Shannon Phillips

So we recently switched Davy over to cloth diapers. It’s going well: we’re using FuzziBunz, which are one of the new generation of cloth diapers. No pins, no folds—instead they look like this:

The one on the right is outside-up, the one of the left is inside-up, and in the middle is an insert. The inserts, as the name suggests, go inside a pocket in the diaper, like so:

Here’s what it looks like when Davy is all diapered up:

They’re a little bulkier than disposable diapers, but the fabric feels like it would be a lot nicer to have against your skin. In fact I have to admit that the main reason I like cloth diapering so far is because it turns diaper-changes into a much more pleasant visual and tactile experience. Poop is still poop, of course, but Davy only poops once or twice a day; most of his diapers are wet, and handling wet cloth isn’t really so bad. The FuzziBunz come in a whole range of colors, so it can be at least a little bit fun to decide which color I’ll put him in next, and they’re extremely soft and, well, fuzzy, so it feels nice when I snap the baby’s clean butt into a new diaper. Dirty diapers go straight into the diaper bag, which I dump into the laundry every morning. They get a rinse cycle first, then a hot wash on delicate cycle, then a lot of drying (because they’re so absorbent, they take a while to dry). I’ve been using our regular Method detergent, although I just put in an order for special Rockin’ Green detergent designed to be used with cloth diapers. I also got a stack of cloth wipes.

The FuzziBunz require a significant up-front outlay of cash (they cost about fifteen bucks apiece, and we bought a dozen, which is about what we go through in the course of a day). Because we were paying as much as is humanly possible for the Whole Foods brand of disposable diapers, I figure that it would only take a few months for the FuzziBunz to start paying for themselves; unfortunately, Davy is going to need to graduate from the “small” to the “medium” size well before that. I didn’t quite time our entry into the cloth diapering world perfectly, but it doesn’t really matter as I’ll be able to reuse the small diapers for the next kid. FuzziBunz also makes a “one size” line of adjustable diapers that you can supposedly use throughout your kid’s diapering career, but I was a bit afraid of leaks, so I went with the sized model. And we haven’t had a problem with leaks, so I’m happy!