Real Nappy Week 2012

I'm cutting it fine again with my Real Nappy Week post this year; I've been following (and entering) all the competitions and gossip with avid interest but as usual, my plan for a nice week of cloth nappy related posts has been scuppered by my ever-present laziness.

We had a(nother) brief foray into potty training last week - Jacob is now 3 and I'm really feeling the peer pressure to get him out of nappies.  But I just don't think he's ready.  He hates not having a nappy on, and if I try to get him to run around naked for a bit, he just glues himself to the potty and stays there until I have to (literally) peel him off.  And doesn't produce anything while he's there.  So I'm trying to accept that he's just doing this late, and it's only a couple of months until I (gasp) finish my job and have endless summer days to turn him out bare-bottomed into the garden, and let him get on with it.

In the meantime, he's grown out of our trusty Motherease One-Size (MEOS), so I've spent this week digging through my various boxes of nappies and finding some size 3s which I had hidden away.  He still fits into our Bumgenius v3s and v4s and we got some cheap pockets from Tiny Nippers, which are fantastic quality, super-cool prints (Jacob's been carrying his new ones round and begging me to prewash them so he can wear them) and we've not had a single leak with them.  We do stuff them with an extra insert though, to be on the safe side.

Finally, I got some Tots Bots fluffles from a recent NCT sale, and they are gorgeous.  Jacob even gave one to Tilly to cuddle, which is about the highest form of recognition he can offer ;)

Check out this cute bum...

I've been promising my up-the-duff sister to write out some instructions on how to wash cloth nappies, so I'll try and squeeze a post on that lovely topic in before malaise overtakes me again.

Real Nappy Week 2011 - the aftermath

So I did pretty well out of Real Nappy Week - I scored five pairs of Bumgenius Babylegs for £1 each, two Bumgenius flip covers for £5.50 each, and I won an Ella's House Bumhugger from a lovely local retailer, Nappy Go Lucky.

All had arrived by the time we got home from our weekend away, and thankfully collapsed back into cloth. 3 mornings of waking up to find J-cub wet through (it was very cold in my sister's house, so he was wearing a disposable nappy with a fleece cover, sleepsuit, pajamas, and the only 2.5tog Grobag we'd taken...) meant we had to try and wash and dry everything every single day. No mean feat when we were setting off on adventures every day, the sky was threatening rain and my sister didn't have a tumble dryer.

We've yet to give the Bumhugger a proper trial as it's still going through its pre-washes, but I can report that it is beautifully soft, fits him perfectly, and J-cub attests that it is "Bery bery comfy". I'll do a proper review when we've tried it overnight.

We are now in full-time cloth, using a selection of cobbled together nappies at night as we only have two proper night nappies (both Wee Notions Night Notions) and we're never organised enough to wash every other day. I'm sick of leaky disposables, and having to wash bedding all the time, and he has never (touch wood) leaked through a cloth nappy at night. His skin is a bit prunish in the mornings, which I'm not overly happy about, but a bit of nappy free time soon sorts it out, and I'm sure it's more comfortable for him than waking up shivering with cold from being wet through.

And in local news, Swansea council are now offering a £50 incentive voucher for parents wanting to try using cloth. I really hope the scheme is successful - it would be great not to be in the minority.

Real Nappy Week 2011

I had a nice series of posts all planned for this week to celebrate Real Nappy Week and my love of all things involving fluffy bums. But oh I'm so tired, long days at work spent with a duckling nestling in my cleavage (don't ask) and Jamie having his final OU piece of work due on Thursday, so he's appropriating the laptop while I'm watching the extended version of The Lord of the Rings and crocheting pigs (it really was too much to ask that Peppa Pig would never make an appearance in this house).

So, a quick rundown....

• Go Real - the real nappy information service. Loads of great info, advice, and a list of offers available for Real Nappy Week.
• Baba Me - one of my favourite online retailers, who do a-ma-zing offers if you sign up for their email notifications.
• Nappy Go Lucky - fab and local (to me) online retailers.
• Baby Kind - great for reductions, special offers, bits 'n bobs and have super-low postal costs.
• Little Green Earthlets - specialising in Motherease nappies, and where I got my initial stash from.

And some lovely cloth-bummed pictures to brighten your day....

Cloth nappies rock. They're so easy, and the Daily Fail can f'off with their cloth-isn't-any-better-for-the-environment rubbish. For an easy-to-digest rebuttal, see here.

There. Fastest blog post ever. Tea time!

Di-dor DAT!

