May 27th, 2011
Flats Challenge: Day 5
Today I ran into my front snag. Liam fell asleep in my arms while I was talking with a neighbor after taking Matt to the bus stop. Since he rarely does this, I figured I would ray him in his crib and get some nice baby free time. He rarely naps out of my arms, so it was awesome when I was able to lay him down and get some chores done. Unfortunately I forgot to change him before the trip to the bus stop. I also forgot that I was testing a single flat in a pad fold. I also had him in a larger cover that I normally use for night time, so it was not as snug. When he woke up he had this first leak. Not bad I guess considering it was probably the 40th flat. I blame this on user error, not diaper failure.
Last night, it looked like we might be clearing up, so I decided not to wash diapers and to wash and hang them in the morning, so I can sun them in the afternoon and dry them in a couple hours vs. overnight, and naturally bleach them. Mistake #2. I KNEW the forecast wasn’t calling for sun this week. I had one clean cover left, and he had already had a big poop earlier, I would be fine. I washed and hung his diapers and I noticed him turning red. I guess the poop earlier was just a warm up, and this was the main attraction. I cleaned him, got him nice and doubled up, went to grab a cover and none was to be found! I looked on the rack and four were hanging and I just put the 5th into my soapy bucket so I could wash it too. So if I really was without a washer and dryer, today I think I would have run screaming to the laundromat or to a friends house. Since this was an emergency, I decided to think of a way to rapidly dry the diaper that the average family home and the only thing I could think of was the hair dryer. I may have been cheating, but while the baby happily chewing on his feet in a diaper sans cover, I was washing the newly pooped in diaper and had the hair dryer angled to blow on the dryest of my 4 covers. It got done just in time too, after he nursed, Liam was exhausted and went to bed.
Overall though, I still wish I had known about flats when I was a new mama. My hubby had just joined the Army and we were struggling and living paycheck to paycheck. I remember letting him wear his diapers an extra hour or so because I knew how expensive they were. I remember counting change and hoping we could scrape together enough for a small bag of generics because we were a few days from payday. Even if I had cloth diapered part time, it would have really stretched our budget. However, in 1997, I didn’t know anything about cloth back then outside of the diapers my mother used one me. Even back then, I would have had options outside of the rubber pants my mom used on me. That is a picture of my mom and I in 1980. I was 15 months old.













































