Adventures in cloth diapering

When I first got pregnant we went to one of those baby product shows, with row after row of stroller companies, baby music classes, glitzy cribs, slick sales people exhorting us to 'buy now'! Buy now or risk NEVER finding this must-have product ever again and failing as a parent and your kids will be dumb and poorly nourished and face it, NOT CUTE ENOUGH.

I happily resisted everything until we got to the cloth diaper display. They were cute, and colourful, and so darn ecological, economical, and clearly the right thing to do that I was immediately hooked. I talked to the women running the booth for ages, hearing about their personal experiences with cloth diapering, and learning about the different kinds. A lot of thought and a few e-mail exchanges later, I decided to invest in some newborn and small Bummi diaper covers and prefold inserts.

The newborns were a writeoff. The babies' legs were so skinny that I couldn't cinch the diapers tight enough to stop leaks without squashing their little bellies (or so it seemed to me). By the time their legs were fat enough to fit the diapers the newborn size was too small, so I tried the small, which seemed huge but still closed around the legs ok. However, I couldn't stop them from either being wet around the leg gusset or downright leaking, no matter how I folded the insert or fastened the tabs. After one spectacularly poopy diaper episode, that squished out both the leg openings and up the back, I gave up. I feel terrible about using disposables for enviromental reasons, but twins are so time consuming and generate so much laundry on the best of days that I just couldn't hack it.

Bummies kicked my ass.