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Mar 5, 2008

I miss cotton

I was reading a post today about cotton diapers and I realized just how much I missed them. Julia and Ruby are our only babies who have been exclusively in paper. Yes, they are more convenient, I'll give them that. But the cotton are so soft... And their butts are all fat and squishy in them. Cotton diapers never leave little balls of jell stuck to their tush when they get a bit too wet.

We've mostly used diaper service. I loved to put a big 'ol bag (or two) of dirty diapers out on the front porch and then get a whole new bag of clean soft white diapers in return. I would stack the diapers on the changing table with the confidence that we were covered for the week, caressing the soft, clean cotton. Seriously, they were lovely. I could never figure out how they got them so white without using bleach.

No shopping for diapers or wipes. We used washcloths and our diapers were delivered. Plus using cotton was cheaper, especially for two. You only pay once for the diaper service and just throw in a few extra bucks for some extra diapers. Now as I'm writing this, I'm not really sure how convenient paper diapers are.

When the twins returned to our care we put them back in cotton. For some reason when they returned to us they continued to have chronic diarrhea and loose stools for a year or more. The diaper service folks had recently sold to new owners who complained that our almost two year olds should not be having such dirty diapers and essentially scolded us for not changing them soon enough. This happened a couple of times and while we tried to explain the circumstances, it did not seem to change their opinion. Eventually we became tired of the insinuations that we weren't taking care of the kids and gave up cotton for paper. Shoulda, woulda... at the time we just did it.

Abe and Mia stayed in paper until they were potty trained and then we made our second mistake. We were done having kids. Six was plenty. So we gave everything away. All our fabulous onsies that buttoned up the front, instead of having to go over their heads (can't find those anywhere- JC Penney used to sell them), all clothes under 2T and all our diaper covers. We had easily 15-20 diaper covers in each size. Gone, all gone to Goodwill.

What were we thinking??

When the girls came we went with paper, purely based on the fact that we had no diaper covers and it was such an investment ($8.00 a piece) to buy them all over again. Now, I regret that decision and swear that if we ever have another baby, it will wear cotton diapers.

5 comments:

Wendy said...

I love, love my cloth diapers. I bought a few dozen prefolds and some covers for my first daughter, sewed a few myself with my rudimentary sewing skills and never looked back to to disposables. A friend gave me all her old fitteds and several more covers before my second daughter was born. I've already passed on the ones that are too small. It was such fun both receiving them and getting them.

I have to do my own washing, though- no diaper service here. No biggie, though.

Wendy said...

Oops, I meant receiving and giving them!

Jody said...

My Mia wore cloth. I used a brand called Little Lambs, as well as some Wool covers and these www.kissaluvs.com So very soft and wonderful.

I had a blast buying the diapers and all the fun covers for her etc.

If we ever had another baby in the house, it would be cloth allt he way.

MommyNay said...

Years ago when I was a nanny one of the families I worked for used a diaper service, I LOVED it and swore when I had kids I would do the same....then Olivia came along and while I did use cloth I didnt use the diaper service. When I began fostering I switched to paper diapers because the thought of rinsing and washing formula/food poopy diaps was more than I wanted to deal with having four children under age 4 and 3 in diapers. Why oh why did it never cross my mind to use a diaper service? seriously....hmmmmmmm

Anonymous said...

We used cloth too for both kiddos. Luckily, we have an alien child who potty trained herself at 14 mos and was in panties all the time at 19 mos. I missed the diapers. I feel the same about them. Disposibles suck.
xx