More Cloth Diapers for Your Second Child?

More cloth diapers for your second child?

Our daughter was cloth diapered from a very early age. It was probably about our second day home from the hospital when we excitedly broke into our new stash of cloth diapers. We started out with a pretty great stash consisting of pocket diapers and prefolds. The pocket diapers appealed the most to me at the time. We selected FuzziBunz diapers and the vibrant colors were perfect for coordinating with summery T-shirts. After our daughter became fully potty trained at 27 months, we had no use for our fabulous diaper stash. Everything was washed, folded, and put into storage- but not for long. I was pregnant with our second child and this time it was a boy.

Our son arrived and thanks to our previous investment in cloth diapers we really didn’t need to purchase much (if anything) for diapering. This was a great feeling: “We’re saving so much money!” Every diaper change was just free money for us. In fact, we were saving so much money on diapering that we could easily justify “splurging” a bit on special things. We indulged in ordering take-out during the first weeks home with the new baby, and purchased special toys to make our daughter more comfortable with the transition to being a big sister. Using our cloth diapers again was working out wonderfully for us, but I was feeling a little sorry for our son. Being the second child does have its down-sides in that nearly everything we had for him was recycled from his sister. While most of our diaper stash was gender-neutral in color, we had several diapers that were pink or purple and we still used them for our son. Even though we felt like our diaper stash was complete, I realized there were still reasons to purchase cloth diapers for our second child:

1. Special Occasions and Photo-shoots: Getting a fabulous looking diaper for a special occasion or a photography session can be really important. It’s easy to justify purchasing a gorgeous diaper when it will be worn for a special photography session. If you are doing an infant baptism, purchasing a white diaper may be important to avoid color showing through the baptismal gown/suit.
2. Differences between children: While both our children were large at birth, our son is much chunkier in the legs than our daughter was as a baby. Therefore, certain diapers that worked well for our daughter are not a good fit on our son. Our son is also a heavier wetter than our daughter was, and diapers with more absorbency work best for him.
3. Diaper style preferences change: We loved pocket diapers with our daughter, but now we are beginning to favor All-in-two style diapers. They are a time saver (no stuffing), and they cut down on the amount of laundry. We were willing to put in the extra time prepping pocket diapers with our daughter, but our time is more limited now that we have two children to care for.
4. Gender specific stash: Some people really prefer having a stash of gender-specific diapers. If you’ve purchased an entire stash of diapers in flower prints for your first child, and your second child is a boy, you may want to (minimally) add some gender neutral diapers to your collection.

By Nissa