Thursday July 22, 2004
C & P from MDC:
Question on diapering asking the benefits of flats
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The main “pro” of a flat is the drying time. They are good for line drying and backpacking/hiking because you can just hook them to your backpack and they will dry in the sun. If you are talented at folding them, you can get a super-customized fit too. As long as the weave of the flat is loose enough for the snappi to get a grip, you can use a snappi on them. I have heard that hemp and some tight weave flannels don’t work as well, but another mama might have a more exerience with that.
One interesting note: I only have one package of flats and never used them as diapers (only burp rags and stuffing things) but asked my mom one time how to fold them to use as diapers. She picked them up and immediatly asked if I had cut them in half. She said that the flats from when I was little were literally double the size. We speculated that since most people used them as burp rags and not diapers, they probably changed the size since the original size would be huge for a burp rag. btw…34 years later, she could still remember how to fold it without even thinking about it. She said that she remembers how much she loved making little stacks of folded up diapers ready for me. |
I hope I can do as good of job with my kids as my mom in not being pushy. My mom was shocked that I dismissed cloth diapering outright when pregnant, but she didn’t bug me about it. When I started considering CDing, she relayed both the good and the hard parts of CDing that she remembered, but was supportive of me trying it. After I had been doing it a while and totally loved it, she told me how glad she was that I decided to CD. She said she still remembers how happy it made her to see diapers hanging out on the line blowing in the breeze. It was a nice connection.
The feeling of connection to women from ages past is something that things like cloth diapering really bring to the forefront. There is something so fullfilling about it, the ritual of changing and cleaning diapers is so timeless. Your mom, your grandma, your great grandma….all the other things that change with time, this is something that remains.
I am also much more aware of how he is physically because of CDing. When you use sposies, you fold the things up so fast, you don’t really see anything. When you clean CDs, you know things like “I need to watch him better with crayons” and “I should cut the raisins in half because he obviously isn’t chewing them well” and “too much green juice”. lol.
I am also just shocked that people can’t smell how horrible the sposies smell. I can’t believe I didn’t notice it. You can tell whether they pee or poo from across the room in a sposie! The smell of the diapers permeates the entire house and it is so NASTY! With cloth, you can’t really smell anything unless there is a bad poo or they are getting ready to be, or are, sick. That is one of the reasons we go coverless (well, that and he will rip a cover on..lol) is because I can’t tell if he needs a change unless I can see or feel it and covers get in the way of that. The cost savings in diaper rash cream alone is substantual. He gets a rash sometimes, but in sposies, he pretty much had a rash any time I forgot to put butt rash cream on him. Now I don’t even use cream most of the time. Just warm tap water on a washcloth.
Of course, as I finished this post, ds comes up to me needing a diaper change. It somehow doesn’t seem quite as nostalgic when you are scraping poop off a butt. lol.
Ah, yes. I get all warm and fuzzy whenever I think about cloth diapering, too, right up until: a. the poop scraping b. the attempt to use the minishower to spray off said poop from diaper while also keeping a toddling 11-mo from unrolling all the toilet paper c.wiping sprayed poop off the side of the bathtub from minishower attempt gone wrong.
But all the rest of the time, I love using cloth!