The cloth-diped baby....

I first read about cloth diaper from Adriana's livejournal blog. I'm an avid follower of Adriana's blog even until today and I'm proud to say I got so many beneficial infos from her blog (THANKS ADRIANA!)! To think she's YOUNGER than me! Hahaha Guess people do learn from experience and it doesn't matter of the age. When I read her entry about cloth diapering Aqil, I thought, "Is he wearing those lampin or napkin type of diapers?". It was WOW so cool! My Mommy used to wear those type of napkins on my baby brother. To be honest, it takes a pro to fold the napkin up and until now I don't know how people managed those type of napkin. I didn't ask her any questions then since at that time I wasn't even pregnant. You know when you start asking questions about "how to.. baby" people would instantly think that you are preggers. heheheh So then I googled on my own about "cloth diaper". Amazingly there was soooo many websites on it. I never knew it was such a big thing. But most of it was in the States.

I kept doing my research about cloth diapering until I have confirmed that I am carrying Khairaldin. By then, I started messaging Adriana to ask for her personal opinions. I've never thought of wearing disposable diapers on my baby. I had my reasons for wanting to wear it. People think that we're just cheapskate and want to save cost. I mean come on, when I started researching on it I was earning quite good salary and can afford disposable diapers if I wanted to. Also, I get Child Benefits which could definitely pay off his disposable diapers. But we thought, WHY WASTE MONEY???

We did depend on disposable diaper during Khairaldin's first month. It was the easiest option since he was our first and we had noone else at home with us, except for my parents in law who was visiting from Malaysia for 2 weeks. Also at that time we recieved way too many free disposable diapers from the hospital. So again, why waste? We did use disposable diapers for a bit. As soon as he got into his 2nd month, Hubby & I thought it was about time we cloth-diped him. After all, he's growing up too fast and his prefold diapers can only last till he's 5kg (which he turned 5kg at 3.5months!).

Our cloth diaper experience was somewhat funny! There were times when we fussed about too much on how to fold his diapers and got peed on. There were also times when we thought he's done pooping but in the end he wasn't and imagine newborn poops! hehehehe Yes, you need to be a pro to fold prefolds. And we're definitely not one of them pros. We then decided to swap to AIOs/Pocket diapers. Firstly, just look at those prints! It's just toooooooo cute. I fell in love with cloth diapers because of their prints more than anything else. :-) Thank god I didn't get a girl because I can see myself buying cloth diaper for her EVERY week, at least! hehehe After going gaa-gaa about the prints, it then comes down to the benefits of cloth diapering.

• It's healthier for the baby's private parts. I've heard one too many Mom's out there complaining about diaper rash and I didn't want to go through that stage. So I took the chance and cloth diped him. People can't say that "you haven't tried disposable so how do you know?". I've tried disposable and Khairaldin was almost at the stage of getting nappy rash. My MIL who was staying with me for the first 2 weeks of Khairaldin's birth kept telling me that I should put some cream as his bits are red & almost inflamed. So I did put Sudocrem on him. Thank god for freebies!

• It's cheaper. DEFINITELY YES! Unless you're like me who like to custom make some of it every now and then. It could be A BIT costly. Not as bad as disposable diapers though.

• For the environment. Well, I'm no green person but if they say so. Then why not?

I used Sudocrem on Khairaldin only when he was using disposable diapers. We recieved free 25g Sudocrem tub from the hospital and until today, it's only about 1/4 of the tub being touched. Everytime I see the Sudocrem tub, I'd think 1/4 tub for one month, imagine how many tubs we have to use if we used it everyday until he's 2 years old!

Some may think that washing cloth diaper is an ALL DAY job. To be honest, it's not. If (god forbids hehehe), I become a working Mom, I would still stick to cloth diapering. Because for now I only wash the diapers at night. I wash the diapers every other day and there's only about 12-15 diapers in the bucket at one go. It's not that you have to handwash it. It still goes in the washing machine. What I normally do is, prewash (30mins) the diaper then wash it at 40 deg c (approx 2hours max). Once it's all done, I'll just hang it at the radiator and ready to be used the next day. And the radiator is only on for 4 hours. That's how easy it is to wash the diapers! It's also convinient for both Hubby & I because we hate to go to Tesco/ASDA just to get the nappies! It;s such a nuisance. So by washing the diaper we can do it whenever we're running low on diapers. Easy peasy! Pssst, even my Hubby knows how to wash cloth diapers, so IT IS that easy. Hahaha Sorry Sayang ;-)

For our second baby, we plan to use cloth diaper as soon as he or she is born. Unless again we get free diapers from the GP/hospital. :-)