As promised, today I have pictures! Yesterday I washed the baby clothes from newborn size to 3 months and all of my cloth diapers plus their covers. Lots of folding later, I now have a mostly set up changing table.
Bottom shelf has two stacks of pre-folds and the wider stack is my birdseye flats. Far right, diaper covers in the back, cloth wipes in the front. There’s also some diaper wipe solution in the spritzers (designed to be used with cloth wipes).
The covers are pretty damned awesome (and insanely adorable). The ones I got are wipeable and waterproof (and NOT vinyl or rubber!), so when you change the diaper you can just give the cover a quick wipe down and slap on a new diaper. No diaper pins here! Just use the velcro or snaps (most of mine are velcro) to wrap the baby up. They work a lot like a disposable diaper, and both diapers and covers can be washed together (along with the wipes). The fabrics in these are designed to be breathable – if you think of rubber pants when you hear “cloth diapers” then bear in mind that these ain’t your momma’s cloth diapers.
So I have some newborn sized covers and then a handful of “one size” covers for when Baby puts on a couple of pounds. The one size covers are by Blueberry and they have three rows of snaps along the front to adjust the rise from small to medium to large. The waist adjusts with either snaps or velcro along the top.
These are really nifty, but they’re really just the tip of the iceberg on modern cloth diapering. Basically: vastly improved covers and no pins. I would love to get some of the All In Ones or Pocket Diapers, which function even more like disposables. You have breathable, waterproof fabrics and soft, wicking materials on the inside against baby. They are built in with layers for absorbancy, and Pocket Diapers have a slot for extra stuffing (Inserts or Doublers). These are especially great for nighttime, when you may have a baby that’s a “super soaker” a night but they need to go a little longer at nighttime between changings since they are (theoretically) asleep.
I’m planning on getting some One Size bumGenius 3.0 cloth diapers for nighttime, though I realize that Baby won’t be sleeping through the night for awhile so it’s not as urgent. Those diapers can be worn as is, or they come with two inserts for extra absorbancy (like nighttime, as mentioned above). With those kind, since the diaper itself is pretty much one piece you just take it off and put the whole thing in the diaper pail and put a new one on the baby. Just like a disposable, except you’ve put the diaper in your dry pail with waterproof launderable diaper bag instead of into a trash can (and later a land fill).
I’ve also got some smaller waterproof launderable bags to go in the diaper bag for outtings, so it’ll be easy to use the cloth diapers when out and about. Yeah, we’ll have a small stash of disposables for emergencies, longer outtings, etc etc, but I certainly don’t want to use them full time.
