Cloth diapers

I was 8 years old when my oldest sister had her first child. I learned childcare by caring for my nieces and nephews. They were in cloth diapers with pins, covered by plastic pants. I got really good at changing diapers, and also really good at ignoring wet diapers.

When my husband and I had our first child, I was 20 years old, somewhat more responsible. We were given six months of diaper service; that was awesome! It came with a supply of white cotton diapers and a diaper bucket with a secure lid. They didn’t even want us to rinse out the diapers!

After that experience, there was no way we were going to spend 20 bucks every two weeks on disposable diapers. Not if I could save that money. Remember: this was back when I could feed two adults and four toddlers for a week on 25 dollars. Not comfortably; it was an accomplishment when I cut the bill that far, but still… We learned quickly that wet diapers cause rashes. I changed diapers promptly, no matter how many we’d have to wash.

My husband’s mother was glad we used cloth diapers. She was even willing to use cloth diapers while the children visited her house! Her washer and dryer were in a little room off her kitchen, very convenient, and she had a clothes line for that glorious sunshine.

She provided a lot of the diapers, plastic pants, and pins. Every time she found cloth diapers at a yardsale she bought them. We must have tried one or two of every cloth diaper variation out there, because she found them used. I liked a couple of them, but pins and plastic pants stayed on children the best, with the fewest leaks. Plus we could get more plastic pants and pins for cheap at Walmart whenever we needed them.

We had children in cloth diapers for 16 years. At one point three children wore them at once; I changed a diaper once every half hour. Little boys must have a bladder the size of a teaspoon, it drains so fast. My husband and I rinsed the poop out in the toilet; we only flushed one diaper that I know of. We washed a load of diapers every week at least, sometimes every other day.

The first time my husband lost his job, the church gave us five dozen cloth diapers. Theirs were a cotton-poly shell over a poly-fill stuffed center. Those were miserable diapers. They lasted a long time, but didn’t hold much liquid and had to be triple layered for toddlers. We ended up buying cotton diapers as we were able. When he lost his job again several years later, they no longer gave out cloth diapers. No one else wanted them.

For our sixth child we ordered six dozen Egyptian cotton prefold diapers new. They arrived in the mail in a huge box. The fabric was tan, the same color as the cardboard, and the diapers were 18 inches square. As soon as we washed them with bleach and machine dried them, they whitened and shrank to a more reasonable size, plus they thickened. Those were awesome diapers. Our daughter had to have larger pants to cover those enormous fluffy diapers, but they held moisture.

We finally switched to disposables completely for our last child. We had kept disposables for babysitters and for once-a-year trips across country. Our older three children pinned diapers like pros. But by that time they were teens, busy all the time. Our fourth child didn’t have the hand strength to reliably pin diapers tightly around squirming children. I frequently left her in charge while taking older children to activities; switching back and forth between cloth and disposables every day became a chore. My husband worked fulltime as a college teacher. We were still on food stamps and Medicaid, but he agreed we could carve out money for disposable diapers.

If my grandchildren were in cloth diapers, would I use it? I don’t know. I still have the hand strength, I think. I don’t miss sitting on the floor with one leg over my child’s stomach, trying to pin a diaper while holding the wiggly child in place. We kept the changing pad on the floor; it limited falls. It also meant that the instant the child could get away, he or she would. I sang to them a lot. It kept me sane and sometimes even distracted them from trying to get away.