With a dinosaur-printed vest to cajole J-cub into believing he was a dinosaur, I managed to get the damn hat on his head today. He'd been happily running around shouting 'Di-dor DAT!' (dinosaur hat, to those not familiar with J-cub parlance), but as soon as I got the camera pointed at him his hat-based objections returned with a vengeance. And, to add insult to injury, the blasted thing is just a wee bit too small. That'll teach me just to blithely follow a 2-3 year old pattern without measuring his evidently massive head. Still, it's cute, no?

Tonight is also our first night in a fleece soaker, as we've been having increasing problems with failing to find a combination of nappy/nappies/inserts/wraps which will contain his overnight wee. The mornings often involve a full wash of PJs, vest, sleeping bag, fleece sheet, regular sheet and mattress cover. The fleece covers are supposed to be great though, so we'll see what the morning brings. And once again, cute, no*?

*If anyone dares answer 'no', I will cry.

Day 22 - Back in cloth

(Tuesday August 10th)

It was such a relief today to reach for the bag of cloth nappies rather than a disposable. Out of necessity, we'd used disposables all throughout our holiday - we knew it was going to be a busy week without much time for laundry, and as my parents had an extra 3 adults and a toddler staying with them the demands on their washing machine would be much higher than normal without the added burden of my fluff.

I have to say that it is easier, and quicker, changing a disposable nappy. Plus there's pretty much no worrying about leaks, and it's much lighter to carry around 5 disposable nappies than 5 cloth. All that aside, I missed the cloth nappies so much! Convenience, speed and lightness of travelling aren't really important to me, and I felt guilty every time we reached for a disposable. I can't believe we took so long to switch to cloth, I'm such a convert now.

Plus, however many disposables you take with you, you can still run out. When we went to the beach, we took 5 disposables and 2 swim nappies. As I was carrying him in the Mei Tai, we elected not to use the swim nappies when we went paddling, as swim nappies just contain solid matter, and the rest just runs right out. I didn't fancy having that running down my back. So by the end of the day we'd worked our way through 4 of the nappies. I lay him down and changed him into the last clean nappy ready for the 2 hour journey home. Once finished, I picked him up and stood him by the car. He took hold of the side of the car, stood on tiptoes, and made his poo face. Oh dear.

A frantic search through the car ensued. Could we put him in a swim nappy and put one of the used disposables on top? Or lay a muslin inside one of the used nappies? Walk all the way back down to Spar and buy a whole pack of Pampers, while he stood around in a filthy nappy?

I eyed the stack of muslins sadly and thought that if we were using cloth, it wouldn't have been a problem. I could have just whipped off the dirty nappy, folded the muslins into a nappy shape and covered them with the wrap.

Thankfully, my ever-trusty swim bag came up trumps again (remember we found a tiny newborn hat to stave off the wind?), and we found a too-small but clean disposable languishing in the bottom of it.

From now on, even if we're on holiday using disposables, I'm going to be lugging a cloth nappy and a wrap around with me, just in case.

Attempts at a relaxing day...

We took a trip out today to a beautiful country park near us. Margam Park is in the next county to us, but just a short drive down the motorway. We've somehow never been there before, but were invited out by friends to have a play.

J-cub woke up late and hadn't slept by the time we left. We foolishly presumed he would sleep in the car (ahhh how I miss those days), but he gazed happily out of the window all the way there. We met up, reacquainted J-cub with his one true love, A, and bundled piles of stuff and toddlers into their buggies.

The park is huge, and after getting lost and walking up a loooooong hill we took a break in a grassy area in front of the castle (I'm calling it a castle, it might be a manor house or something but it's very castley) to play football with the Hello Kitty ball we'd bought for A.

J-cub took off at a fast crawl, looking like a mini-explorer fighting his way through a forest of grass while we chased him down and made sure he didn't come across anything unmentionable in the grass.

When he eventually started to look tired, we strapped him back in the buggy for his nap, and he started to scream. I'm sensing a bit of a trend here with my posts in general, as I seem to be typing "And screamed, and screamed" far too many times. But scream he did, as I pushed him in circles around the others who were dawdling towards the animals. I did my best to placate him and make him comfortable, but there's little you can do when out and about with a 30lb baby who's too tired to go to sleep. He did eventually drop off, and we managed to grab a drink and a snack in a completely deserted visitor centre while he slept in the buggy.

