Diapers

We are a cloth diapering family. A friend of mine cloth diapers her son, who is about 18 mos older than Libby, and seeing her go through it made me interested. I started researching, and found out there is a TON of info and support on the Internet.

Because Libby was such a tiny baby (under 7 lb for the first 3 wks of life), we used disposables for the first two weeks till her umbilical cord stump fell off. She swam in Pampers Swaddlers Newborn, prompting us to unsuccessfully search for preemie diapers. I think she was wearing newborn size diapers for the first two months, certainly for the first 6 weeks.

When Libby was 2 weeks old or so (I think it was when my mom was visiting approx Sept 17th), we started using the Thirsties wraps I had bought before she was born. Someone online had recommended using washcloths as diapers under a cover instead of actual diapers, so we bought two 18-packs at Walmart and used two in each diaper. We also bought newborn size prefolds, about 12 of them. We had about 6 Thirsties. These worked until she was about two months old.

When Libby was two months old (early November), we bought size Small Thirsties (we had been using extra small) and started using the prefolds we had bought before she was born, which we had about 24 of.

At the end of December, we were getting ready for daycare. We bought 9 or so BumGenius pocket diapers, which are probably the most popular cloth diaper nationwide. We already owned 3, which we had used at night since Libby was a month old or so, probably. BumGenius are so popular because of their ease of use, and I knew daycare would be cool with them because baby W. (the aforementioned friend's baby) had worn them at the same daycare. We also bought four Thirsties Duos Size 2, which are size M/L, and 12 "red-edge GMD" prefold diapers to use at home, because Libby was already too big for the size small.

We now have about 14 Bumgenius, which is enough to have 5 per day at daycare, one at night, wash every other day, and not get nervous about running out. We have one of every color they make, and two of both shades of pink, both shades of yellow, and neon green. I love the colors!

Libby wore Size 1 disposables for only about a month, Size 2 the same. She was wearing Size 1 in November, maybe part of December, and wore Size 2 until about the 1st-2nd week of January. We bought a pack of Size 2 on January 1st in case the new BumGenius didn't arrive in time to start daycare, but they did, and she only used about 5-10 of those diapers before needing to go to Size 3. She should be in Size 3 for quite some time, since they're 18-28 lb. By the way, she was only 14 or 15 lb when she started wearing Size 3.

Okay, this was a really boring post, but I've been wanting to get it down so I have something to refer to "next time". Also for the record, we've spent about $250-300 on cloth diapering, which is the cost of 25-30 packs of disposables, which would have lasted 15 weeks at most. I don't foresee spending more money on cloth for at least a month, at which time I think $25-50 should fix us for another spell.