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As much as I love Cloth Diapering, the experience was not entirely without its own set of problems. But none without a solution. With a little tweaking of the rules and some creative ideas, I was able to get a great CD experience with my newborn so far.

1. Breastfed Baby Poop Soils the Diaper Covers Every Time

The entire idea of a few diaper covers and more inserts or prefolds goes to the dumps when a newborn who is exclusively breastfed, starts pooping. A simple solution would be to place your insert outside the pocket instead of inside it so you only have to change the insert and not the entire diaper along with the cover. Diaper/insert changes are so frequent during the first few weeks that the insert will not stay in contact with the baby’s skin for long. And in a few days, when you begin to understand your baby’s patterns, you can only keep the liner outside of the pocket until the baby poops after feeding. Once the poop is out and the baby is off to sleep fora good 2-4 hours, you can put the insert inside the pocket. You might also want to use hemp or bamboo liners/inserts till you have to have them touch the baby’s skin.

2. Washing  Baby Poop Off Washable Diapers/Inserts/Liners

One of the major reasons parents shy away from cloth diapering is the thought of having to handle the gross poopy diapers with their hands. Now, the first good piece of news here for moms who are breastfeeding is that breastfed baby poo is completely runny and easily washable. Just throw them in with the rest of the laundry. At the most, you might have to do an extra wash cycle. For formula fed babies, consider having a health faucet/diaper sprayer type of attachment added near your toilet. It is a little hand shower spray type of sanitary fixture that you can use to spray  off the poop into the toilet without touching it at all.

3. Diapers and Inserts Not Drying Out

We faced that problem when it rained too much and there was hardly any sun. Having more inserts and making temporary inserts out of absorbent cloth was what we resorted to. The next morning, we ordered more inserts online.

4.  AIOs are Bulky and Ill-Fitting for Newborns

Although I have had no problems with diaper leakages with All-in one diapers, the aesthetics certainly go wrong! My tiny little baby looks super-bulky at the waist and upto the crotch. Now I don’t know if this counts as a solution, but it certainly has worked for me. Keep your newborn Swaddled! Swaddling the baby is recommended for at least 3 months of age for the purpose of better sleeping and we follow it religiously. Even friends who come to visit the baby are comfortable handling a baby wrapped in a swaddling blanket. And the swaddling blanket covers all the bulk of the diapers completely. By the time, we stop wrapping him and/or have to take him out, I am hoping he gets into tiny, cutesie overalls and shorts/pants etc. and even if he doesn’t, the diapers look less bulky and more becoming on him.

I wish I could say these are all the problems I have encountered, but the truth is that it’s been only 2 weeks and you never know what other unforeseen issues might be on their way, so I might add more to this post. In the meanwhile, Happy Cloth Diapering!

I am not new to cloth diapering – or maybe I am. I will explain in a minute. Disposable diapers were never an option for newborns and even with my first child, we used cloth diapers – Indian style. In India, pre-folded triangular or diaper style cloth diapers made of cotton material are used. They are not very absorbent and diaper covers are not known here at all. Based on the advice received by other family members, these are what we had used too. So, every time the baby wet her diaper, the diaper, the baby’s vest/onesie, the swaddle cloth and the sheet underneath got wet. A waterproof plastic layer kept the mattress safe. Hubby and I, both new parents, never really knew any other way to diaper except for using disposables which we reserved for ‘going out’ purposes. Timely potty-training finally put an end to the horrifying diapering experience and we moved on to more creatively satisfying parenting experiences with our toddler. DotComWomen.com got a parenting section after my baby turned into a toddler and hence lacked in the real issues faced with babies.

With my second child born five years later, I started to look into options. I figured, that with the new ‘green’ trend of cloth diapering, there had to be something more to CD than what I knew. Then, the simple logic of using, diaper covers with prefolds and inserts, came into view during my eBay journeys (which is what I have been doing to while away my pregnancy time) and I suddenly felt more dumb and stupid than a jackass! I couldn’t believe it could be so simple to keep using cloth and not spoil all the blankets and sheets. It still seemed too good to be true so I started by ordering the Chinese version of the AIO which looked as good as the American diapers available. I ordered 5 diapers, each with one insert, off an eBay seller. The seller was very efficient and the diapers were shipped off immediately with a registered airmail with online tracking. When the diapers arrived, I was unsure of whether they would fit a newborn. I packed them in the hospital bag, just in case, along with the regular Indian prefolds saved from my first cloth diapering experience.

