Just one fluffy bum, and you'll be addicted too!

Hi, my name is Jill and I am an addict. A cloth diaper addict. I am very fortunate to have a husband that is 100% behind cloth diapering. In fact, he is the one that with a 3 week old baby suggested I follow through with my instincts and order some diapers. Having a newborn with nursing issues, and various misadventures in household moving at the time (I went into labor right after we moved for my husband's work, 3 weeks early), I wanted to poke his eyes out. However, knowing through my haze that he was right, I ordered a dozen pre-folds and a couple of covers. At first I was a little...reluctant to use them. We didn't have a diaper pail, or a wetbag, or... anything. We used a Rubbermaid tub and rinsed the covers out in the sink in between uses. It made for a very small load of diapers. Once the haze cleared up a little bit, I began looking forward to using the cloth, and despising the leaky, stinky disposables. My husband, who has a sensitive nose, hated the powder stench. Having been major recyclers before, and stuck in a small apartment, the trash mounded up, and it disgusted us. We found out that we had a retailer in the local area and visited. Fluff everywhere. This odd feeling kind of crept into my veins. We bought some AIOs in small and medium, and figured if we didn't like the smalls, we could take the mediums back. Ahhh, bum genius, you got us hooked! I tried a one size pocket diaper and got that odd feeling again.

Then I found out about the Great Cloth Diaper Hunt. I found out about giveaways. I discovered free shipping, and sales, and more giveaways. I found out about being a tester and have done that twice. I held out a long time on cloth wipes, but got some free samples of solutions and decided to give it a try. Now I wish I had done it sooner! Did I mention giveaways? I've been very lucky, or handy at entering at just the right time for giveaways on several major blogs. I even won a swim diaper on Earth Day recently because I was the only one that entered! Right now I am waiting for 2 diapers that I got for doing reviews of other diapers at a major retailer (I'm sure a lot of you did this, too), and will soon use a $25 gift certificate that I won for participating in one of the Earth Day twitter chats! I also won another $10 certificate Earth Day for a diaper I've been coveting, and a credit at my local retailer's online store and got a nearly free diaper from there as well. I keep up with a lot of the cloth diapering blogs, including their facebook (and sometimes twitter) pages as well, spotting random giveaways here and there. I pay attention when I see someone posting about a fluffy giveaway, and watch their sites, if they do one, they are most likely to do another. At one point, I was entering at least 10 giveaways a day. I entered for everything I could. Now I am a bit more selective. I don't enter everything, or maybe I'll do one entry 'just because' I can't resist! I will semi-shamefully admit that I've turned on a certain cartoon with Muppets so that my daughter would watch it, JUST so I could enter giveaways or read blogs about CD'ing! It might be that that is exactly what I am doing now since she woke up early from her nap. (Don't worry, she gets lots of non-tv time playing outside too!)

I try and match my baby's diapers to her clothes if we are having company or going on an outing where they might be seen. I found out that my cousin was going to get married this summer. All the diapers I ordered recently have been snap diapers, and ones that would match the dress for the wedding. The dress has 2 colors of pink and orange and green, and yellow. I picked a blue and brown for contrast, and we'll have some other dipes with us overnight just in case. I'm probably crazy for it, but I don't want a toddler running naked through a wedding reception because she undid the velcro while we weren't looking, and I'm not covering up her fluffy bum when she twirls in her dress for anything!

The brands I currently have are:

• Chinese prefolds (retired)
• Kissaluvs contour (retired)
• Kissaluvs fitted (retired)
• Bummis Super Brite and Super Whisper Wraps (retired)
• ProRaps (retired)
• Bum Genius AIOS in small and medium (retired)
• BG 3.0 pockets (one waiting for replacement velcro is currently retired)
• BG OS AIO organic with snaps
• Apple Cheeks
• Nifty Nappy (Peachy Keen pocket)
• Baby Kanga
• Rumparooz
• Katydid
• Tweedlebug
• Gro Baby (now GroVia)
  
• Otter Blotters AI2
• Monkey Doodlez swim diaper
  

Grand total (unless I'm missing one is....78!) I had no idea I had that many until I started counting! Right now I rotate 2 batches of BG's and the snap dipes, with the gro baby's rotating around in there somewhere! I also have around 50 cloth wipes and wish I had more! I didnt' get those until my baby was a year old and now I'm kicking myself. I have 6 wetbags in varying sizes and I think that's enough. I've gotten so many diapers now that I'm using my largest one as a makeshift pail liner for a round of dipes! If my hubby has his way, we'll have one child potty trained followed closely by another one using them, or perhaps 2 at a time using them! In fact, he insists he will do diaper laundry every day if he has to, in order to keep any future babies from having to wear un"disposables" in the hospital! However, he's happy to buy more diapers to get us through if necessary. Yes, I do owe the man some major baked goods for getting me hooked on cloth. We are a greener, cleaner, happier family for it, and I've even lent support to a couple of ladies considering or full out cloth diapering, by providing information and an ear! I blog about cloth frequently and am always on the lookout for a new type of diaper to try! Anyone have any suggestions? ;-)

Contributed by Jill S.