Ok, laugh. Laugh so hard your sides hurt and you snort. Or are you just thinking I'm crazy? It's possible you're not thinking anything at all since, well, I may be the only person reading this anyway. But you know you have your odd addiction too. Besides, I'm not the only one. There are entire online communities of CDing (Cloth Diapering) addicts. Yes, I belong to a couple and yes, we really do get online and chat about diapers and what goes in them. I'll let you ponder that for a moment.
My addiction started innocuously enough, it certainly wasn't intentional. In fact, I had thought my diapering days were over when, surprise! We got to give it a go again. I had encouraged friends that were having babies to go green, save the earth, do baby's bum a favor and forgo the disposible diapers in favor of cotton but me, well, it was too late. Cloth hadn't even been on the radar with my first three so I confessed the thousands of diapers I dumped in a landfill and moved on after a moment of silence. Until that line showed up on the stick I peed on. It wasn't long after that positive test result that I moved from "Oh my gosh, we're having another baby" to "Oh no! I have to cloth diaper it!" So between puking and IVs I reached for the computer and began my research. That's when I discovered the online communities dedicated to just cloth diapers! Crazy? Possibly. Fun, oh yeah! At first I had sticker shock but that faded after a little bit of math (hello, disposable diapers aren't CHEAP!) and I started thinking how cute and soft it would be. I became educated in the health benefits as well and considered that if we had used cloth with Lavinia and Helena perhaps our rash issues wouldn't have been such a battle. I'll never know of course but so far, Evangeline's bum has been much less red than her big sisters' rear ends ever were in their diapering days. Then I started picturing a cute little baby bottom swathed in soft fabrics with darling prints. Someone introduced me to the wonders of wool as a natural cover for cloth diapers and after puzzling over that one for a little bit I was completely hooked. Aside: yes, wool would seem like a hot option, after all we don't even own any wool for ourselves here in Houston but when someone asked me if I'd rather wear wool or a plastic bag and I got my hands on some amazingly soft, not itchy wool I saw their point. Back to my story. So I bought a few diapers. They came, we opened the packages and the girls and I oh'd and ah'd. I practiced on baby dolls and teddy bears and settled on prefolds (the kind my mom used but not the big flat ones that you have to fold, the ones that are, well, pre-folded) and some fitteds. We choose a combination of PUL and wool for covers but it wasn't long before we realized we liked wool the best. Yes folks, Evangeline really did wear wool all summer long and you know what? Not one rash. We LOVE our cloth. It's fun, cute, healthy, and good for the earth. There's all kind of info out there on cloth, I'll come back later with some of that but for now, I just wanted to share; I'm a cloth diapering addict. :)
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