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Last Updated: Jul 2nd, 2008 - 21:15:22 |
(ARA) - When Janeé Pedersen gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, Noelle, last year, she was certain that cloth diapers were the right thing for her.
“I knew I would use cloth before I was even pregnant with my daughter. I did a lot of research online and by the time we came home from the hospital, I had my stash ready to go!” she says.
Pedersen, like many of today’s eco-minded new moms, is part of a growing number of women who are ditching disposable diapers for more environmentally-friendly diapering options. The influx of moms going green has been a key contributing factor to the booming resurgence of cloth diapering.
The good news is that there are many cloth diapering systems for a mom to choose from, however, this plethora of options can be overwhelming. Here is advice from three veteran cloth diapering moms on how to get started -- and stick with -- cloth diapering.
Get Educated
“The first thing a mom needs to do is become educated on the different types of cloth diapering systems, from pockets to all-in-ones to fitteds,” advises Kelly Wels, who is expecting her third baby and is the founder of KellysCloset.com, a popular cloth diapering boutique. “After a little research, moms will realize that cloth diapering has nothing to do with pins, rubber pants or soaking and swirling dirty diapers.”
Wels also recommends that moms turn to the Internet, specifically the DiaperPin.com, to learn the cloth diapering lingo and read about the different cloth diaper brands.
Try Different Types and Brands
New mom Jesi Josten from Denver concedes that figuring out what type of cloth diaper to choose can be overwhelming. “I always suggest that you buy a couple of each kind of diaper, then sell off the ones that don't work and go with the ones that do. Sometimes what sounds great on paper doesn't really work for you in real life,” she counsels.
Go With the Tried and True
With new diaper brands popping up every day, Wels advises that you can’t go wrong using the tried and true brands. “I usually recommend new moms use Fuzzi Bunz pocket diapers because they are so easy-to-use and wash at home,” she says. In fact, Wels has dedicated an entire online boutique, FuzziBunzOnline.com, to exclusively selling this type of diapers and accessories.
Other tried and true brands include BumGenius and Happy Heinys, which are popular one-sized pocket diaper brands available online at OneSizeDiaperStore.com. These diapers allow parents to squeeze maximum value from their investment because the same diaper fits most babies from newborn to toddler.
Josten says when she first started cloth diapering her 16-month-old daughter, Violet, pocket cloth diapers were all the rage. However, these diapers just didn’t work for her daughter so she switched to Thirties fitted diapers. Josten is happy she made the switch rather than give up on cloth diapering altogether.
“I’ve learned that there is no such thing as one-kind-fits-all. There are literally hundreds of different brands and styles to choose from, so even if you have a hard-to-fit baby you can find something that works for you,” she says.
Follow Your Heart
Josten believes that it’s important to make decisions that mean something to the world-at-large. “My husband and I try really hard to follow the ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ motto in our daily life, and I just couldn't see throwing away literally dozens of diapers a day into landfills. My research into cloth confirmed my beliefs that this was the best way to go.”
Don’t Give Up
Josten also advises that moms shouldn’t give up if cloth diapering doesn’t seem to be working for them right away. She suggests getting support from a local mom who uses cloth diapers too. “It would have been great to have a mentor to meet with where I could actually touch and feel the diapers and ask questions about cloth diapers in real-life.”
Wels says that cloth diapering is so much easier than most people think and tells moms that they should at least give cloth diapering a chance if they are even remotely curious about it. “Give it a shot. You might just surprise yourself and become a fellow mom of the cloth.”
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