Our wash routine was also something that came relatively easy as well. I had to tweak it a bit in the beginning, and again when we moved, but never had any major issues or problems. For those first 18 months, I wondered why anyone wouldn’t want to cloth diaper. Then I had my son.
I was thrilled when I found out I was pregnant again when my daughter was only nine months old. I already had a stash that could easily diaper three children at once, but when I found out I was having a boy, and couldn’t resist adding a few more. I was fully prepared (or so I thought) to cloth diaper two kids at once. I figured I might have to do a couple extra loads, but didn’t think diapering one or two babies would be a big change. Let’s just say those first few weeks weren’t as smooth as a transition as I thought.
I can’t blame all the changes on just my diaper laundry. Our family of three was now a family of four, with a toddler who was into everything and a newborn who was nothing like my daughter was at that stage. For the first few weeks, washing every other day just wasn’t cutting it. I had to wash every day in order for the diapers to get clean. My husband was a huge help when I was stuck on the couch nursing my son, but I still wanted to be in control of the diaper laundry. To make matters worse, the newborn diapers that worked wonderfully on my daughter (bumGenius newborn AIO) leaked every single time I put them on my son. I ended up using mostly prefolds and covers on my son, and they worked well. I was struggling to keep up with the laundry and ended up buying some disposables for my son.
I hated to spend money on disposables when I had so many newborn diapers, but it was a huge help for a few days until I started to figure out how to balance everything. Once we adjusted to our new life, I was still baffled that the diapers that worked so well with my daughter, didn’t work at all with my son. I figured once he chunked up a bit and was fitting in the bumGenius one size, the leaks would stop. But they didn’t. I knew how to properly put on a cloth diaper, and they looked like the fit him well, but almost every time he would leak. In strange places, too, like out of the back of the diaper while he was being held, and after only being in a new diaper for five minutes.
I decided to start putting him in our daughter’s bulletproof nighttime solution: fitteds and wool. Luckily I had bought a few Sloomb covers and longies just for him, and they worked great. But then I was faced with an even bigger problem. Should I buy more wool and fitteds (probably the most expensive cloth diapering option), or hold out and see if the BG would start to work better? I knew that my son would grow and change quite quickly, so I decided to just buy a few more fitteds and wait to see how the BG would fit him in a few more weeks.
My son is now five months old, and I’m happy to say that the BG are fitting better and the leaks are becoming less frequent, although we still are getting them. I am slowly trying to buy more wool and fitteds, because they just work the best on my son. The biggest lesson I learned after adding another child into our cloth diapering journey is that what works on one child, might not work on another. I wish I wouldn’t have had bought so many of the same kind of diapers before seeing what would work on my son. Cloth diapers have a great resale value though, so I plan on selling the ones that definitely don’t work to fund more of the ones that do.
Bio: Jamie is a SAHM to two under two. She lives with her husband in Washington, D.C. and enjoys crochet, knitting and reading in her (few and far between) freetime.
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