So, Bear has been in cloth nappies for over a year now and I feel that it has changed us a lot. Bear with me whilst I try to write a summary of our journey over the last 12 months!!!
After months of steroid cream and trying every nappy cream on the market we were at a loss, nappy changing was unbearable with the screams and tears from the pain it caused Bear. One of my husbands work colleagues mentioned that they had used cloth nappies with their 2nd child as he too was suffering badly with nappy rash. We spoke about it a few times and were unsure. I spoke to my mum who was definitely against it (she cloth bummed by older sister back in the 80’s and had the old terries boiling on the hob firmly in mind). But we had to do something for Bear so spending a little money on a few to ‘trial’ was worth it…..after all we were spending a fortune on creams and nappies anyway as we couldn’t let him sit in a nappy if it was at all damp.
After very little research we purchase 10 ‘little bloom’ nappies off eBay to try.Bear was in them only a day when we started to notice a difference to his nappy area. After 3 days in cloth we decided to order more so we could cloth first time. Little blooms and TJ’s were fine for us for months, I had one ‘special’ elephant Bambino Mio Solo which I loved, but was our special nappy as we couldn’t justify spending £15 on a single nappy.
By March this year Bear was leaking through almost every nappy…..he was more active, drinking more and peeing more too. It was getting very frustrating and we were getting disheartened a little. I came across a great bargain lot of Tots Bots V3 on a local selling page, an offer too good to resist and I thought (as tots bots was a well known brand) it would be the answer to our problems…..it wasn’t, in fact, he leaked worse!!! But,as they were such a bargain, I was able to sell them for more than I paid to fund a few different nappies to try.
By this point we had figured out the night time problems with prefolds, an insert and a wrap (we have always used a mixture of wraps as there wasn’t a single one that was ‘better’, they all did the job). So we started to look around at the day time nappies. We tried tots bots bamboozles, mio solos, little lambs…..mio solos seemed to be the best so we up graded all the nappies so we had enough to be in solos full time. We love Bambino Mio Solos, we have always promoted them as our personal favourite, and although they are heavily boosted, they work brilliantly (and lets face it, they are so cute!!!) The only time Solos aren’t fantastic is when Bear is running around with only a nappy on…..velcro is easy peasy to undo!!
I have recently discovered Milovia Pocket nappies (courtesy of a mystery box I got!) and they are also fantastic. These nappies dry over night, whereas the solos take several days to dry inside in this weather. And the Milovias are poppers, which also solves our clothes-less issues! The only problem is the price….we happen to have fallen for a nappy that is even more expensive than the solos.
Had it been set up a few months earlier, when first starting our journey, our local cloth nappy library would have been a great place to ask questions and get advice from. But since we started our journey, the number of local nappy libraries has increased massively, so hopefully this will encourage more to cloth….especially if the local midwife services allow cloth nappy demos in ante-natal classes, if ours had of mentioned cloth (instead of showing us how to put a disposable on a doll) maybe we could have considered it earlier.
Our cloth journey has spread beyond nappies for Bear, we also have cloth wipes for Bear and Cloth Sanitary Pads for mummy 🙂 it has made a massive difference to me too, no more cramps, and my time of the month is no longer dreaded…it just comes and goes without a fuss, completely pain free! I never realised how the chemicals in both Bears disposable nappies and my disposable sanitary pads could have such an affect on us. Bears were obvious, his eczema and rash. Me on the other hand, I always thought that the monthly visit was supposed to be a horrible time to be dreaded….it doesn’t have to be, believe me!!
Myself and my husband have already made the decision to use cloth on all children we may have in the future, you don’t notice it when you are using them so much, but the smell of disposable nappies is not nice (in my opinion, and my husbands, anyway!) they make my stomach turn, so even if the next child is not allergic, it will be cloth all the way as a choice, not as a necessity x
mummy tales of an allergy baby 