12 Days, 8 Month Old Twins, and Cloth Diapers

I have just returned from a 12 day trip with my 5 children. My oldest being 6 years old and my youngest being 8 month old twins. I took them without my husband, who had to work, to visit my family in Wisconsin, which is a 6.5 hour drive if you only have to stop once for gas. Add 5 children, including nursing twins, and it took 9 hours to get to the Eau Claire area. I was not in a good mood upon arrival but we all survived and made it home again 12 days later.

I knew I had to bring my cloth diapers on this trip because I was going to be gone for nearly two weeks and had access to do laundry when ever I needed too. Really, how could I not bring them? I would have had to bring about 160 diapers to make that amount of time in disposable diapers! On a side note I figured it out that I would need 315 diapers a month with twins! Double that when they were newborns! My mom also is happy that I use cloth and tells me all the time that my diapers are welcomed to be washed at her house.

Packing up the diapers and figuring out just what I would need to make it about 2 days so I could wash every other day was a bit of a process. It was only a process because I have many different diapers and I like each one for different reasons. I opted to take mostly pocket diapers. I choose pockets because I like the ease of use on the go. I prestuff them so it is easy to just grab and go.

Here is a list of what I took with us. Keep in mind that this is for twins. If there was only one child I could have gotten by with only half of this amount. 24 pocket diapers, which included some bumGenius!, FuzziBunz, Nubunz, and Cutiepoops. I also had one BumEssentials along for the trip. I brought two Small Weeds Hemp inserts and 2 Thirsties Hemp boosters for night time diapering. I did grab some Duo Wraps and a couple Bummis Diaper covers to go with the diapers I am testing for a company, for my back up diapers if I ran out of pockets during laundry day. I had about 20 cloth wipes with too. I washed when I was down to one or two wipes left. I brought along a large Planet Wise wet bag to hold dirty diapers until wash day. That wet bag is AWESOME! I was able to stuff all the diapers I needed for the trip when they were clean in this bag while traveling! I also had one WAHMIES regular sized wet bag for the diaper bag. Of course I brought my own cloth diaper detergent, Lulu’s in the Fluff Glamour Wash in Zippity Doo Dah. That scent reminds me of Fruit Striped Gum. That list seems so long! But it all fit nicely in my Planet Wise wet bag except the detergent of course.

While at my mom’s I had to improvise with no clothes line so I use clothes pins and hangers to hang them on the side of my mom’s deck. After a few days like that with such high humidity I ended up just using the dryer on low because it was taking too long to dry outside. The one really great thing that happened was my ammonia issue went away! No more stinky diapers! I couldn’t figure it out right away then I realized that my mom’s hot water was a lot hotter than mine. So much so that I was only filling it half way with hot water before switching it to warm because I was nervous my PUL might delaminate. I guess just like boiling inserts is sometimes the only way to get rid of the stinky and ammonia issues maybe just turning your hot water before diaper laundry could do the trick for diapers too!

Using my Cloth Diapers while taking our many day trips to visit and go shopping was a breeze. The only difference than using disposable diapers was that I took mine home with me at the end of the day. Otherwise, I had no leaking issues even when the babies had to wait for a diaper change longer than usual. When we took a long car ride I just put in one of the hemp inserts along with the normal micro fiber insert and away we went. I never had a leak! The twins were only changed once during the drive to and from our home in Northern Minnesota. I did have to be sure a hemp insert was in the diaper at night as they both were waking to nurse in the night because of teething and not being sure of where they were sleeping. Even babies know the comforts of home.

I was fortunate to visit many family members and friends while in Wisconsin. During those visit I was also able to show off my cloth diapers! So many people were awed in how nice and easy cloth diapering has become and I could see the wheels tuning in their heads. I would love to say that my cloth diapers were the thing people commented on the most but, they took a back seat to people realizing I took the trip by myself with 5 children and how adorable our twins are and how much they have grown. Ellie’s little bum certainly looked pretty underneath her dress at a family wedding.

By Alyssa N.