As most of you know we are currently doing Nakie Days potty training however, when we started, we used diapers…and no, not cloth diapers :0 We started on disposables. Honestly, we didn’t have the money to pay up front for new cloth diapers and since I was new to it all I had no clue there are trades, swaps and sells of all kinds. Needless to say we used what we were given as gifts and used coupons to buy what more we did need for disposables. This stockpile held us over until they were 5 months old. No joke, it was great to not have to diaper shop. By the time we were out we had gotten some Gdiapers to try, as we were told they were a gateway cloth diaper. I looked at the company and I liked that it was a company I could stand behind and feel good about buying from. In addition, we could still use them as a disposable(with the convenience of being flushable)and of course the other perks of cloth:) One problem… we had no idea what to expect, I mean who cloth diapers twins?! Well, we do, and a surprising amount of other twin mommas! Its not for everyone but here’s how we do it!
Our Stash:
We started with 24 inserts/5 covers/5 liners and soon realized that was NOT enough, even with doing laundry daily. Yes, we wash our own. We added 36 more inserts to our stash immediately and over the next 8 months we added 10 more covers and 15 more liners. This meant we only had to wash once every three days. Ours are all Larges, the boys were a little small for them in the beginning but it worked out well and we’ve been able to get more use out of them! Also Gdiapers use a paper like liner against the back of the cloth insert, but if you sew a piece of fabric on the back it works just as well:) Voila…see picture for example:)
Daily Life in cloth
The boys did wonderfully with the transition from disposable to cloth. Their instinctual “dirty alert” with cloth diapering became like clock work every day. It was soon after that we introduced the potty(we’re still in the process of finding the best potty for boys, and I will review them all later). The day we got the potty we decided to time our “potty breaks” for when they normally went. Instant success! Cloth Diapering reinforced the natural tendency for our boys to not like their soiled diapers on their bums. After 6 months of timing their potty needs we rarely had more than one poop mess per day and even those if caught fast enough easily “peel” off the cloth G insert, and flush. Yes, if its really liquid-y it soaks in and is harder to get out, so catch it fast 😉 Through out the day I would keep used G’s in a fabric tote (with a garbage liner in it) in our laundry room. If I was lazy I washed what was in that tote once per 3 days, if I was super mom twice per day. And hey, you don’t even have to wash, there are services in just about every major city that wash cloth diaper inserts for you. Leaks, explosions, and utter disaster? Not here, we had the expected FULL diapers and a mishandling by mommy or daddy that got poo everywhere, but things were always nicely contained with G’s. Boy parts do tend to be a little more… crafty shall we say.. about leaking. But, if you don’t want leaks …its all about a snug fit! My only complaint is about night time/nap time absorbency, we have had to stick with disposables to get the needed protection(that was without a nighttime bottle and ample potty breaks :/) oOHhh just a heads up too, cloth are BIG compared to your disposables so plan on going up a size in clothes. We “lost” a good portion of 6m clothes when we started and jumped right to 9m.
Washing Cloth
Yes this does incur a dollar amount so, remember to figure that in when you decide if its cheaper for you. As I said before, if washing isn’t for you there are services in almost every major city….and my solution to everything…just google it! We wash with homemade detergent and always do 2 wash/rinse cycles. It helps with build-up. If you do have build up you will start to notice a constant odor, possibly diaper rash;all you need to do is strip them. Pretty simple, wash/rinse without detergent over and over(5 cycles for us). We do this every 3/4 months, but keep in mind we have few poops in diapers.
The Indigo Hen Homestead 