Fluff Butts

Admit it.  You're curious.  It used to be the only thing available and now you're seeing it come back again....but for the life of you you can't understand why. Who wants to deal with a poop or pee (or egads, both) laden scrap of fabric. Don't they leak? Don't they stink? Don't they take tons of work? Why wash a diaper when you can just throw it away?

When I started parenting I didn't even realize cloth diapering was still a thing. My ex had a diaper party BBQ and we just bought disposables.  That was it. Boxes upon boxes of diapers. Then before my son was born I heard about cloth diapers.  I was just starting my crunchy journey. I love my husband and lovingly refer to him as Ebenezer Scrooge. So when I shopped I looked for the cheapest cloth I could find and found a killer deal. I reasoned with myself that this way I would never have a situation that if I ran out of disposables in a given pay period, my son would still have a covering on his butt. Ever the Boy Scout theory: always prepared.  But the more I researched, the more I wanted to do it full time. Then I got the box and started playing with the diapers to understand them....I was hooked. They weren't especially cute: just prefolds and white covers. But I began imagining the possibilities. I began to dream of never buying disposables.  Imagine...His whole diapering career completed in $50! I was over the moon! 

My husband was not so amused. We ended up doing disposables for quite awhile ("you act like I can't afford him!") until I got the bombshell in my mom group that the synthetic plastics in disposables act like estrogen.  Um...I don't know about you, but I'm not overly eager to shove estrogen on my son's family jewels. That's just me though.  I still use disposables occasionally,  and if he's teething I'll use one overnight to keep his butt dry because his...expulsions are acidic. But otherwise my son is in cloth diapers.  Over the months I've learned more about the styles, the options,  and unfortunately,  the designs....which make me want to spend big money. Like the Winnie the Pooh diaper I saw here. But my fallback is still my cheap prefolds and covers.  AIOs (all-in-ones) are also wonderful if you're terrified of the idea of diaper pins or folding it. AI2s (I think you can guess what this one is) are similar but the insert isn't attached to the main part of the diaper. There are far more types and adjustments and oh, the designs.  I highly recommend looking into them if you find yourself looking for cheaper and/or healthier ways to care for your baby.  Prepping them and taking care of them isn't all that difficult or time consuming either.
As we close in on our homesteading days, I'm finding a whole new value to these things. They can be washed! Reused! Be still, my beating hard! My son is nearing the end of his diapering days; I plan to spend the next two days working hard to potty train him, but there is another little one in the talks, if not the works (obviously, since Hubs is deployed). Bump. Set. SPIKE! I win.