Prefold cloth diaper to semi-fitted - Tutorial

We use prefold diapers and covers over at our house. I find that I like them a lot better than any other cloth diaper both for use and cost. I've mastered quite a few folding techniques and the covers do a good job keeping the cotton in, but with a boy, getting that just-right-fit is difficult.

Especially, if they're like Max and like to "help" you put the diaper on by taking it off or try and run away all together.

I've been working on this for a little bit, the nice thing is that it doesn't have to be perfect since no one will really see it and if they do, chances are they're poo-stained anyway. Who's going to look closely at sewing lines at that point?

Take your flat diaper, I use unbleached indian cotton, and lay it flat. Measure out approx 5" on one side and 3.5" on the other. The five inches will be the "back" and the 3.5 the "front" when you put the diaper on. Mark these places and draw a semi-circle connecting them like this:

Sew a tack stitch along the line you made. Cut off the semi-circles along the sitch line without cutting the stitches.

Cut off the stitching along one end and "open" the diaper so the outside is now inside ripping the inside seams apart. You might have to work the folds of the middle section a bit. Sew it all the way around the edges and then turn it back right side out.

You may have to sew down the side where the fold of the diaper meets. Sew a top stitch around the whole diaper and on the end you opened sew it closed with a tight zig zag.

Less leg bulk all the absorbtion!

Back on the cloth diaper band wagon

I've been using cloth diapers since pregnant with my third babe, Cordelia. I started because Alex and Olivia would get diaper rashes and terrible yeast infections (yes, boys can get yeast infections). I lived in the Orlando area at the time and a great gal Jan Z. introduced me to cloth. I can still remember the feeling I got when she told me about cloth; it was like a switch was flipped. Could it be that easy?

The funny part of this story is that Jan and I talked about this outside Chili's one mom's night out and I inadvertently stood in a red ant pile. If that wasn't enough of an attention grabber, as I drove home I started to feel funny. I ended up with the paramedics coming out to the house twice that night. One to give me benedryl and one to take me to the hospital. I had a terrible allergic reaction to the two dozen plus ant bites all over my legs and lost feeling in my mouth, arms and legs.

After I recovered, I talked to everyone that used cloth diapers and did a ton of research online. I ended up using the most expensive all-in-one diaper - Fuzzi Bunz. These come in great colors and were easy enough to use. They resist staining well and hold up over time. They also had a great resale value if in good condition. We used these exclusively and miracle of miracles, the rashes and infections went away. I'm not sure how they've changed over the years, it's been a good five years since I bought mine and they may have changed. For the better or worse, I don't know.

At the time we had a tight budget. Fitting in an order for cloth diapers and still maintaining 'sposies while I waited for the package, then get comfortable using them, was a little tricky. But we managed to get about 12 diapers, 6 for each child with washing every other day. I supplimented with disposables at night. This both cut down trips to the doc for meds and treatment of rashes and costs on buying disposables.

I had a love/hate relationship with cloth diapers since. Selling my stash when it was too difficult to maintain or we needed the money, buying it again when we found out we had a child with super sensitive skin and back and forth.

Max in his whisper wrap.

We're now on our fifth child, Max, and have two in diapers again; Emmy and him. While Rob's away money isn't as tight but he'll be returning soon and spending $50 or more dollars every couple of weeks on diapers just dosen't make much sense. So, I'm back to cloth but have changed things up a bit.

We're now using prefolds, which look like the Gerber baby diapers. I use unbleached indian prefolds. They're far superior to the Gerber ones, they fluff up very soft and are super absorbent. Folding can be tricky but there are lots of great informative sites and video's on YouTube.

To hold them togetherI use Snappi's. They're pricey but there's no way to poke a hole in you or the baby and you can reuse them after each change. I use one a day unless it gets gross and disinfect them in the dishwasher. You can find good deals on ebay for these too.

To hold it all in, I use a diaper cover. These aren't the same things you'll find at Babies R Us. These are polyurathaine laminated cotton or PUL matterial with velcro closures. They can come in a variety of colors and styles. We prefer the ones with leg gussets as it's easy to tuck in stray diaper pieces.

Emmy playing piano in her polka-dot Bummis.

I use some deliciously wonderful baby wipes from BatikBags on Etsy. She specializes in mama pads, cloth wipes and reusable breast pads. Excellent quality!

I also found another great Etsy seller Respire. She makes some wonderful pocket prefolds which take the work out of folding, great to leave with the sitter! She also sells handmade wool covers and patters for making your own cloth prefold fitteds.

I love the prices, service and selection over at Cotton Babies too and have bought almost exclusively from them this last run. They have some great diaper packages too.

So, now we're back in cloth diapers and I stay away from the ants.

The Many Adventures of Emmy and Poo

Little, sweet, adorable, curly-headed Amelia (Emmy for short). Ah, what a lovely little baby girl. Quickly approaching the two year mark in May. My Emmy was a model baby. Slept alone, all night with nothing special needed from about 6 months old. Even tempered, easy to get along with, perfectly happy. Until recently.

What has happened to my little cuddly munchkin?? She's turning into a very demanding, opinionated, obsessive and bossy toddler. And she's turning two. I love her to pieces. I love that her personality is coming to the surface and she's becoming a "real" girl. But a mom can only take so much.

Lets start way back at the begining on...Monday. 5 short little week days streched to feel like months of work. Emmy has added some wonderful words to her vocabulary recently. Such as, "pa-hee" (potty), "uck" (yuck), "die-he"(diapie), "bum", "pee-hee" (pee-pee), "y" (wipe) and "NO!". As excited as I was hearing them for the first time, she has now entered them into a different context that is making my life somewhat miserable, at least so much as keeping a diaper on her.

At the begining of the week she decided she would like to sit on the "pa-hee". Wonderful! my almost two year old is trying to potty train herself! Yippee! Although, the whole "pa-hee" experience ends up being her stripping wherever she happens to be, me egging her on quite quickly to the bathroom and her sitting on the potty for all of 3 seconds by which time she gets completely freaked out that she's going to fall in even with me holding her. Followed by her necessity of getting a "y", actually wiping herself and closing and flushing the non-existent elimation with the perfectly clean toilet paper. This is all well and fine and dandy. Wonderful. I'm ecstatic she's wanting to learn and is taking some of the grunt work off me. My last two wouldn't potty train until 3.5-4 years which was quite a debacle.

By the middle of the week she learned that when she's got a "uck die-hee" that she can take it off and leave it anywhere she happens to be and that by saying "mommy uh-oh" or "mommy uck" that I will be ok with it. More than not she's in bed supposed to be sleeping either at night or at nap. This makes it more challenging and more laundry. I actually have an entire laundry basket filled with her wet/poopie bed linens and clothes going through the cycles.

This little gem has learned how to take off a zippered footie pajama. The following night I tried pants and a shirt and by morning she was nude with poo in the bed. I tried a zippered footie pj with a snap closure at the top and she was nude and peed within the hour.

I've been throwing around ideas on how to keep her in her jammies. Possibly turn the zippered jammies around? I'm worried about choking her.

Add snaps to her shirt/pant sets all the way around so she can't take the pants off? I'm not sure about adding snaps on knits.

Go shopping for special escape-free jammies? Not until we get paid next week.

So for the interim (or at least for tonight) I've taped her in her diaper with packing tape. Let's see her get out of this one.