Pages

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Why am I doing the Flats Challenge?

Why am I doing the flats challenge? I was one of those people who realized that when my oldest son (who will be three in about a month) was five months old. My husband didn't have a job and it didn't look promising. I saw an ad for gdiapers somewhere. I joined their yahoo group and it took a few weeks for me to get warmed up to the idea of cloth diapers. Then I found Sharni who owns The Nappy Shoppe. She makes these great inserts called gflappers that are more absorbent than gcloth they also came out before gcloth so thats what we used because gcloth wasn't out yet when we started. I didn't know about flats or prefolds other than the gerber ones that I knew from that yahoo group weren't very absorbent. I had some of those prefolds for burp cloths and actually used them in his diapers a few times but they were horrible so it turned me off to prefolds and flats. Little did I know those are just exceptionally crappy most prefolds are actually ok. We started out with about six diapers that I hand washed in our bath tub because we didn't have a washing machine. I hug them out on hangers and put them over our balcony in our apartment to dry them. I had to wash and hang to dry right after I took the diaper off of him to ensure that it was dry in time. There were a few times where I got my blow dryer out to dry them. As much of a pain in the butt that it was it worked and I kept my sons bottom covered. It was so much better than leaving him in a disposable too long because he was having constant rashes until we switched to cloth then they just stopped. I am all about the flats challenge because of our experience. Thankfully Sharni eventually hired me to work for her first as a sewer helping to make the beloved gflappers and now I work in the store and help people pick out a good diaper for their child. We are much more fortunate now than we were back when I was forced to hand wash things. I'm very excited about this challenge. Flats aren't as bad as I thought they'd be. I fold them into squares before using them so they are more ready. My oldest son is a heavy wetter so he actually wears two flats at once. My youngest isn't quite as heavy of a wetter but pees a lot at night so he wears one flat with a doubler and its usually drenched by morning but no leaks. I like the flats because it gives them a chance to air out a bit but no pee on my floor. The snappi is an excellent invention because I'm afraid of pins on my kids. My oldest is very good at figuring things out. I think he'll be an engineer or something so I think he could get a special diaper pin off. I'm sure he could get the snappi off but he couldn't hurt himself with it like a pin. Below is a picture of my oldest wearing two diaper rite flats size large with a size 1 snappi.


And below is a hilarious picture of my oldest trying on a pair of training pants with a diaper underneath he fell asleep like that on the couch. Thought some of you could use a giggle :)



2 comments:

  1. We decided to use cloth for the same reason! My husband could have lost his job at any moment (the owner was going through a nasty divorce) and I din't want to have to choose between diapers and food. $300 bought me a complete stash of GroBaby diapers (right before the name change)and we haven't spent a cent on diapers since then.

    ReplyDelete
  2. My PF's are almost all Gerber and they have been awesome- my Indian PF's don't hold up half as long. I think people forget there are different styles of Gerber PF's- the DSQ's are really great. With as much grief as the get I figured I must have low expectations but everything else I've tried has been so disappointing! /getting off my Gerber soapbox now...

    ReplyDelete