Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Cutting up our t-shirts

I know this looks strange, but it's really not. When I was pregnant with Suzi, I decided I'd definitely be going with cloth diapers. We had cats before, and after all that litterbox-scooping and picking up poop out of the floor, I figured it'd be nothing to wash a few baby diapers... right? Well, at first I procrastinated because at birth Suzi was too small for the diaper covers we'd purchased. Then, to tell the truth, I was just scared to death. I once got up the nerve to put a cloth diaper on her when she was a couple of months old, but as luck would have it she pooped that first one and I was scared to wash it, so I threw the whole thing away. (I'm so ashamed.) Luckily it was only a cheap diaper cover and a Chinese prefold, not one of those fancy $18 all-in-one diapers.

When I went to the babywearing group a couple of weeks ago and saw the other moms using cloth diapers with their babies, it made me want to try harder. I had even noticed some of the moms using washable wipes, so I recently asked Julie what she used for wipes and she said cut up t-shirts work fine! So that was our little arts and crafts project for the evening. We were surprised at how many wipes we could make out of just two shirts. She went to bed wearing a cloth diaper but soaked it so we've changed her already--and it wasn't that bad! The t-shirts make soft, luxurious wipes compared to the disposable ones. We'll gradually buy her some better diapers, but right now we're using what we've got.

I have to go feed her now. It's 10:55 (not sure what the timestamp says) but we've had a hard day and she's not wanting to sleep. Wish us luck!

4 comments:

Vicky said...

Good for you, let me know how it goes. You are braver and smarter than me when it comes to this subject. :)

Jules said...

We took baby steps when we first started, too. It really is so easy once you get going. I love a wool soaker at night. Never leaks. Nope, never.

Theresa said...

Bless your little heart. I didn't realize all those years ago that I was working on reducing my carbon footprint! I just kept thinking of how much money I was saving. But I surely did hate the diaper pail thing. How do modern mothers handle this - still the soaking in the diaper pail?

Theresa said...

PS - I remember all the mothers at church used empty bread bags for transporting dirty and wet diapers.