One morning my beautiful five-week-old Baby Girl decided to have five dirty diapers in the span of ten minutes. No sooner had I undressed, cleaned, diapered and redressed her little bum than she she would christen yet another disposable diaper. I dutifully bound each diaper into a little softball of yuckiness and stacked them at the edge of the changing table (at this point we still were primarily changing her in our bedroom and the diaper pail was in the nursery). As I looked over the last ten minutes of our life together I suddenly became irrationally angry (thank you post-partum hormone shifts!). What an absolute waste of money (at that point I had calculated diaper costs down to the tenth of a cent - I knew then exactly how much money I was about to literally throw away). And that small pyramid of diapers would soon find itself occupying landfill space for hundreds of years.
This could not continue!
It was in that moment that I finally decided to switch to cloth diapers.
Apart from the irrational anger shift, I thank heavens for that fateful July morning. Cloth diapering has been such a blessing to our family! It enables us to know exactly what chemicals (or lack thereof) are going on our baby's bottom. It allowed me to take control when post-partum depression seemed to be all-consuming. It ensures we are doing our best to impact the health of both the environment and our checking account. Most importantly, it has provided me an opportunity through which to share my enthusiasm and passion with families just like yours!
Welcome to Itsy Bitsy Bums!
What is an Itsy Bitsy Bum?
Changing a newborn's diapers can be a challenging feat. Not only are you sleep deprived and a wee bit confused as to which end is up, but you also are working with a baby who generally does not like to be changed. In our house the solution was 'The Itsy Bitsy Spider.' Bless his heart, that spider made multiple appearances at every diaper change for the first couple of months. And nothing seemed more apropos than to honor the little guy who first made my baby girl smile (I refuse to admit those actually were probably gas bubbles).
