Saturday, November 20, 2010

So Far, So Good

So it's been 2 days now & I already have a lot of thoughts. Some good, some neutral, some bad. I promised that I would give my honest opinion about everything & I don't intend to stop now.

So here's the good: It's nowhere near as bad as I was afraid it would be! Of course, we have yet to deal with a major, messy poop, but I'm sure that's just a matter of time. And my opinion might change then, but I'll let you know. But for everyday use, not much different than disposable diapers. I had this fear that they wouldn't be anywhere near as absorbent as the disposables and that I would have leaks all the time. Not true. Well, I'm sure that the disposables ARE more absorbent, in that you can probably leave them on your child for much longer, but I'm not so sure that's the best idea anyway. When we traveled to Vegas back in December, there was a fiasco at the airport & at the hotels, and poor K ended up staying in the same disposable diaper for about 5 hours!! I felt awful! To my surprise, there were absolutely no leaks. I'm not so sure that would be the case with cloth, unless you were prepared enough & stuffed the hell out of it. I did not anticipate the 5 hours to begin with, so we probably would have had leaks. But now I'm totally off topic....

For the most part, I stuck to the regular insert alone in the BG's, and I let K go about 2-3 hours before I would change her and we were fine. That's usually about the length of time I would go with disposables anyway, so that's totally the same as usual for us. Part of me wants to try to push the limits to see what I can get away with so that I can be more comfortable in the future, but I'm sure that will come with time, and I don't really want K sitting in the same diaper for too long anyway.

We also ended up taking a day trip to my mom's house (which is about an hour away) so I got a brief insight into what cloth is like on the go. Of course, I completely forgot to buy a wetbag for travelling, so I ended up using a large freezer bag instead. Worked just as well though I don't recommend for long-term use, lol.

We did have a minor poop incident, which again wasn't much different than diapering as usual. We have been accustomed to flushing K's poop already, so that was nothing out of the ordinary. But I had my concerns about just tossing a dirty diaper into the laundry. But I did it and was amazed that it came back out clean as a whistle! I didn't really believe that would happen, I thought there would be a residual stain or something, but there was nothing!! And what surprised me even more was that usually when K poops, we can smell it 3 rooms away, lol. This time we had no idea it happened! So I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing!

And so far there has not been a bad diaper pail type smell in K's room. We had a problem with the disposables stinking up her whole room & ended up getting rid of that diaper pail completely. So we were nervous about storing dirty diapers in there again, but I don't think there was enough time for them to sit there to stink! We'll see if that changes in the future.

But there are still some things I am not so sure of. Since we only have 7 diapers in total, we still have to use a combination of cloth & disposable and probably will have to for a while until we can build our stash up. That being said, we did end up with a big messy poop in a disposable that I wasn't sure how I would handle with cloth. I'm considering buying a diaper sprayer for this type of situation, but I'm not sure if they are worth the money or not, and even if we buy one we won't have it for some time yet. We will see what happens when it happens I guess.....

The other thing I'm not thrilled with was the Flip Stay-Dry system. We only have one of them so it has only been used once, and I'm not sure if it's the cover or the insert that I don't like. But when the insert got wet, it bunched up in-between K's legs and got really skinny & I felt that left room for some pretty bad leakage. We did not actually have a leak, so maybe it is fine, I don't know. And also, if there were to be a poop incident, it wouldn't be the easiest to clean off into the toilet. I would be afraid that the insert would fall in there as well since there really wasn't much holding it into the cover to begin with. On the plus side, there was no reaching into a pocket to grab out a wet liner either. My mom has purchased some prefolds for us that we will try out later on this month, so maybe the covers will be different with those. But for right now it's not my favorite.

Another negative is that the diapers take up A LOT of room in the diaper bag & I actually ended up having to switch back to a bigger bag. I was annoyed by this because we had finally moved down to a large purse-type bag that I could fit all of mine & K's stuff into, and now we had to go back to a big diaper bag.

None of these negatives are majorly earth-shattering and are not enough to deter me from moving forward with cloth diapering. I am interested to see what else unfolds over the next few weeks! Any suggestions you may have for the issues we are facing so far?

2 comments:

  1. a few things - one of the first questions people usually ask me is about the smell of the diaper pail, and i always tell them it's way better than a disposable pail! i can't even stand the smell of a wet disposable, let alone a whole pail of mixed excretion sitting for days. it's awful. as your diapers get used more, you'll probably notice an ammonia smell, but that's when you do a heavy duty wash or with the BG's bleach & it's fine after. you can also try rockin a soak or the rockin green 'funk rock' that just came out.

    i have a flip cover i use with our prefolds and i love love love it. i used the inserts down in florida when we stayed with my sister-in-law, and i was not at all a fan. it did the same thing with t, bunched up & slid down. no good. with prefolds it's the best cover i own.

    and yeah, cloth does take up a lot of space in the diaper bag. but it's worth it & you get used to it! :)

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  2. Julia, I also don't know if I don't have a stink because the pail is currently open & there is tons of airflow to it....If we do get an ammonia smell I know that I will have to strip the diapers ASAP because I'm a smell person - I don't do bad smells well at all! And I am glad that you had the same experience with the flip insert! I did plan on using it with the prefolds once we get them from my mom, so hopefully I'll love it then :)

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