Cloth Diapering with Multiples September 07 2014 1 Comment

MEET KIM & HOW SHE GOT STARTED WITH CLOTH DIAPERS

With a two year old boy showing no signs of interest in the potty and two babies on the way, I was determined to figure out this cloth diaper thing. I went to the one shop in Louisville (at the time) that sold cloth diapers, bought a few, and tried them on the no-where-near-potty-trained 35 pound, 26 month old. Problem was, he was already too big for "one size" diapers. Back to the drawing board.

Diaper Laundry on the Line

About this time another friend gave me her whole stash of small and medium Fuzzibunz. In the stash, there was a few marked petite that were just a little bigger than the mediums. They just barely fit him. So we tried it out. Lucas actually told me he preferred the soft diapers. This was a good sign. Logic told me if there were small and medium ones, there must be larges. Sure enough. And we've never looked back. I started buying them up - new, from the seconds store, and used. I got a stash of about 30 in a 6 week period. We used up the rest of the size 6 pampers at night and went with just the Fuzzibunz during the day. I remember the first night he wore a cloth diaper. I was freaked out. But it was fine in the morning. No leaks.

My mom is our daycare, so I had to get her on board as well. Now, you should know my mom was a hippie mom before it was cool. She calls it being cheap. She cloth diapered us (because disposables gave us rashes) and breastfed (because it was cheap - and without any medical support - yes, her doctors told her to quit), and baby wore (because it was the only thing that would make me stop crying the first 6 months of my life). When I first mentioned it she was, "No! It's such a mess, and they leak!" I countered with, "It's not like it was in the late seventies, Mom." And I showed her what I had and what I had researched. She helped me experiment on Lucas and realized it wasn't a big deal. And I love not having to buy 120 disposable diapers every week.

Fuzzibunz Large and X-Smalls

So, after we settled on Fuzzibunz with Lucas I started building a stash for the twins. The stash of over 40 my friend has given me was mostly girly since she had two girls. So, while I was secretly hoping for two more boys, I was also hoping for one to be a girl so I could use all those super-cute pink and purple diapers. At 20 weeks we found out our babies were still healthy and on track, and definitely fraternal - baby A was a girl and baby B a boy.

Once I got my mom, AKA daycare, on board with the cloth diapers and the two year old, I started researching newborn diapers. Assuming the twins would have no use for Lucas' large Fuzzibunz for at least a year, I went through the small and medium ones my friend gave me when she moved. From reading on the internet I learned that there was a size smaller (extra small) and that most people, including my green mom friend in town, preferred fitteds or prefolds and covers with newborns.

Cloth Diapers for 3!

- Prefolds scared me - too much work with all that folding, then putting a cover over it? I barely convinced my hubby to use the pockets - they had to already be stuffed and in the drawer.
- Fitteds seemed a little more reasonable - it's just like putting two diapers on. I could handle that.

My friend told me about a deal a good company was having on fitteds and I bought about 18 for a great price. I bought some newborn/extra small covers to go with them, as well as some XS Fuzzibunz.

The twins arrived at exactly 37 weeks after a lovely week long stay for me at Floyd Memorial Hospital and Spa thanks to pre-eclampsia. They were born perfectly healthy at 6 lbs and 6 lbs 15 oz. Lincoln was bigger than about half of his singleton counterparts in the nursery.  We grow big babies around here, even when they come in sets.  :)

We used disposables in the hospital, and when we left they gave us about 7 packages of newborn pampers. Those, along with the few packages friends/family had given us despite our pleas to not buy diapers, lasted about 3 weeks - just enough time for the cords to fall off. And we moved into the cloth stash!

Twins vs. Toddler Diaper Stash

The fitteds and covers worked wonderful. The pockets worked okay, but my girl was, and still is, long and skinny, so they didn't work as well on her. My mom loved the fitteds and covers, because they never leaked, but hubby wasn't a fan, so we left that stash at mom's and kept the pockets at home.

Around 2.5 months we moved into small Fuzzibunz and OS pockets and sold off the newborn stash. By 10 months they moved into the medium Fuzzibunz and OS on the tallest rise setting. And now, 10 months later, they're still in them - we're just moving out on the hip snaps.

My stash, as you can imagine, is pretty large. Basically, it's two stashes (one at home and one at my mom's house) for two kids. I haven't counted, but at any given time, I've had around 70 - 90 diapers in use. (Details in a forthcoming post.) It does add some work to my already hefty workload, but I think it's worth it.


Learn more about Kim and her previous posts!
Meet Kim
... and more coming soon!