If At First You Don't Succeed...

I have always been interested in cloth diapering. I am now a mother of 4!! I have a four year old (almost 5), a two year old (almost 2), a 17month old and a 1 month old. Two boys with my two girls in the middle. I started my journey back when my oldest son was eight months old. I heard about cloth diapering and just knew I had to give it a try. I read all the articles and blogs and thought I had it down pat. Oh how I was wrong. When I got my first BGs in the mail I just couldn't get over how cute they were. I prepped them and got them on him right away. Within the first few days we started battling rashes and leaks. No matter what I did I just couldn't get the rashes to go away either. I tried less detergent and then more detergent. I changed him every two hours and he slept in sposies at night. I finally read up on liners and decided to give that a try. Finally after more than a month of trying and almost giving up a few times I found my answer. A liner with just a little diaper cream (cloth safe of course) and he was fine. Its almost like his skin had to adjust to it cause after a few more months sometimes I wouldn't use a liner and he didn't rash. I thought I knew all about cloth diapering. We did CD til he was probably 18months old and finally I switched him back to sposies and just decided to go that route again. I loved my cloths but with two kids so little I found I couldn't keep up with the laundry etc.

I decided to try again with my third little one. We discovered Alvas and thought they were budget friendly and decided to give them a try. I will say they have quite a few adorable prints and she looked so precious in her cloth BUT they started leaking and I just couldn't get them to work. I thought to myself surely if cloth diapering worked for me last time and I got through the hurdles I could again. I tried for a month and finally convinced myself that maybe I shouldn't attempt this now with two in diapers, one potty training, and one on the way. I sold the lot on ebay and went back to my disposables. I felt like I had failed in a way because I wanted it to work so badly.

For some reason when my fourth came along I just had this feeling I wanted to cloth diaper again! My mother and husband thought I was nuts since I had done this twice before. But I was determined this time to do it and to keep him in it. No more disposables was my goal. I started reading all the articles and blogs again and realized maybe I didn't know as much as I thought. All of a sudden there were hemp inserts and bamboo. Somehow I had missed all of these before. I started buying diapers here and there creating my stash. I had used the bumGenius with good luck but I wanted something different. I also had never CD a newborn so this was fun to learn about too. I have some wool covers ordered and fitteds and prefolds. I decided to try all new things and to learn all I could before I start him. I want to know everything!! I have many pocket diapers now that I plan on using when he is big enough. My recent discovery of Tots Bots has me super excited. I have never seen such cuter prints. Well then of course something came up again. When my son was 2 weeks old I fell and broke my elbow in 8 places. I have been down for 2 weeks now and finally on the mend when my Dr tells me that I have to have another surgery to fix it again because it shifted. I was so excited to start my cloth but now I have to wait since I can't really change him.

The reason for this post was just to say not to give up. To give you some encouragement if your starting to wonder if you can really do this or not. I thought that myself once. Almost boxed my diapers up and said Im done. But most of the problems you will face are easy fixes that you just don't realize til after you solve it. And you probably will have multiple tries before you figure it out. Just don't give up :) If you have issues, work through them. I almost threw in the towel so many times with my first. Rashes, leaking, it just seemed like it wasn't going to ever work but eventually it did. If you have troubles search for an answer and try the different things. I also recently joined an AWESOME support group that is very wonderful at providing answers as well. I am determined that this is going to work this time and plan on going COMPLETELY cloth!!! I have some Fluff Mail on the way and plan on ordering a little bit more now (can't help it, its addicting). I can't wait to get his little bum in that adorable fluff!! :) That's my cloth diaper journey so far! :)

Bio: Whitney is a stay at home mother to four little ones. She is married to a great man and lives in a nice town in Indiana.

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