The Schlemmer Grandchildren

Last year at this time my parents had five grandchildren... in a year they doubled.

Cloth Diapering-BumGenius

We have been using BumGenius for a short time. My daughter is two and a half months old and we stared using them when she was just over a week old. I love them so far. Some of the things that I love about them.

- easy to take the insert in and out

- fits both my 2 year old and 2 month old

- never had any poop blow outs

- not leaky

- cute colors

- a flap in the back that covers where the inserts go in



Some of the things I think could be improved

- the infant insert(one w/o the buttons) is not very absorbent, could be thicker

- the big insert(one w/ buttons) looks very bulky on a little baby



There is not very much wrong with these, we find them easy to use and very absorbent. My son has even forgotten to put an insert in and my daughter peed and pooped in it and it did not leak. I was very surprised. They are also very easy to wash. I posted about that here. This inserts have stained a little, but the outsides still look new with out one stain. It is nice for it to look like you are putting a clean diaper on your baby.

Cloth Diapering-washing

I have tried many different ways of washing cloth diapers. This is the system that works for us. I store the soiled diapers in a flip top trash can with a liner. Right now my daughter is exclusively breastfeed, so I just throw the soiled diapers in the bin I have for them. For past babies once they started eating solids I just shook the diaper over the toilet and then put them in the bin. On to washing...

1) Start a cold cycle and add 1/4 oz laundry detergent, I use Allen's Natural

2) Take diapers out of the liner and remove inserts out of the diaper, put in washer along with the liner once everything is removed

3) Start a hot cycle (every week or two I add 1-2 scoops of Oxi-Clean to this cycle)

4) Start a hot cycle(this could be a warm or cold cycle), this just makes sure everything is off the diapers and gives them one final rinse.

5)Remove from washer and put in dryer

6)On low dry for 40 minutes

7) Take out out sides of pocket diapers, diaper covers and liner

8) On low dry about 60 more minutes of until everything else is dry

9) Take out of dryer and stuff pocket diapers and put everything away.

I wash every other day to every two days. I have 15 pocket diapers and 6 doublers with prefolds that I use with covers (I have 4 of). I also have three dozen wipes. I usually wash when she is down to two to three diapers, sometimes that is more often then others. I know there are many ways to wash cloth diapers and just about every cloth diaper retailer has a different way to wash them. I used the trial method and picked which one worked best for us. This was the winner!

Cloth Diapering-what I made

When I cloth diapered my two middle children I did not like how bulky the prefolds where on them. For my last I decided to make some fitted type diapers for her.
They had a inside and out side layer of flannel (it was flannel I had left over from making PJs one year for Christmas) and four middle layers of microfiber cloth (the rags you get in the automotive part to the store). For the first month or so these worked great. I would put that on her with a NB cover over it. After that they were getting a little small so I turned them in to a doubler by wrapping a prefold on the out side of the fitted diaper.

This is great for at night because it absorbs so much. I have 6 of these that I use. I use them along with the BumGenius diapers.

The other thing I made for our cloth diapering adventure was wipes. These were so easy and again made out of the left over flannel. I cut 6 inch squares and zigzag stitched two together. They were really quick to do and are so nice. I keep them in a wipes warmer along with water and baby bits.
They work so well and on the go I either just grab some of the wet ones and put them in a bag or take some that are dry along with a small spray bottle of the solution.




I made this stuff slowly over the last part of my pregnancy. I diapers took a little bit of working to get the pattern right and my daughter thought it was fun because after I would try them on her cabbage patch doll to see how they would fit.

Cloth Diapering-our story

I have tried cloth diapers on 3 of 4 children. My first child I was young and going to school and working full time. My mother did all of my laundry and well I was not going to make more for her. I was just not home to do it and when I was home I wanted to spend time with my baby. Number two cam along 4.5 years later and I was still in school full time I had dropped down to working part time. For him I cloth diapered till he was 18 months and found ourselves moving and not knowing where we were ending up. Number 3 came along two years after number 2 and we had just moved in to a house the month before and it did not have a washer and dryer. I had tried to cloth diaper using the laundromat, but it did not work for us and my husband hated the prefold diapers with covers method. With he I had also tried gdiapers and did not have much luck with them being easier then the prefolds. Then along came number 4 two and a half years after number 3 and I had a great none stressful pregnancy and no moving. I was determined to find something both I and my husband would be happy with. I settled on trying BumGenius and have been using them for two months now, along with one Happy Heiny and some that I made(pictured above). My daughter was just over a week when we switched over to cloth. I love them and so does my husband. I think we may make it all the way to potty training this time. I always laugh that it took me four children to get this whole cloth daiper thing down, but I am glad I did.

There will be more about cloth diapering in the future. I thought the place to start was my story of cloth diapering.