What style of cloth diaper
to start your cloth diaper journey is deciding what style of cloth diaper to use. For beginners, we highly recommend going with pocket diapers first, with inserts made from natural fibers i.e., hemp, bamboo, and/or cotton. Here's a link to a more in-depth explanation as to why we recommend this route (link to a blog that explains why)
What about the poop?
Easy it gets sprayed into the toilet. We highly recommend investing in a bidet. I have this one from Amazon you can get something fancy like the spray pal or you can go a little more sustainable and find something around your home like an old empty kitty litter bucket (see photo below) like we did and cut the bottom off, it's not the prettiest, but it gets the job done just the same. After you’ve sprayed as much off as possible, you can let it drip dry for a bit then place the diaper in a wet bag, or we use this small trash can with a lid. This helps me not skip our wash day allowing diaper laundry to pile up too high.
Time to test your water hardness
This sounds scary and complicated, but it's truly very simple. You can order test strips from amazon we recommend these or you can usually take in a sample to your local pet store. This sample needs to come directly from your washer. Not from your kitchen or bathroom faucets. This will tell you if you have hard water or softer water, soft water is 0-180 and hard water is 181 and up would be considered hard water. here is a link to a more in-depth wash routine for both hard water and soft water.
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Getting that perfect fit.
Cloth diapers sit on your baby differently than a disposable diaper would. They fit more like underwear. You want to ew the belly button and above the booty crack. You want to be able to squeeze two fingers in comfortably in the front to ensure the fit isn’t too snug. Always make sure the fabric is tucked up underneath the snaps (see photo b below) make sure the elastics sit in the bikini line to avoid those angry red marks. It may take a few trials and errors on the snap settings, but that’s okay. One-size cloth pocket diapers are meant to grow with your baby, so the snap placements will change as your baby grows. Like a disposable diaper, you just stretch the tabs until it feels like that will create a snug fit then just snap it.