When he woke up, I took him off to be changed, and when I picked him up he was soaking (which would possibly explain the screaming). He was wearing one of his new TotsBots Easyfits, and I don't know whether I hadn't put it on properly, or if it was just from sitting in the buggy with a poppered vest, but it had leaked all through his clothes and into the squishy buggy seat. It's put any potential thoughts about getting some more on hold for now...

I changed him (he screamed) into a fresh nappy and clean clothes (my over-preparation paid off, as I had spare clothes (for hot weather), spare clothes (for cold weather), a sunsuit (in case it was very sunny), and a puddle suit, so I had plenty to choose from). I came out of the changing room not 5 minutes later, and the lovely sunshine had turned into pouring rain.

We stood around under shelter while A tried to boss us back out into the rain to play football, then we walked aaaaaallllll the way back to the castle for some lunch (toddlers did not want to walk, or ride in the buggies, so we all took it in turns to carry them and push the heavy buggies through gravel and up hills. Why did I have to choose today to forget the sling?

In the cafe for lunch ("Yellow chips! I want yellow chips, not purple. Where are my yellow chips? Yellow chips, where are you?" sang A), J-cub was surprisingly keen on eating, polishing off a big pile of baked beans and poking at some sausages and coleslaw. He managed to get most of the coleslaw all over him, leaving big wet patches which necessitated another change of outfit (see, I'm not over-prepared, I'm just prepared).

We finally made our way to the fairytale village (J-cub again refused to nap on the way), where there were mini-cottages dressed up as various fairytales (they'd gone to all the expense of building actual mini houses, but still just had cardboard cutouts of the characters within), a playground, and a castle. J-cub had a whale of a time in the playground, terrorising all the other children by grabbing their hair and shoving them out of the way, and terrifying us by moving so fast around the raised climbing-frame bit that we could barely get to the openings to catch him before he fell out (but woe betide if we tried to take him out, cue screaming tantrums until he got back in again).

In a shady corner, we found a massive round wooden table and parked him on top of it. We then had to dance around the table while he performed acrobatics in the middle, trying to catch him every time he approached an edge only to have him reverse direction while we galloped like loons to the other side. I suppose the sensible thing would have been to take him off the table, but he didn't like that, oh no.

I eventually remembered the stack of cups I'd shoved into his change bag, and when I gave them to him, his face lit up and we had a couple of moments to breathe.

Doesn't he look happy and peaceful?

Do I sound tired, jaded, ungrateful and like I didn't have a lovely day? It was a lovely day, and I'm so happy to have spent the day in the company of such good friends, my lovely husband, and our delightful children. But I still haven't quite got used to being out and about with an almost-toddler. The tantrums which have only started in the last few days are pretty much constant, and we haven't quite got to the how-to-deal-with-it point yet. He's not walking, so we're either leaning over letting him hold our fingers to work (which is back-breaking), making sure he doesn't pick up cigarette butts or other nasties when he's crawling, carrying him, or pushing the buggy. And when he doesn't nap, or doesn't nap for very long, he never stops. As with all other parts of motherhood, it takes a while for my brain, muscles, and sanity to catch up when he starts doing something new. And becoming a toddler is like starting from scratch all over again. Having a baby was terrifying, but at least if you put it down somewhere, it would still be there when you came back. Now, you can't switch off, or sit down, or have a break for a single second. All day.

I'm knackered.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I know my Look Up project has finished, but I couldn't resist today - we came across this amazing Tulip Tree, the like of which I've never seen before. It was 400 years old, maHOOsive, and absolutely stunning.

(More) new nappies

When I picked J-cub up from nursery yesterday, he was wearing a disposable nappy. They said that he'd been sweating loads (it was insanely hot, and they hadn't yet got the air conditioners working) and they were worried so had put him in one to cool him down. I was a bit unsure about whether or not they were right - cloth nappies are breathable, as are the wraps we use, whilst disposables are not. Then again, the weight of a disposable, even when saturated, is nothing compared to the weight of a wet cloth nappy.

I decided that today was the perfect time to try out the TotsBots Easyfits which I won during Real Nappy Week. The nappies are pockets, and after our initial foray into the world of pockets, we were a little reluctant to try any more. However, I figured that I'd let nursery deal with any potential leaks, and I shoved a few disposables into his bag Just In Case. Pocket nappies don't have a wrap to cover them because their outer layer is waterproof. That makes them ideal for caregivers who aren't used to cloth, as they are as easy to put on as disposables, and are seemingly good for hot weather, as they're slimmer and have less layers.

