Cloth Diapering

I've been talking to my husband about using cloth diapers on Aurora almost since before she was born. My "baby steps" into the world of cloth diapering was using gDiapers, a hybrid system of cloth and disposables. The inserts were flushable, and you washed the outside liner and pants to use again. I loved the re-usability of the little g pants, but didn't much care for having to buy the inserts every week or two. My husband didn't much care for having to travel to Whole Foods or Babies R Us to buy the inserts, and we ended up going to normal disposables. We've used three brands:

• Pampers while we were in the hospital. They worked, but not my favorite - we were still having meconium at the time so I have no idea how they'd hold up to breastfed poopies.
• Target Up & Up brand. Easily my favorites out of the three, very little rash and until today (I'll elaborate further) contained the breastfed poop exceptionally well.
• Huggies. These gave Aurora the worst diaper rash I have ever seen, to the point where the doctor was even surprised at what she saw. We also had several blowouts out the leg holes, out the front, out the back... everywhere.
  

I think Aurora's outgrowing the size 1 of the Up & Up diapers (upper limit is 10 lbs, I think that's about where she is) but the size 2 starts at 13 pounds. Um... what about that little three pound discrepancy there? That's about two months of growth at the rate Aurora's going! The reason I think she's outgrowing them is because today I had to put on three (yes, THREE) outfits on her. At the cloth diapering class she had a blowout on a super-adorable outfit. This may be because my husband is still getting the hang of diapers... but then she even had blowouts later on with diapers I'd put on her, and I'd like to think diapering is old hat by now, with having helped with my two youngest siblings and now having a daughter of my own.

After much discussion Mike said we could do cloth diapers but only through a diaper service. I Googled for local services and found the price to be MORE than we were paying for disposables! I was saddened by this - I don't want to keep using disposables with how expensive they are! (not to mention the cost of wipes, the chemicals, and the environmental impact!) I did further Googling and discovered a local shop called No Pins Required, which offered free cloth diapering classes in addition to the diapers they sold. I immediately sent Emily, the owner, an email asking about the class. We went to it today, along with my mother-in-law, and I am so glad we did. We learned more about cloth diapering, and Mike is very much on board with the idea now.

The current plan is prefolds for me to use (so mostly those), about five fitteds for Mike to use when he changes her, and a few bumGenius! diapers for overnights. Mike seemed very enamored with the bumGenius!, but at $18 a pop, those are a "few-at-a-time" purchase. It's looking like we'll use the arrangement I detailed, with purchasing a few different diapers every so often to try them out and build a nice stash. I can't wait!