After spending many hours online in search of a good place to set up a diaper registry, I found a great local lady who runs Abby’s Lane. She is based out of Virginia and has FREE SHIPPING. This is a big deal for me. So many sites charge way to much for shipping and it was important that if I had a registry where people could buy our diapers, they wouldn’t have to shell out an extra $10 for shipping. Her prices are the same as other online diaper retailers, and I am thrilled to have our diaper registry on this site. Another bonus is that you don’t have to set up an account with the site to order a registry item. All of the other sites I researched required guests to open an account with a log in and password. I found this to be ridiculous and somewhat of a deterrent to buying items off the site. No one likes spam and no one likes to set up an unnecessary account on a site they will probably visit infrequently. I’m a happy camper knowing I have selected the easiest set up for folks who would like to contribute to our most desired diaper stash :)
Abby's Lane registry link
For those of you asking - Why cloth diapers?? Aren’t disposables the way to go? Are you guys just crazy hippies? What will you do when you go out? Do you seriously carry poop-filled diapers around with you? What will you do at conventions? I don’t want to smell your dirty diapers! Fear not, I have done a LOT of research and I’m not going into this completely inexperienced >.< Although I have only babysat one child in cloth diapers, I have a lot of understanding about how they work, the different types, how to launder and store them, as well as which types I will prefer for our lifestyle.
Learning about cloth diapering over the past 4 months has led me to choose the GroBaby system. The diapers “grow” with your baby, as you snap the diaper height-wise to fit the size of your baby. There are 3 settings that will fit babies throughout their entire diapering journey (unless you have a late potty trained child who simply gets too big to fit into them). The GroBaby system comes with an outer shell and a snap in soaker pad. With a soaker pad, you do not have to put a diaper in the wash every time baby pees. If the soaker pad gets wet and the shell does not, you just snap out the shell and put it in your wash/diaper pail, then place a clean soaker into the shell. For poopy diapers, you’d do the same, unless any pee or poop got on the shell. At that point you would put the shell and soaker pad in the wash/diaper pail. This makes it very easy to go through maybe 2-4 shells per day, versus 7+ full diapers daily. Although the GroBaby diapers cost about $5 more than most all-in-one cloth diapers, they can be used for a longer period of time, reducing the number of total diapers you have to buy in the long run. Most people would buy about 20+ cloth diapers, where with the GroBaby, you only have to buy around 10-12 shells and the soaker pads come with it. You can also buy additional soaker pads for about $17 for a 2-pack. I LOVE this system and it has received amazing reviews from many different sites and on diaper forums.
There is *not* a specific color for each size, the photo is just giving you an idea of some of the available colors. The prints are so cute, too.
When it comes to traveling with a cloth-diapered baby, it’s not as difficult as many people think. Yes, you store the dirty diapers in an air/smell tight bag until you get home to put them in your diaper pail or straight to the wash. That is not a big concern for me because as long as the bag is smell-tight, who cares? The diapers seal up nicely and once they are in the smell-proof bag you cannot smell them. You can also (gasp) take the diaper into the restroom and shake the poop off into the toilet while someone else is watching the baby. This does not involve getting poop on your hands. Poop is supposed to go in the toilet, not the trash. Many people throw their disposables away with large amounts of poop in them when you are not supposed to do that. It says on every diaper package that you should try to remove excess waste before throwing it away. Anyway, dealing with poop is a big concern for a lot of people, but it’s a small inconvenience for me. Cloth diapers are healthier for baby because they are not chemical-filled. Many commercial disposable diapers are bleached and contain chemicals that give babies diaper rashes more often than parents like. Some babies are very allergic to disposable diapers, but parents will use diaper rash creams or they go through many extra diapers per day to keep baby dry, instead of considering a cloth alternative. This is rarely a concern for cloth diapered babies, as cotton is very absorbent and there are special fleece inserts you can buy to wick moisture away from the bottom if your baby does get a rash. If the diaper needs to be changed more frequently, you are not wasting money on extra disposables, you are just washing maybe a little more frequently. Believe it or not, the water used to make disposable diapers far outweighs the water a family will use during their cloth diapering years.
A new option for the GroBaby system is a chlorine-free biodegradable insert that lays in the diaper instead of a soaker pad. This makes traveling VERY easy. If the baby poops or pees, you just remove the insert, shake off the solids if it's there, and throw the insert away. It degrades completely in 50-150 days, versus many many years for one disposable diaper (excluding disposable eco-diapers that biodegrade). This is a great option for when we are traveling and don’t want to hassle with a mound of dirty diapers, especially if we are on a longer trip with no place to wash the diapers.
Overall, Dave and I are meeting our goals of keeping un-biodegradable waste out of landfills, spending much less money in the long run, and most importantly; putting something safe and gentle on our baby’s bum. Here is a link to Abby’s Lane Cloth Diapering 101 that answers many common questions about diapering.
~Christine
