Wanting to start cloth diapering but you send your babies to daycare or have in home care for them? No worries, there are ways to make sure you can cloth diaper and be successful!
First thing, don’t be scared to bring it up to your caregiver—tell them the reasons that you want to cloth diaper, the benefits for baby, the environment and any other reason you felt like it was a good fit for your family.
This can be a scary topic since using cloth diapers can be challenging to some but with the right conversation, you can make a plan together that works well for everyone involved. Once you have talked to your caregiver, make sure they know exactly what you are going to provide to them. Make a list, including how many diapers, inserts and wet bags you will be bringing for your baby.
You may need to find new techniques to help out the caregivers in order to make this transition easier for them. Some ideas are:
- Mark the snap settings with a sharpie. Some families will make paper guides to help caregivers remember which snap settings to use for baby. Another super simple technique
- Have all diapers stuffed and ready to put on baby
- Keep the rises snapped into place so that the caregivers do not need to size the diapers before use.
Another recommendation is having 2 wet bags that are different colors or designs.
Two distinctive wet bags will make it easy for the caregivers can keep poop diapers in one and pee in another. Try to keep all your diapers the same, if you go with pockets, only send pockets—rather than sending a mix of pockets and covers.
Send one brand and style of cloth diapers.
It is best if you can send all of the same brand as well, since diapers from different companies can fit different. Sending different brands can cause confusion for caregivers who are not used to using cloth diapers.
You will also want to make sure that you leave plenty of diapers with the caregiver, you don’t want them to run out because baby had an unexpected poop or they were unable to do a fit check like you would. You want to make this process as simple and quick as possible, since the caregivers may have additional children to change.
When you have others helping with cloth it can be a little overwhelming, for you and for them.
Make sure to have some patience with each other and have alternative solutions. You can always provide a small stash of disposables just for at first until everyone gets the hang of things or even disposable/ reusable liners! Those may cause a smaller upfront cost if it isn’t something you already use but it can work as a great compromise.
When you are sending cloth for baby to use all day you may end up with a bigger wash pile than you usually have. With that being said, make sure that you have a set wash schedule, this will keep you from any additional stress, like there not being enough clean diapers to take to the caregiver or the need to take something they are unfamiliar with.
If you want to cloth diaper and are a working parent, don’t be scared! You can do this!
