Cloth Diapers

Cloth Diapers

We decided to use cloth diapers. We knew a handful of people who used cloth diapers, but most of our friends, family, co-workers, etc. was on the disposable track. When asked about cloth diapers, they all expressed “Well, we thought about cloth diapers, but…” and then an excuse is used on why they did not take that route. I never want to come across as expressing that these excuses are bad. On the contrary, I think you have to be a little weird to choose cloth diapers in the first place; they are a lot of work. Disposable diapers are easy. That is quite possibly the most used, and simply put, the best reason anyone can use. Excuse me cloth diaper users, but it’s true. Don’t deny it.

It seems that every other factor between cloth diapers and disposables is a wash. Cost? Wash. Seriously. The only difference is you’re paying for diapers $20 each time you go to the grocery story, or $100 each time your baby gains eight pounds. Buying both is just plain silly. You have to choose one or the other. Oh, and cloth diaper people, don’t kid yourselves. You don’t just buy cloth diapers once. Sorry. You buy different sizes. You buy different brands. You buy new diapers because the old ones get a funky smell that you can’t get out. It happens, I don’t care what you try to do to stop it.

Cloth diapers don’t travel well either. When you have to do laundry every three days, a week-long trip to Disneyland sucks. A two-day road trip sucks. A weekend at the beach sucks. Trying to use someone else’s laundry facility sucks. Cloth diapers are work, and they are a big commitment.

With that said, we actually are so happy that we chose cloth diapers. Shocked? Yeah well, it’s all about perspective. When we chose cloth diapers, we talked about it and decided that to do both cloth diapers and disposables was not an option. It was one or the other. But that doesn’t mean we stuck with a single kind of cloth diaper.

We originally bought a package of 30 Fuzzybuns, which consisted of a diaper cover with an equal number of inserts. Upon further research, for our purposes it didn’t make sense to have 30 covers that we had to keep track of. We ended up selling most of them, but kept some as a nighttime diaper option. This way we could use a double liner for longer periods.

When Michelle first came, she was a skinny little chicken-legged thing. We chose G-diapers because they do very well with skinnier legged babies. Plus, the diaper consisted of a cover, and a liner, and an insert. The great thing about a G-diaper is that if the mess is contained, you only need to change the insert. Bigger messes may soil the liner, and the biggest messes soil all three. But there’s flexibility, and that is what we like about G-diapers. We love these things, and using these diapers actually convinced several people in our lives that cloth diapers were actually kind of cool!

Between months six through nine, we tried some pre-fold diapers. They were okay, but our daycare providers, and myself for that matter, truly didn’t like this option. Once Michelle grew out of them, they were gone.

We tried a larger size of G-diapers for a toddler Michelle, but they don’t work the same magic for a thunder-thigh toddler. After many many instances of the diaper leaking, we decided to try Best-Bottoms. These seem to work great for our busy girl, and we will hopefully use these until she’s potty trained. The great thing about them is that they adjust in size, and have a nighttime insert you can buy.

The trick with cloth diapers is you have to commit, but you have to be flexible enough to try different brands to find the one that fits you and your child best. It has taken me a long time to adjust to this flexibility piece because my wife used the argument that they would be less expensive than disposables. The good news is that we have only bought disposable diapers twice in Michelle’s existence: once when she was an infant, and the second was when we moved to Virginia and went two weeks without laundry facilities.

There’s so much to say when it comes to cloth diapers, and I feel like I’ve already rambled enough. We have only experienced a sliver of the cloth diaper brands out there, but we have some feedback about all of them, good and bad.

Until next time.

Critters

This morning, as Nicole was getting ready for work, she was standing in the kitchen and asked if I had seen a rubber band anywhere. Sitting at the dining room table, I looked to see one right next to me. I quickly grabbed it and fired it at her, as I would expect any loving husband to do. She bent over and the rubber band struck her shoulder blade, then hopped up and landed directly onto the center of her back. She immediately began flailing her arms and jumping around screaming, apparently under the assumption that some giant critter had repelled off the ceiling and onto her back! To see the rubber band on the floor, and her husband grabbing his sides from laughing so hard, she decided it was appropriate to hit me in the arm.

Worth it.

Plans

It wouldn't come as a surprise; we knew the day might come when we left the sanctuary of everything we knew, packed up our things, and traveled to destination unknown for Nicole's doctoral program. We had been planning on this potential move for four years. I would work and get her through school. Then in her fifth year of the program, she would find an internship somewhere, and we could start a new adventure in a distant land. I would be able to explore the area and possibly find work in our new place while she completed the internship thus earning her doctorate degree. It was a perfect plan. We were not planning on Michelle coming into the picture.

"Surprise! You're going to be a daddy!" Those are not the words she used. Nicole had never expected to have kids. If anything, she had always thought she would adopt. And that would be after she finished school, and after we had our lives figured out, and at that rate, only after we started receiving our social security checks would we be ready to have kids. We had always played it safe, and after four years of marriage, quite enjoyed supplanting children with our dogs.

Surprised we were. But the scene that played out was by no means the congratulatory cliché we like to see on our feel good TV shows. We were in between houses and living with my parents. I got home from work and she took me aside. "I have to tell you something. You are not going to react, or smile or say anything to anybody." She then opened the bathroom linen closet, reached back behind the towels, and pulled out a ziplock baggy. Inside was a stick with a plus on it. I’ve watched enough of these silly commercials to have a general idea of what this meant. "Is this what I think it is? Are you serious?" was all I could stammer out, a big stupid grin on my face. What she didn’t see was the ice-cold bowling ball in my stomach, which was keeping me planted on the ground instead of jumping with joy. This wasn't part of our plan. It was exciting, but a stretch from anything we had ever considered prior to that moment. Funny how quickly plans can change.

The fortunate and unfortunate thing is that I married a stubborn girl. Nicole was going to finish school. We were in agreement about that. We’d devoted way too much time, energy and money for her to stop now. It would just be a little more work. The fact was, the baby had picked its timing perfectly. Nicole had front loaded her schoolwork, and was way ahead of her requisites. Had the baby arrived any earlier, it may have made it more difficult for her to put in those 90-hour weeks. Had the baby come any later, and it may have compromised her ability to get a good internship site.

The question then was “what are you going to do?” This was directed at me. If we were to move across the country, I would have to quit my job. However, I now had a different role to play in this team. Where I had once had ambitions of finding a new job in a new land, or making coffee at some random coffee shop; pursuing my own internship, or just playing songs on the street corner for all I knew, all that was out the window. I was now tied to a person I’d never met before. There wasn’t a question of what I’d be doing during Nicole’s internship. I was going to become a domestic dad.