It Started With One

One Diaper. That's all it took for me to fall in love with cloth diapers and become a full-time cloth diapering mama. We received hundreds of disposable diapers in all sizes at baby showers, and we were content using those because they were free, but I had always wanted to try cloth diapers. I knew the benefits: less waste, better for baby, less expensive, and lets not forget how cute they are, but my husband was not going to have any part of it. I let the idea of cloth diapering go, but still thought about it from time to time.

I began researching swim diapers one day when I read that an unstuffed pocket diaper made a good swim diaper. After searching around Etsy.com, one of my favorite websites, I found a Work at Home Mom who made cloth diapers, and she had some CUTE ones! I fell in love with a lime green diaper with white and blue daisies on it. It was a one size pocket diaper, and I told myself that this would be perfect for my baby girl for summertime!! I ordered it, and waited for it to come in the mail. When it arrived, I took it out of the package, felt the softness, strapped it on my baby girl, and just knew that those crunchy, smelly disposable diapers had to go!!

I immediately started researching diapers online, and before I knew it, I had more fluffy mail on the way. My husband, of course, was not too happy with this, but we sat down and had a talk about it. I promised him I would not throw his Pampers away, but asked if he would be willing to put the cloth diapers on her during the day. I assured him that nothing would change for him. They would be like disposables as far as he was concerned, he would just pick one up, put it on her, and throw the dirty one in a diaper pail instead of the Diaper Genie! To my surprise, he agreed!! Once we built up a stash, and were cloth diapering full time, he started to comment on how much pee they would hold, how her poops didn't smell as bad, and how her clothes still fit over all of the fluff! Now he's quick to tell anyone who comments on her cute fluffy bum about her diapers.

What started out as a curious purchase has turned into quite the obsession. Our diaper stash is composed entirely of pocket diapers from brands including BumGenius, Happy Heinys, Rumparooz, Kawaii, and 3MonkeysClothDiapers. We have all we need to diaper her now, but I justify buying new ones because "she doesn't have that color yet!" I think it's a pretty good excuse!

Switching to cloth has had its challenges, from learning how to travel, to packing the diaper bag, to finding the right washing routine, but these are small obstacles that with a little work we got through! We've been full time cloth diapering for 3 months now and we will never go back to disposables!

My name is Jenilyn Mulkey, and I am the proud mommy of a 9 month old baby girl, Grayson Leigh. I am a Medical Laboratory Scientist by trade, but by real love is being a wife, mommy, and craftaholic!