We bundled him off in one this morning, and when I collected him I had a resounding thumbs up from the nursery staff. I'm happy enough with our normal MEOS at home, but it's far easier for us to strip him off and keep him cool during a heatwave than it is for the nursery staff with all the other babies and children to deal with.

When I got him home I had a chance to see them in action - they are far quicker and easier to change, and after 2 hours and lots of drinks of water, the nappy was fairly dry (although again, the hot weather and a sweaty baby could account for that). Still, I really like them. I started to think about getting some more, as we only have 5 Easyfits which wouldn't cover 2 days at nursery. I was lucky enough to win the brand new Easyfits V2, a fancy new super-dry version which doesn't need an extra booster (hence being so skinny and cool). And which seem to cost a whopping £17.50 each. The ones I won are white, but they come in 6 gorgeous prints as well, and I am so coveting this one:

Damn it, I thought I'd escaped from the cloth nappy mania which seems to befall so many users. Until I win the lottery (or another competition), I think it's unlikely that we'll be able to afford to buy more anytime soon. In the meantime, I'm going to do some proper research into whether or not cloth nappies are hotter, and spend my hard-earned pennies on some potties so we can have lots more bare-bum time at home.

I thought I'd combine today's Look Up photo with a snap of J-cub modelling his new nappies - although this isn't the best one as you can't really see the nappy. It was the only time he chose to stare at the ceiling though, so that's all you're getting.

I'm off to clean the telly now.

Real Nappy Week 2010

I'm a bit late with this post, as there are only two days left of Real Nappy Week. Still, that's two days left for you to act and get yourselves some freebies and discounts. Lots of online cloth retailers are offering 10-20% discounts using the code RNW10, and there are competitions galore to win everything from single wraps to full birth-to-potty packs worth upwards of £250.

We're so happy with our decision to go cloth, it's been about a month now and he's in cloth at all times except for over night. Nursery are happy with them, and though it means packing and taking an extra bag every day, the extra effort is worth it. I very nearly didn't bother asking them, as they already think I'm enough of a weirdo as it is, but I happened to overhear another mum telling the staff that her daughter only had disposables that day as she was in a rush, so I was brave and asked them to change.

Our only problem is that we don't have quite enough nappies, we bought 14, and had a couple of freebies. All except one of the freebies don't fit him well, so we have 15 nappies in regular circulation. With drying time, that really means that we need to be washing half way through every other day, otherwise we run out. I've tried Freecycle, I've tried netmums, and ebay, and usednappies.co.uk, and the Cloth Nappy Tree, but there seem to be no freebies to be had, and good quality secondhand nappies can go for almost as much as brand new ones. As I want to use these nappies for any subsequent children, I'd rather have new so they last longer. And so I thought Real Nappy Week would be an ideal time to find some bargains to add about 5 nappies to our stash.

Whilst dredging round all the myriad of online retailers, trying to find the biggest discount/best offers, I also entered some 'Freebies not Discounts' competitions run by TotsBots. I logged onto facebook a couple of evenings ago to see a post saying "BETH WOODS come on down!!!! Send me your address and I'll send you you 5 pack of easyfits..... :-DDD"!

I've never won anything in my life, and I was so excited, especially as the prize is exactly what we needed. I have a moral compass which stops me from entering competitions where the prize is something I don't need (like a total set of nappies - I already have an almost-complete-set so would feel guilty taking a prize away from someone who would really appreciate it) or don't want (like a holiday to Ibiza or somewhere equally hot and clubby). I can't wait to receive my nappies now, so we can try them out and see how they compare to the MEOS. We already have a TotsBots wrap (see picture, above) which I love, although I need to get better at remembering to close the aplix fastening before I put it in the washing machine.

Anyway - that's all from me, I just wanted to share my excitement and encourage you to go out there and get saving/winning if your stash is in need of any supplementation. Feel free to add any further bargainous discounts you've found in the comments section.

Does my bum look big in this?

We're now at the end of our second week of using Mother-ease cloth nappies, and it's been a resounding success. It's bin day today, and rather than putting out a binbag chock-full of nappies from the upstairs and downstairs nappy bins, there were no more than a dozen or so disposable nappies, from overnight (J-cub is a very heavy wetter and we didn't fancy his chances in a cloth overnight) and from one day last week where he had a dodgy bum.

We've got 15 cloth nappies, which is enough to wash every 3 days (at a push) or every 2 days with time to get them dry. And with some experimentation, we've discovered that a pop-in booster (to absorb extra wetness) and a fleece liner (to wick away moisture) keeps him nice and dry for between 3 to 4 hours.

