And so it ends.  I’ve just put my daughter in her last mandatory flat diaper and put her to sleep and I’m more relieved than I can say.  I’ve discovered many positive things about using flat diapers, but with the list of pros come some cons as well so it’s nice to know that I now have the option to use whichever type of diaper I want as each individual situation dictates.   But before I go into that, let me tell you about the final day.

Saturday morning, my daughter had the greenest poop I’d ever seen! It was so green I called my mom and my husband to come look at it as I asked them if maybe she’d ingested a crayon or something.  Seriously, it was THAT green.  Meanwhile, my little girl loved all the attention and just sat there on the changing table looking from one loving caregiver to another smiling widely.  It makes me wonder if she might just produce green poop again just to get our attention!  When I was washing it off, the fold sort of fell apart as I tried to hold all the corners and dunk the diaper without touching too much of the stuff…which brings me to the point of this story—I dislike cleaning poop off of flats or any other diapers with lots of creases where poop can hide.  But I got it off.  I think I got more of the poop off the diaper by dunking it than I would have with a diaper sprayer, actually.  Of course, my hands did became more submerged.

Friday went much better than Thursday. It was calm, and there was no drama. Even though I have enough diapers that it wasnt necessary, I washed the diapers quickly while Bunny napped and then line dried them under the sun where they dried much more quickly than they would have inside. In fact, they dried in three hours that way. I hope its sunny during the rest of the week!

It’s a great feeling knowing that only a couple hundred dollars spent on cloth diapers can save you the thousands of dollars that you would have spent on disposables. I bought my cloth diapers for my first (and currently, my only) child, fully intending to have more kids and also intending to never have to spend another dime on diapering once my stash was completed (unless I want to, of course :-D). Even the best cloth diapers can wear out over time which means that you might have to add a little more money to your investment when it comes to your second and especially your third child. But there are ways you can protect your investment by prolonging the life of your cloth diaper stash.

Among experienced cloth diapering families it is well known that you must use cloth diaper friendly rash creams and ointments with your cloth diapers.  The problem, is that it's one of the most frequently forgotten or not even considered issues for those new to cloth or considering cloth.