Practical & Conscientious Parenting
Archive for August, 2009
Terry Fleece Diaper Doublers
15 years
by Zach
in Creative Projects
When we told people that we wanted to use cloth diapers, we got a lot of support, and also a lot more props than we deserve. I think, especially with older generations, that people think about desperately trying to safely pin a diaper on a wriggling little bottom. But with the amazing diapers that people have come out with these days, it’s really not hard at all. And fortunately for me, Anne had already done a lot of the research and trial & error with Mehalia, so we had a great resource for any questions we had.
So far, everything is going great with Edie in cloth diapers. We’ve had a couple of blowouts, mainly because she’s just so tiny still and it’s hard to get the diaper covers around her legs. One of the best things in our diaper collection has been our terry fleece doublers. They really wick away moisture and keep Edie dry. And they were really easy to make.
We had a couple of doublers that Anne had given us that we used as a template. The fabric store we went to only had a couple of bad colors of terry cloth, so we bought a yard of white terry and dyed it ourselves using iDye. And there are so many cool cotton fleece prints these days, we just picked out two that we really liked and bought half a yard of each.
The sewing was a snap, though it would have been even snappier if we owned a serger sewing machine (which we seriously contemplated buying). But not owning a serger, I learned how to use a finishing stitch that I didn’t even realize our sewing machine had. Ashley traced the outline of the doubler we had on the fleece, and loosely pinned it to the terry cloth. She sewed a straight stitch about half an inch to the inside of the line she drew, and then she cut along the line. She was a little nervous about doing the finishing, so that’s where I stepped in. There were places where I got a little too close to the edge, but all in all they turned out great, and we love having so many of them. It was really a lot easier than I thought to do a project I used to think was only possible with a serger.
Angel Baby Bottom Balm
15 years
A friend of ours gave us a container of Angel Baby Bottom Balm at our baby shower, and we love it. We took it to the hospital with us, but we didn’t use it right away. I had never seen meconium before, and frankly, I was surprised at just how sticky and tar-like it was. We had a tough time cleaning Edie up the first couple of diapers, and then Ashley decided to put it the Angel Baby Bottom Balm on her, and wow! What a difference. She was a ton easier to wipe clean. Now that she’s moved on to breast milk poop, it’s not as tricky to get her cleaned up, but we’re still using it off and on to help keep her from getting too chapped. We haven’t had much in the way of diaper rash (the fleece doublers we’re using help keep her really dry), but when Edie does get a little red, this balm does the trick.