My main problem is that most of his clothes no longer fit him. At birth, J-cub weighed 8lb12oz, but he lost around 12% of his birthweight and was very slow to regain it, due to our problems with feeding. I knew I was having a big baby, so we had lots of 0-3 month sized clothes, and just a couple of Newborn sized vests. We had to quickly rectify that (everyone told me not to buy many clothes as we'd be inundated with gifts of packs of vests and the like. All of our friends evidently knew that, and elected not to inundate us, which resulted in us having NO gifts of clothes, so we had to make emergency trips to Tesco at 2am to buy Newborn sized vests, and sleepsuits, and socks when we realised that everything else was swamping him). He was in Newborn clothes for 5 weeks, and then quickly zoomed up through the sizes. At 7 months old, he was in 12-18 month clothing. Luckily, his growth has slowed since then (I say luckily, as we couldn't afford to keep going through a year's worth of clothing in 6 months), and at 13 months old he's only just growing out of the 12-18 month size.

Of course, I've been stocking up on the next size in the sales, buying bits and bobs of 18-24 month clothes here and there. But with his new, massive, cloth bum, none of that fits him. And the 2-3 size is ridiculously long in the leg.

When he went into the 12-18 month size, I managed to buy 4 pairs of cord dungarees off ebay for the bargain price of £8. 3 of the pairs are Osh Kosh B'Gosh, which I think must be cut for cloth bums as they have always been massive on his bum, and now look perfect. They are about the only thing other than jogging bottoms which still fit him, but heavy cord is not really what you're looking for in a light summer wardrobe.

I've had a look around websites like Frugi, which sell clothes cut for cloth bums, but they are well out of my price range (bearing in mind that I consider £7 Tesco trousers to be out of my price range). And I'm not really in an ebaying mood at the moment (which, trust me, is a Good Thing). My only option is to crack out the sewing machine, and make some myself. My main problem with that is that I'm much more comfortable working with heavy fabrics like cord or denim, as they seem to be more forgiving of mistakes. I've never worked with any sort of stretchy fabric, which would seem ideal for accommodating a big bum. I'm going to have to bite the bullet though, and give it a go. If only he were a girl, then he could just wear dresses and be done with it.

My lovely Mum (and Dad) came to visit earlier this week, and whilst discussing this problem, and demonstrating how nicely his Osh Kosh dungies fit him, she offered to knock up a few pairs in a lightweight summer fabric (my Mum is a genius sewer). She traced the OK's on a piece of newspaper, and cantered off home, stopping to buy some lightweight checked summer cotton at her favourite fabric store on the way. She's back in a couple of weeks time to help me knock the garden into shape, so hopefully he'll have some lovely new outfits to wear by then. In the meantime, my parents kindly went to Tesco and bought him 2 pairs of stretchy jogging bottoms so we have an alternative to making him wear his PJ's all day.

Thanks, Mum and Dad.

Yesterday was our first properly hot and sunny day. And, for the first time, I got the nappies drying on the line. It was lovely, and I felt nice and smug.

The kindness of strangers, and friends, and family

Cute bum in his TotsBots wrap

Now that J-cub's turned a year old, and we seem to have cracked most areas of raising a baby (really?), we've been thinking about branching out into cloth nappies.

Our reasons for not having done so thus far are as follows:

1. I read the government paper into the environmental impact of reusable vs. disposable while I was pregnant, which concluded that the impact is only significantly lower in reusables if you don't tumble dry them, and if you use them for more than one child. Here in rainy Wales, living in a house with little available clothes-airer space, we tend to use our tumble dryer quite a lot. And having taken the best part of 6 years to get knocked up, I couldn't say for sure that we'd get to have another one.
2. We are rubbish at doing laundry. The floordrobe in our bedroom is testament to this - piles of clean clothes never get put away, because they're stacked in front of the closed wardrobe doors, and the piles get higher and higher and it's just silly. I hate laundry, it's so stupidly time-consuming, having a domestic task which takes more than a day to complete, has several physically-tiring components and which you're expected to do more than once a week.
3. A good friend had tried them, and hated them, and put me off.
4. We didn't have the available cash to make the initial outlay, and kept being given vouchers for disposables.
5. When J-cub arrived, everything was so ridiculously difficult that it never really crossed my mind again. I would say that only in the last couple of months have I started to feel like I actually know what I'm doing, and to feel comfortable with our day-to-day life, and maybe like I need a new challenge.

