Cloth Diapers and Disposable Bottles???

So here’s the thing….the second time around, I’ve gotten a little adventurous. Well, adventurous for me. A few months ago, I started hearing about BUM Genius cloth diapers, and I was intrigued. A cloth diaper that grows with your child? A pocket diaper so it’s easy to load with inserts? Velcro and snaps to adjust the fit? Really? Really. I won 3 on ebay and immediately stated using them on MAM overnight. They worked great, and MAM thought they were cool, and I got to stop buying diapers for overnight. Win-win.

Then I started thinking crazy thoughts. What it I cloth diapered this new little person? Could it work? Would it gross me out? And I thought about the bazillion boxes of diapers I bought at Sam’s club over the past two years, and all the diapers going into the trash, and thought, why not? So I won some more on eBay, and when the newborn disposables were too small (read here about how I figured that out), I started with the BUMgenius. And so far, two weeks into it, it’s going just fine.

1) I wash diapers every day–usually in the evening around supper time or bath time. I make sure they are dry or are drying when we go to bed, and stuff them as soon as they come out of the dryer.

2) I have a diaper pail next to the two changing stations we have set up in the house. I take out the insert and fix the velcro tabby things for the laundry as I change the diaper, so that I don’t have to touch anything that’s been festering for a few hours.

3)If they are washed everyday, there is no odor. It’s a small load, but it’s 24 hours worth of diapers. I should mention that our W/D set is upstairs, between the two bedrooms. This makes it very easy to stay on top of the laundry. If I was tripsing down to a basement to to this, I don’t know that I would.

4) I think this will absolutely work until I go back to work. From there, we’ll have to see what kind of childcare arrangement we end up with. If nothing else, I’m thinking we can cloth diaper at night. I figured out it would take about 4 months of full-time cloth diapering to break even on what I would spend on disposables. I will be at home for about 4 months. That works well, don’t you think?

Even just cloth diapering at night for 3 years saves over 1,000 disposable diapers. Seriously. Do the math!!

Which leads me to my second topic: Disposable Bottles

Back in 2005, I inherited a stash of AVENT bottles and accessories, and loved them. I added to the stash myself, and it’s sitting my garage this very morning. The problem is that AVENT has failed to acknowledge the dangers of PBA. Sure, we could be careful about not heating the bottles, but I liken it to painting a wall with lead paint and not licking it. (I’m not a paint licker myself, but I live with two) Why cause myself the worry?

Soooo I started researching. And the cheapsake in me can’t a spend $15 per PBA free plastic bottle. (I can spend that much on a cloth diaper, but not a bottle–don’t ask me why) Sooo I picked up some 4 oz Evenflow glass bottles and loved them, right up to the point where the little man started spitting up entire feedings. On me. Dressed for church. Or the store. Or hell, sitting in my pajamas. So in looking for viable alternatives, we came up with Playex drop in system–you know, that throw back to 1984,where you have a little plastic bag inside a bottle casing. You squeeze the air out as you go, and guess what? No spit up! Now it’s a disposable plastic bottle bag, mind you. But it’s BPA free. And economical to a point.

So that’s what we’re doing at Casa de Crazy (bgK’s new word for our home)–cloth, reusable diapers, plastic, disposable bottles. Does it sound as crazy as I think it sounds????

A sidenote: the glass 4oz bottles were fine, but I think 8oz bottles are too heavy to be really practical. Since I’m sure we’ll be moving out of 4oz feedings in the next minute or two, I plan on experimenting with PBA free plastic bottles, to see what works. There are some cheaper, old-school brands I plan on trying (evenflow plastic, gerber plastic) first.