"Love My Cloth Diapers"

      A few years back, over 4, my Cousin's baby got a terrible diaper rash. She told everyone she had switched to Cloth diapers called bumGenius and they were way different then the kind we wore in the 80's, and the diaper rash was no more. At the time my own child was about to be 4, I smiled and nodded  I paid absolutely no attention to her because it was of little interest... after all I didn't want to have anymore kids. Two weeks later I rekindled a relationship with my first love and we immediately started trying to conceive.

     Fast forward three years to a saturday last September and we never had gotten pregnant and I was at the point of baby obsession. I found a giveaway to enter for some baby stuff online, I entered then saw THEN I SAW IT an ad for Modern cloth diapers. It had occurred to me at the time to ask my cousin about them and I did a search for them and found a veritable cornucopia of fluff! I was bitten by the fluff bug at that moment.
    I started learning about cloth then, I ingratiate myself into the online community and I was embraced there even though I didnt have a baby to diaper and all the information I doled out was regurgitated and theoretical, at least to me. I won a few giveaways and I leaned to sew and repair some handed down diapers that I had gotten from freecycle! I developed friendships and relationships with people and companies. I have learned to use twitter thanks to Cottonbabies.com Monday night twitter chat. I ignored my husbands eye rolls when I won a Freetime (he told me to donate it, cant you imagine?!?!)         I have told my sisters in cloth my secrets, and they have told me theirs. I cried to women I never met about our struggle to conceive without fertility coverage and I commiserate with others that grudgingly viewed other peoples beautiful second children in cloth knowing we may never have little others and sisters for our lonely only boys. The advice and Love came over the Twitterverse and one day some one told me to start drinking Apple Cider Vinegar. I tried every cocka mame thing I could find so I tried it and three moths later I learned I was pregnant.

(a photo of tme the day I got pregnant ha! )

      I have learned about so much from the online diapering community, my husband no longer rolls his eyes on mondays at 9pm! I have discovered babywearing and found support in breastfeeding. I know about parenting styles and tricks that never would have occurred to me. It also never would have occurred to me that there are people who never think to wrap a dish cloth around their baby's butt rather than reuse a disposable because they cant afford diapers. That lead me to take over a chapter in a nation wide diaper charity, so that I can help others in the way that I have been helped by this community. I have never felt so good about something in my life.
         THere are many many reasons that I love cloth diapers; They help reduce waste, they are cuter than disposables, they keep chemicals off my baby's bottom. Cloth diapers are super inexpensive (when I am home for the day we wear flats and prefolds sometimes without covers and, yes I wash them in a bucket with a breathing washer) And Cloth diapers are have lead me to more "green and natural" products and ways to live.
     I have won giveaways and I have been given diapers by friends, I have flour sack towels and home made covers, I never had this stuff the first time around, I also didn't have friends that told me to try drinking ACV, which I wholeheartedly heartedly believe is the factor that helped us conceive. Because before being a part of the Cloth Diapering online community I never had comradery or friends to speak of, Without the wonderful community I have become a part of I probably would not have my sweet baby boy, I definitely wouldn't have the knowledge and confidence to cloth diaper, and breastfeed and wear him in a sling. Our parenting generation is a different one than our parents lived in and they are not always the best source of advice in the same  way that their mothers were to them. I Love the friends whose babies bottoms look like mine, those distant people I may never meet and exist only in my phone and on my laptop screen, I love my fluffy butt baby and his cornucopia of cloth, and with out either of those things I might have neither.
  That is why I love my cloth diapers because they have given me so so much that I didnt have before, Cloth has made me a better person.

Baby Ray in his Irwin

I have written this post as an entry to a contest on  Cottonbabies they are my favorite diaper retailer, I am sure many will enter, I know that I wont win because I doubt anyone will comment here on why they want to try cloth or why they love it but I wonder if all the others know what I do, by being here in this good company with our lovely Babies in Cloth that we have already won...