Triggered by my final 3 unpaid months of maternity leave, when money wasn't so much tight as entirely non-existent, I started to talk about getting some cloth so we wouldn't have the cost of disposables in our weekly budget. I also think that it'll be easier to get the hang of them now, and get into a good system of washing and drying, now that living day-to-day with a baby isn't such a massive struggle. And then we'll be experienced enough to use them from the start next time, and can re-use the ones we get now for the next baby, so everyone's a winner (especially me, because I get to have another baby! Not yet though, obviously. But maybe soon, please?).

A friend very kindly told me that she had a load of cloth nappies which she no longer had any use for, and which I was welcome to. We ummed and ahhed a bit more, then decided to give it a go and collected them a few weeks ago. Cloth nappies nowadays come in a frightening variety of types and shapes and brands and colours and fabrics and absorbencies, which websites like the Cloth Nappy Tree helpfully detail to guide you through the maze. The ones my friend gave me were pocket nappies, which have a waterproof outer layer, and an inner pocket which you stuff with a variety of fabrics to soak up the pee. We excitedly tried one, and it leaked. I started reading up on why leaks might occur, and the reasons seemed to be endless. Too much stuffing causes gaping around the legs, and the pee comes out. Too little stuffing and the pee has nowhere to go, so it comes out. If a tiny bit of the inner fabric isn't covered by the outer layer, then your baby's clothes wick the pee out. If your baby's clothes are too tight, then the pee gets squeezed out. And of course, the nappies might be too big, or too small.

I spent ages trying to figure out where I was going wrong, and trying different combinations of stuffing materials, and looser clothes, but all to no avail. I came to the conclusion that all but one of the nappies were too small for J-cub. He is a big boy, the size of an 18 month old at just 12 months, and all but one of the nappies are a medium size. Consensus seemed to be that he needs a large.

I started to investigate the other types (by this point my head was reeling - and in fact I've been dreaming about Swaddlebees and Minkis and Blueberries and TotsBots and MEOS and bamboo and hemp and fleece and prefolds and wraps for weeks now, it's very tiring.), and picked up a couple of cheap fitted nappies to try, which are shaped like a disposable and have a separate waterproof wrap to cover them. My experiments with pockets had kind of put me off continuing down that route, but they're very popular so don't let me put you off if you're reading this and looking for advice about what to get. I should probably put a disclaimer somewhere around here which says "I'm mental, don't listen to anything I say, especially when I'm giving my opinion about things, because I'm usually wrong".

The fitted nappy with a wrap worked well, fit J-cub nicely and were easy to wash and dry. Another friend demonstrated her system to me, consisting of Mother-ease one size (MEOS) nappies and Mother-ease Air Flow wraps (left); the combination of which were far less bulky than the ones I'd been trying.

I started having a look around ebay for some cheap ones to try, which proved practically impossible as most cloth nappies have a high resale value, even when used.

I happened across a posting on my local Netmums nearly new board, offering a free (FREE!) Mother-ease trial pack consisting of 3 different ME nappies, a wrap, a pop-in insert and a roll of paper liners. I emailed the lister quickly and crossed my fingers. She got back to me quickly, saying she lived a few miles away and would drop them off the next day. The trial pack was worth £38, but she didn't want any money for it, and brought it right to my door.

And they fit beautifully! One of the sized nappies and the wrap were sized small, so I've put them away for the next baby. I tried the nappies with the wrap I already had, by TotsBots, and while it's not a perfect fit, it'll do.

So that just left me with trying to pick up enough nappies to get going with. Around 20 seems to be the suggested amount, and at £10 each (ish) new, that's a lot of money. Even at knocked-down prices on ebay and usednappies.co.uk, bundles of nappies and wraps go for well over £100. Yet another friend offered me her complete stash for £100, which for what she was offering, was a massive bargain. But again, actually coming up with £100 in cash is way beyond our means. Have I mentioned that I stupidly rammed my car into a bollard a couple of weeks ago, and have a £300 excess to pay?

I finally mentioned our dilemma to my Dad during a phone conversation this afternoon, and a few minutes after I ended the call I received an email from him telling me to order what I need and he'll put the money in my account. THANKS Dad ;)

Rainbow MEOS

So now I'm off to make my order, and to commence on our cloth nappy adventure. And to brush aside those feelings of guilt that I haven't done it earlier, because better late than never, right? And at least we can do it right next time around. Just maybe after the meconium is all out of the way. And the breastmilk-poo explosions.