Giant Diaper Butt

By Mom
Before Roland took up temporary residence in my body, I had already started collecting cloth diapers. As friends moved off the island they handed down diapers they were no longer using and didn't expect to ever need again. Some are huge, and likely won't fit until Roland is a toddler. Others are tiny and will be outgrown in the next couple of months or so.  And then some are regular old diapers that can be folded many different ways and will fit a tiny baby or a bigger baby.

We've had Roland in cloth diapers for a week now, since the newborn size disposables that Grammy sent ran out.  The disposables were great those first few weeks as we were figuring out other things, like how to get the baby to latch on properly or how to get enough sleep with a tiny human in the house.

So far I've only really noticed two drawbacks: diaper laundry is more time consuming than throwing out used disposables, and cloth diapers can give Roland a giant diaper butt.  The good things may outweigh both of those though: no blowouts (yet), poopy diapers have nearly no smell, Roland is easier to get clean even after the fullest diaper, and all the diaper rash has cleared up.  We figure we'll still use the disposables if we are going to be out and about for a long time and during other times that the convenience is needed.   But otherwise the cloth diapers seem to be worth the extra laundry.  We'll see how I feel about that later on, but since I'll be home with him for the rest of the school year I should have the time for an extra load of laundry every couple of days.

Some diaper laundry ready to go and the changing station.  Yes, we change the baby on the floor.  Why?  We don't have the room (or the want) for extra furniture, and the baby can't roll off the floor.  I don't leave the diapers out, but took the picture so you could see what we have: fitted inserts, prefolds, adjustable diaper covers, and cloth wipes.  The prefolds can be folded to fit in many ways, but for the most part I just fold them in thirds and lay them in a diaper cover.

Onesies usually don't cover the diaper all the way.

Roland's giant diaper butt.  Inside is a fitted diaper, so this is a relatively small diaper butt.  But still much larger than when he was in disposables.  He doesn't seem to mind the extra bulk.

The diaper bag.  Yesterday when we went to a friend's we took cloth, but there are also a few disposables in there just in case.  Or if we'll be in a place we don't want to carry around dirty diapers.  Everyone kept saying we needed a diaper bag, but I insisted we did not as we already have ton of bags.  This one is an Assassin's Creed messenger bag.  It hadn't seen much use yet, but is now a great diaper bag that Doug doesn't mind carrying around.  And how many other people are using a diaper bag that shows the video games they play?