Cloth Diaper Challenge: Day 1

By Natali Del Conte-Morris

I don't have the wet bag, diaper pail, or diaper spray yet, but I still started my 30-day cloth diaper challengelast night. I received a few samples from SoftBums, which I concede are super cute. I may have gotten a little overzealous, so I put them on my little boy even though I don't have all the proper gear yet.

I'm only two diapers in, so I have a cursory impression to share. First, it was not as easy as I had hoped. I had to watch the instructional videos two or three times. I was confused with the extra insert that the babies in the videos have between their legs. I finally concluded that those pieces of fabric are there to protect the private parts of the baby models from the prying eyes of perverts, right?

Another question: what do you do with the poopoo diapers? Do you throw those in the wetbag too? My son did soil past the shell. Are you supposed to dump the inserts, the shells, and the wetbag into the washing machine at once? 

These may seem like simple questions, but I figured that if I have them, other moms must have them too, so I might as well learn in public.

Also, cloth diapers are a lot more bulky than disposables. My husband walked in on me diapering and said, "That's the biggest diaper I've ever seen." Do you buy baby clothes one size up to compensate for this?

I did notice that my son's skin inside of the diaper was not shriveled and red like it normally is when I remove a disposable diaper. I attribute that to a lack of synthetic material that is meant to dry out everything around it. That is certainly comforting.

And of course, these things are adorable! I didn't understand what the blog commenters meant when they said that cloth is cuter until now. These things are way cute! And I have to think they feel better on my baby's bottom than spongy paper.

My son fell fast asleep in the SoftBums Echo System. This all has me thinking: I'm a high tech reporter who reviews gadgets for a living. How did I come to be reviewing diapers? A crap job but someone's gotta do it! :)

Note: This post was originally posted to my personal blog, Mommy Beta.