Baby Countdown...Cloth Diapers and Infant Potty Training

One week to go!! I believe I can say that I am just about ready. I would like a few more days to put up some food and allow Keith to get a good week of work in. My body is about to that point, though. I can't imagine my stomach getting any bigger and I have lots of uncomfortable pressure at times. I am still doing my exercises and taking my iron infusion, drinking lots of good raw milk, eating my eggs (my mom and dad just brought us 8 dozen from the chickens we had before we moved!) and kale. We are excited to meet this little boy or girl :).

When we had our sixth baby, Stephen, I began to seriously consider using cloth diapers. I didn't know much about them. I just thought it might save us some money. I began doing it the old fashioned way. Using the diapers with diaper pins and a plastic cover. I would go back and forth between cloth and disposable.

Also, before having Stephen I read an article on Infant Potty Training and wondered if I could do that as well. I am always up for a challenge and at that point people thought I was weird already, so this would just add to the list, and I was ok with that. I did hesitate to ask Keith. I just knew he was going to tell me to just forget it. He wondered why I would want to do such a thing, but he supported my decision.

We waited a few months before beginning. It was a success from the start. We also practiced IPT on and off. Sometimes forgetting to take him. Sometimes consistently taking him. He was probably a little confused baby.

When Maleah came along I knew I wanted to do cloth diapers (without the pins) and I knew I wanted to implement IPT consistently. We were given enough money to purchase 9 Bum Genius all-in-one cloth diapers. We also began to train her to potty from the beginning.

Our experience with both has been good. I will do cloth diapers again with the new baby. The snaps and the velcro make it easy for everyone to change the baby. I enjoy the look and feel of a cloth diaper. I like that I am saving money and waste. I even enjoyed hanging them out to dry and letting the sun continue to clean and disinfect them naturally. I also learned how to properly diaper them at night so they would not get a diaper rash. If we did not do IPT then I would have cleaned out a whole lot more poo diapers, but since we did, that reduced it significantly.

I will do infant potty training again as well (I think). It does take time, but about the same amount as changing a diaper. The time it gets a little frustrating is when we are out and about. When Maleah was just born I had her with me all the time nursing. I could tell when she went to pee or poo. She would grunt a little. I would make a psssss... sound every time. When she turned a month old I put her little bottom on the potty and made the psss sound several times and sure enough she had connected the sound with the action and she peed!! We continued to take her about every 30 minutes and eventually that worked itself out to every 45 min to an hour. We would miss a lot of pee, but we almost always got the poo in the potty :). It was team work for us. Once she was big enough the girls began to help me.

I wondered about 3 months ago if it was all worth it. You really want them communicating to you around a year old that they need to go. Maleah, who is very vocal, never did. We just kept taking her. After cleaning several very nasty diapers when we moved here, I had gotten tired of it. I knew she was smart, could communicate, and she knew what she was doing. We put away the cloth diapers and bought about 5 pair of little girl panties. She wet two nights in a row on herself and had just an accident or two through the day. After those two days she has been fantastic. I knew, as her mom, that she was putting this thing off and I should have done this a long time ago. We are very proud of her and it makes me want to try again and hopefully have a little more success next time.

I did read that if doing this brings about frustration and bad attitudes, then please don't even try it. But, if you would like to lovingly give this a whirl, then I say go for it! 

I know this is not detailed enough for anyone wanting to try either, so leave me a comment and I will try my best to answer any question that you may have.

Thankful for my little tots,

Nichole