As luck would have it, I had to go in for a C-section 3 weeks before my due date and on a 30 min. notice because the movements of the baby seemed very low that day. I got admitted to the hospital right after my checkup and hubby picked up the half-filled hospital bag later that evening. The AIO diapers had been tucked in it although I had meant to take them out before I went into labor. However, right in the hospital, I realized what life savers the diaper covers and inserts were. It seemed completely insane the way we had diapered before. I asked DH to bring in my laptop and ordered 5 more diaper covers but 10 inserts instead of 5, from the same seller now that I trusted her service and did not have time to risk trying a new one. I ordered the printed ones as seen above as I had ordered solid colors before. I figured the importance of having more inserts. Because of international shipping, the diapers took some time to arrive and on several (especially 2), we fell short of the diapers. Babies poop more than usual during the first month and it did get spilled out of the insert and into the diaper cover as well. We had to resort to using our old prefolds (without diaper covers) due to the shortage and ended up searching for more swaddling cloths and sheets as we pretty much fell short of everything. Finally, the diapers with extra inserts arrived and although we have been doing just fine, I have ordered plenty more inserts.

Diapering has simply never been the same again and I am glad I did not fall for the trend of using disposable diapers because of my first experience. We live and we learn. Or should I say, we give birth and we learn…lol. A website that helped me with many of my questions regarding CD is http://allaboutclothdiapers.com/cloth-diaper-q-a-volume-1/. So, to all moms worldwide who are looking for options to disposable diapers and for other Indian moms who are wondering if their American counterparts are insane to resort to cloth diapering, you are simply in my situation. You haven’t figured out how the real cloth diapering works. Do give it a try! It is a wonderfully environment-friendly and a safe diapering method for your precious baby’s soft and sensitive skin. And it is easy on your wallet too! Go Cloth Diapering!

As soon as the 5th birthday celebration frenzy was over, I started anticipating my dear daughter’s precious moment of losing her first tooth. Did I mention I like to plan ahead? Yes, it did backfire with her birthday this year but I knew I wasn’t going to go wrong this year. DD is an ardent fan of everything ‘fairies’ and has been checking her teeth for months to see if they had loosened up. I had an idea that teeth can start falling from the age of 5 and a half. Now, DD was eagerly awaiting for her chance to have the Tooth Fairy turn her tooth into a gold coin as she had seen in many cartoon programmes and I wanted to be ready for it. I knew everyday currency coins would not work since she had anticipated ‘gold’ coins. So, I hunted down a wonderful website that sells ‘Fairy Gold’:

Tooth Fairy Coin

The coins looked wonderful and were everything that I hoped my spoilt angel would love. I placed an order right away. Since her 5th birthday was barely past, I did not bother to pay exhorbitantly for the rush delivery charges and bought my pouch of 20 coins for a price of $24 and shipping of about $5. I was really pleased with myself on thinking ahead this time and was waiting excitedly for the tooth fairy visit complete with a trail of fairy dust from the window to the pillow etc. As luck would have it, no sooner that I placed the order, that my daughter came back from school triumphantly and proudly displaying her now loosened tooth! I tried to show how happy and excited I was about it but completely failed. What if the tooth fell before the coins arrived?

The next day my daughter did all her best to keep moving her tooth using her tongue and make the tooth fall and I tried my best to prevent it! Completely desperate, I tried to search online to get an idea how long it usually took a loose tooth to fall. The answer greatly relieved me. It took mostly a week and sometimes even a month! I was confident (or trying to feel that way) that the coins would arrive within 4-5 days. The next day, the Tooth Fairy Coins website even sent me a notification that my coins were shipped. I had my fingers crossed that they would arrive in good time. Meanwhile, my daughter could not keep herself from trying to pry her tooth loose and DH kept giving me awkward glances as I kept brewing up storms everytime she as much as looked at the tooth in the mirror. So much for her excitement over loosing her first tooth! Ah…if only the coins arrived first.

Well, that was not meant to be. The next day, as the coins were somewhere on their way to our home, my daughter proudly presented me with her first fallen tooth as I picked her from school. I don’t think any words can ever do justice to what my feelings were at the moment. I tried to appear pleased and excited but was actually, very desperately trying to think a way out of this so as to not break her faith in the entire tooth fairy legend. Well, I finally thought of a way out. I quick call to my husband to consult his views on this very important issue got me his approval for the plan and we decided to commemorate our little princess’s first tooth fall by buying an insanely expensive real gold coin (the only excuse here is that some money got saved for her future.

Come bedtime, Sanika diligently put her prized tooth below her pillow and went to sleep much easily than on any other day. In the wee hours of the next morning, I replaced the tooth with the gold coin and used craft glitter to draw a  trail from the window to her pillow. It worked like magic and we were rewarded with the happiest outburst we had ever seen (after she saw her Toy Story action figures last month on her birthday. She could not stop telling everyone she met about how her tooth fairy had left her a gold coin for her tooth and it was definitely for real because the fairy dust was there to prove it!

Oh, as for the tooth fairy coins, they arrived a day later and I am (not so) patiently waiting for her next tooth to fall so I can start giving her those. As luck is used to having her own way when it comes to parenting, there does not seem much to comfort me and there is no sign of any more teeth falling off right away.