborn fits into medium/large gDiapers. I believe that we have 2 dozen inserts which
lasts us a couple of days. (Honestly, I
wouldn't recommend having more than 2-3 dozen inserts. You really don't want an excuse to go longer
than a few days between washes and let those dirty inserts sit around for too
long.)
- Purchase large gDiapers at the same time as you purchase
the mediums - Each gDiaper comes with the gPants and one pouch. You will need approx. 2 pouches PER
gPant. That being said...pouches for
medium and large gDiapers are the same size, so by purchasing both size gPants
at the same time, you won't have to purchase any additional pouches. Just pull the pouches off of the larges and
use all pouches towards the medium gPants.
When it's time to move up into the larges, you just continue using all
of those same pouches! (This one might make a little more sense after you visit
the supply list at the end of this series - but by doing this you will save
$23-$46!!)
- REGISTER - is this your first baby? Do you have a baby registry? Will there be a baby shower thrown in your
honor? By knowing exactly what you need
ahead of time, you will be able to add all that you need to your registry and
(hopefully) have the majority of the items you need gifted to you. I went into cloth diapering so blindly, I
added a few pairs of gDiapers to my registry, but hardly anything else. We ended up spending a lot of our own money
on all of the diapers and supplies (which was FINE) but knowing that things
could have been different had I been more educated/prepared... my own fault.
And now for just a few more unrelated tips:
- Wait until meconium has passed before you break in that
cloth diaper! Trust me on this. In those first few days as a new parent...
things are already crazy enough. The
last thing you are going to want to add to your plate is trying to figure out
how to scrape off that damn tar poop. I
would suggest making a commitment to start cloth diapering baby 1-2 weeks after
delivery. This is what we did and I am
grateful we gave ourselves a few days to get into a "routine" (haha)
before adding another new thing to the mix.
No matter how dedicated you are... it's okay to use disposable diapers
until you feel ready to switch to cloth.
- When placing the gPants into the laundry, make sure all
velcro tabs are "closed" or folded over. If not, the rough part of the velcro will
stick to everything and ruin that super cute dress you just bought on sale for
baby at Target.
- Try them out! You
don’t HAVE to go crazy and spend a crap load of money right off the bat if you
aren’t 100% sure this is for you. You
CAN buy a couple of diapers and just try them out. You don’t have to commit
100% to a certain brand or style to try them out (however be ready to commit
roughly $20-$30 a piece on each “experiment"!)
- Don't use any oxyclean or other type of oxygen cleaners or
bleach as they can ruin the absorbency (and softness!) of your inserts. If you are looking to get the stains out of
your inserts, you can lay them in the sun with some lemon juice to bleach out!
- gDiapers also sells "liners", which can be
confusing. Don't get the
"liners" confused with the "pouches" or "inserts"
- they are all different things! Liners
are little sheets (similar to a dryer sheet or dried out disposable wipe) that
are placed inside the diaper on top of the insert. This is to help with transition poop! The idea is that when the baby poops, you
just remove the liner, flush/compost/dispose of and then go about your regular
routine. This sounds like a good idea...
but we really didn't like the liners.
Everytime Heidi peed in her diaper it seemed to almost shed little tiny
pieces on her. (I guess it disintegrates
TOO easily!) I definitely would feel
comfortable flushing the liners, but they were creating more work for me by making
me spend more time wiping Heidi down - trying to get all those damn shreds off
of her hiney!
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| My favorite gBooty! |
Continued here:
gDiaper Series Part 4 - Registry Checklist!
