{not your mom's} cloth diapers

{not Nora}

While I was still pregnant with Nora, Hubby and I contemplated many things about her upbringing.  Where would she spend her days while Hubby and I were at work?  What were the essential baby things we needed?  What would her name be?  How would we diaper her?  That last question may sound like a silly one but with Hubby's and my effort to be more consciously green, whether or not to use disposable diapers was something in question for us.  The pros to disposables - they're easy.  The cons - they're expensive, they never decompose (okay, they do eventually decompose...in 500 years).  So then we thought about the cloth diaper alternative.  The pros - you have one up front cost (some might see this as a con but we knew we were saving in the end), you don't have to make an emergency trip to the store when you need more, they are much more Earth-friendly.  The cons - you have to deal with a little more poop, although you still deal with poop in disposables, you have to do more laundry.

After weighing the pros and cons, Hubby and I decided to go for it.  We were going to venture into cloth diapers.  If you've ever done research on cloth diapers you will know the old traditional option our mom's used - the prefold with pins and rubber cover - is still around but you also now have tons of other options:  all in ones, pocket, convertible...the choices are a bit overwhelming!  After doing quite a bit of research, we settled on the diaper that seemed best for us:  the gDiaper.  Once we had decided on this type we stocked up on all of our supplies.  We had to buy the adorable little gPant, which came with liners, the cloth inserts, and we also got some disposable inserts for good measure.  You see, the big selling point (not to us, but to some) of the gDiaper is that the disposable insert is both flushable and compostable and will compost in just 50-100 days.  Sure beats the 500 years of a disposable.  We chose not to plug up our plumming and got the disposable inserts for travel and nighttime when we knew Nora would be at her most wet.  Once we had everything, we washed it up, put it in the drawer and awaited the first diapering.

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Fast forward a few months to Nora's birth.  We knew that we would not be starting with the gDiapers immediately.  For one thing, they're made to fit 8 to 14 pound babies.  Our Nora wasn't quite 8 pounds when she was born.  Another issue was her newborn poop.  It was messy and tary.  We opted not to completely ruin our new g's with that.  And lastly, her belly button.  We wanted that to fall of before we put her into her g's.

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Now fast forward to a few weeks after Nora's birth.  We were still in disposables.  We had not made the switch as quickly as we (mainly Hubby) had liked.  For some reason, I just froze on the issus.  Was it because I was still getting comfortable with her?  Was it because I didn't want to deal with the mess?  Was it because I wasn't ready to handle one more new thing?  Not really sure but eventually Hubby gave me the nudge I needed and we put Nora's first g on her.  And we haven't turned back since.

Aside from them being quite adorable, I do like how easy they are.  Sure, it took some getting used to but now we're pros at taking them off, replacing, and tossing used diapers in the laundry room.  And laundry itself isn't too difficult either.  We're able to do it every 2 to 3 days, which isn't too bad in my opinion. 

Some may think we're crazy and that's fine.  This is just something we wanted to try.  Do we judge those who use disposable diapers?  NO WAY!  It is totally a personal choice and there may be a day when we feel we need to use some disposables.  But for now, I'm glad we're experiementing and exploring the new world of cloth diapering.

{Nora's introduction to th gDiaper}