I have to be honest – I don’t love using cloth diapers.  I know lots of moms do, and rave about how wonderful it is.  Yes, there are aspects I like about it, but if all things were equal (cost, environmental concern, health), there’s no question I’d rather use disposables.  But all things aren’t equal, so this is something I’m willing to do to be a good steward of the money that H-shem sends us. 

After posting about paper goods last week, I mentally niggled at myself to get back to cloth diapering since I have all the supplies and it was wasteful not to use them (I mentioned in that post that I haven’t been using cloth in the winter, for several reasons).  One of the general concerns I had was that I notice more of a tendency towards rashes when using cloth, and felt that in the winter it would be more of a problem. But on Thursday night, I stumbled on a comment online that gave me a clue as to what the problem was, so I decided that after Shabbos, I’d use cloth again.  My disposable diaper supplies obliged my mental ruminations by running out just in time.  🙂

Lots of moms find that the chemicals in disposable diapers are a problem, but even though I don’t like the idea of chemicals against sensitive areas of my baby’s body, they’ve never been visible irritants.  I have the opposite situation – they get rashes from the moisture of the cloth.  I’ve tried to change them frequently to avoid them sitting in a wet diaper, which has worked, but this has led to its own problems – I was changing diapers very often (felt like all the time, actually) and creating lots of laundry. 

Now I’ve learned that the problem is cotton holds moisture against the skin, so you need to use a barrier that will wick the wetness away.  If I had realized this was the crux of the issue, I could have addressed it a long time ago, but I thought I was doing something wrong, and didn’t consider it was just the material.  You live and you learn.  Apparently, what can do is place a fleece liner between the cotton diaper and the baby, so that moisture goes through to the cotton, which holds it in, but the fleece doesn’t hold moisture, so the layer next to the skin stays dry.  This also has the advantage of solids not sticking to it as much as cotton, so disposal of messier diapers is much simpler. 

So I thought I’d give it a try. On Friday, I decided to make some fleece liners, but you don’t think I was about to run out and buy material for this, do you?!  You should know me better by now!   Anyway, saying I was going to make them sounds like a lot more work than what was actually involved.  Here’s what I used for fabric, and what I did.  As I explained in my last post, we had an opportunity to get a lot of clothing for free the night before, and one of the items my dd12 picked out was a nice pair of athletic pants for her older brother to wear when he plays basketball at the gym.  The only thing was, she didn’t check the size – they looked big, so she figured they’d fit him.  When we got home, we saw how very big they were – size 3x! -so I put it into a give away bag to pass along to Goodwill.  But later that night I read about the fleece solution, and so the next morning I went through the clothing I had set aside to give away to see if there was anything to use.  I looked at the pants and thought the outside material would make a good diaper cover (that nylon/waterproof kind of sports pants, you know?) for a future repurposing project, but then discovered the inside was fleece lined.  So I cut up the pants lining (there was a LOT of material!) into strips of material that fit the length and width needed, and that’s what I’m using for the diaper liners now.  Fleece doesn’t need any hemming or sewing, so all that was involved was cutting it out into rectangles.

I’ve only been doing this a couple of days, but so far it’s working well.  My 18 month old woke up from his naps with his bottom dry and with no signs of irritation, though the diaper was pretty wet.   Actually, when I started using cloth again, he had a little bit of a rash, but it’s disappeared!  I’m very glad to have found such a simple and easy solution to this.  

Now, to find a solution to the nightime soaking for my toddler, and I’ll be totally set!

Avivah