Adventures in Cloth Diapering

My daughter just turned one year old this month.   When I was pregnant with her, I quickly became disturbed by the overwhelming cost of disposable diapers, as well as the environmental impact. I wouldn't say I'm overly "green," but the thought of adding thousands of diapers to a landfill gave me serious pause.

I started to look into cloth diapering.  I soon discovered that there are many fancy and expensive (or so it seemed at the time) options.  I didn't see the need for those and began my quest to learn how to fold and pin on a regular, old fashioned "pre-fold" diaper.  I think my mom encouraged this as well.  You can read about that little adventure here.

I also tried my hand at making cloth diapers. I found a free pattern online.  I then bought all kinds of cute baby flannel fabric at Fabric.com. I was so excited to get started! I cut out several diapers and made a production out of it. I think I made five to start. I also started pulling out cute fabric from my quilting stash.

While my homemade diapers were very cute (see pictures below), I had missed an important step.  Being a first time mommy, I had no idea how much wet & waste babies create.  I just assumed from reading the blog with the free pattern that the flannel and the insert must be enough to absorb the wetness. I later discovered that not to be the case.

I tried the pre-folds with gerber covers for a while, but those covers became hard to come by.  At that point, I just stopped cloth diapering all together.  As my little Biscuit got closer to her first birthday, my interest in cloth diapering became refueled for some reason.

Stay tuned for more posts about my adventures in cloth diapering, as well as links to great places to buy cloth diapers and other baby supplies, contests & giveaways!