All Freetime, All the Time

Before baby number one was born, I decided that I didn’t want to spend thousands of dollars on disposables, so I informed my husband that cloth diapers were the way to go (for our budget and for the environment, too, of course). I did hours of online research on cloth diapering (I’m a librarian, after all), attended a class at a local retailer to see all of the varieties in person, and took the advice of other CDers (see, I learned the lingo!) to try lots of different kinds before settling on just one. I chose a few to try and added them to my baby registry. And once baby arrived, try them I did – from prefolds to pockets and everything in between. I had never imagined just how much fun it would be to outfit my baby’s bum!

I settled on mostly a mix of one-size pockets, a lot of bumGenius 3.0s and 4.0s with a few others (Fuzzibunz, Rumparooz, Kawaii, Thirsties, Charlie Banana) thrown in for good measure (and their cute prints). I was happy with my pockets and liked the flexibility of being able to double-stuff… and even replace all the inserts pretty cheaply when my front-loader did a number on my microfiber (and I hadn’t yet discovered the wonders of Tide). However, when baby number two came along, with potty training for number one still a distant dream, I began to dread the daily stuffing of the pockets. It used to be something I didn’t mind doing while I sat in front of the TV at night, but that was when I only had to wash diapers once every two or three days, not every day…and before I started nursing a case of thumb tendinitis – what they cheerfully call “mommy thumb.” Soon I decided I had had enough. I was so over the stuffing. I wanted a diaper that I could use on both of my boys, no stuffing required. So I turned to the one-size All-in-One.

Again, I tried just about all of the major brands of AIOs -- Swaddlebees, Thirsties, Tots Bots, GroVias –and I liked certain things about each of them, but it wasn’t until I met the bumGenius Freetime that I fell in love. It fastened with all the familiarity of my previously-loved 4.0s, came in all the same colors and my all-time favorite print, Albert, and yet it needed no stuffing. Even Daddy and Grandma could handle it. And just a couple of hemp inserts tucked under the flaps turned it into a worthy nighttime diaper. Best of all, right now both of my boys – my skinny 2 ½-year-old and my chunky one-year-old – are on the same rise! I began to sell off all of my other kinds of diapers and replace them with the Freetime… and now I am all Freetime, all the time!

Laurie is a children’s librarian-turned-SAHM who keeps her storytime skills fresh by reading to her two boys. She and her family live in Michigan, where they use cloth diapers, cloth napkins, unpaper towels…and Cottonelle.