Bless You for Choosing Cloth
Oh you're switching to cloth diapers? Bless you child.
Bless you.
Yes, I heard this quite a few times in my conversion over to cloth. Apparently people are praying over me for diapering my kid in what seems like the only natural way to go. I suppose I get their drift,
I mean
it is poop we're talking about. And it's poop on cloth. And that cloth has to be washed. And that's a big
ewwww
right there.
How about we bless my washer.
My washer machine has seen more crap than it probably ever dreamed of.
Switching to cloth is definitely a life changing event. Actually no, let's not get ahead of ourselves here. Switching to cloth isn't life changing; it is just a change. It is a change that requires some knowledge and unless you're a skilled crap washer and diaper stuffer, then there is a big chance that you will likely be overwhelmed in the beginning.
Our culture makes it easy for us to choose disposables for our children because our culture and society loves to do things the easy route. Unfortunately the easy route is not always the healthiest or "greenest" route to go. It's hard to find the information out there about cloth diapers. You can't just call up your friend with five kids and ask her all about cloth diapers because chances are she doesn't have a clue. You can't go to your local Wal-Mart and ask the sales associate where to find cloth diapers because 1) some WM sales associates don't always know where many items are 2) Wal-Mart doesn't sell cloth diapers (who would have thought?).
For me personally I was terrified to switch to cloth. Prior to having my child I had no clue what cloth diapers meant (I just knew it wasn't disposables). After a month or so of our disposable diapers piling up and me realizing that I was wasting money and hurting the environment, I decided to Google cloth diapers. Well let me just tell you that I Googled
and Googled
; and I You Tubed and I chatted about it and I still had no dang blasted clue about any of it.
The terms that go along with cloth diapers are words that are unheard of in most baby books. I'm pretty sure I didn't read about prefolds and All In Ones in my
What to Expect When You're Expecting
book (they should really include a section). I couldn't for the life of me understand how to wash the crap off. I mean seriously...
it's a human pooping on cloths and I'm supposed to do what with it?
I think I was most confused about pocket diapers. My vision was that the diaper had a magic pocket that the baby pooped in; a poop pocket.
It wasn't until I just said
"I'm doing it"
and went to a new, local store (a Godsend) and started asking my fifty one questions that I decided to just buy some and try it. Actually to be honest my "buy some" was more like $150 dollars worth of my diaper stash. I knew I was going to do it because no matter how much I still had to learn and no matter how much crap I had to wash, I knew that it was the route I wanted to go. I left that store feeling much more knowledgeable thanks to finally meeting someone in real life that had cloth diapered their kiddos. I went home with a goal that night to figure it out and make it work and to just accept everyone's "blessings" on my new journey and make the most of it.
I am now here to tell you that I didn't really need those blessings (but hey thanks). I didn't really get splattered with crap while washing it off like I envisioned and even though pocket diapers don't really have a magic poop pocket, they are actually my favorite. To be honest using cloth diapers isn't that different than using disposables. They are all the same to me. I've actually had less crap on me with cloth diapers than with disposables (so boo-ya).
What I have learned so far is that your baby is going to poop no matter what. That's what they are made to do. They are little human poop factories and we are the lucky dogs who get to clean it up. Choosing cloth doesn't mean that I'm making the job any harder or any messier. Choosing cloth just means that I am making things healthier for my baby and the planet and less expensive for my family. Choosing cloth just means that my baby has super cute diapers (cue the boo-ya).
The biggest and most important thing about choosing cloth is to learn about it. It's a crap load of information about a crappy process. Learning about it is intimidating and will make you say,
"nah I'll just stick with the disposables."
I promise you that once you learn about it and give it a try you will be hooked instantly. You'll kick yourself in the butt for not starting them sooner and you'll want to shout from the rooftops about how cool and easy they are (okay so maybe that's a little bit dramatic).
But no, really.
They are that cool.
