Name: Kristin, Workshop Facilitator & Diaper Tester Program Leader

Number of Children and Ages: A beautiful and active daughter aged 2

A little “About Me”, Please. I love sewing and being crafty, scoring mid-century treasures on Craigslist, on-line shoe shopping, reading, watching Project Runway in all it’s glorious incarnations, The Office, breaking out of the house to see live bands, covetting my partner’s new iPod touch.  Little know fact:  I love the theme song from the Backyardigans!

Why cloth diapers for your family? With healthy options for my family always in mind- I purchased most of our cloth diapers before our daughter was born.  Our daughter Amina was born in the middle of the summer 2007 civic strike. My partner and I saw how much garbage began to pile up with her disposables so we jumped right into using the cloth diapers we had on hand.  We haven’t looked back since!  What we’ve learned from our cloth diapering journey:  It’s important to pay attention to your lifestyle and budget and choose products with a good fit to make your experience the best it can be.

Why do I love to tell folks about Cloth diapers? Using my trial-and-error experiences with cloth, I feel that I can  provide new parents and new-to-cloth parents with many ideas about how to choose the right cloth diapers and products for their families. I feel very fortunate to work alongside supportive and inspiring women in a great, nurturing environment!

What is my best tip for parents new to Cloth Diapering? Make your cloth diaper system as simple as possible and make sure it works for your family. Keep a few AIO’s or pockets in your purse or diaper bag, with a tote and some extra wipes- that way you’re never caught empty handed. You may be surprised at how little space this takes up in your bag.

Our Current Favourites: For daytime, AMP Duo or bumGenius OS Pocket stuffed with Hemp Flat Inserts.  Love, love, love hemp!  For night time or naps, a Bamboozle Bamboo with an Aristocrats wool cover or Polar Bummis cover.

Name: Karen, Owner of New & Green

Number of Children and Ages: 2 Girls, 2.5 and 6 months

A little “About Me”, Please: I am a lover of cooking, gardening and the ocean.  With 2 small children and the business, that means fast meals and dreams of days when I’ll be able to spend time in the kitchen again, a garden with some flowers and edibles but a lot of weeds and walks with the kids on the seawall and at the beach.  Sitting beachside and contemplating the ocean view is one of my favourite places to nurse.

Why cloth diapers for your children: When I was pregnant with our first daughter, I started to think about the parent I wanted to be.  One of the things that rung true with me was using cloth diapers.  Why – it just seemed to make sense.  And more and more sense once I started researching what diapers were made of and the effects of disposables on my children’s health and our environment.  For me I feel great that I am using reusable diapers because they are healthier, they are better for the environment and they make a rather mundane daily chore a LOT more fun!

Why do I love to tell folks about Cloth diapers? I love to teach and help people reach their goals.  I am a firm believer of the old proverb that speaks to teaching people to fish…Cloth diapers can really make a difference in a family’s life and I love showing people how to do it and watching them succeed!

What is my best tip for parents new to Cloth Diapering? Be ready to learn about diapering.  It’s okay to make mistakes and you may get a leak here and there.  There is always a solution to be found and that’s what I am here for – to help.  Cloth diapering will most likely enable you to get to know your little one better – you’ll spend a little more time at a diaper change and you’ll learn when they pee and poo.  Trust me, that’s useful!

Our Current Favourites: AMP Duo with a Hemp Insert during the day and bumGenius Organic All in One for nights.

Nice to meet you!

I just had a question posed to me by one of my fellow “tweeps”.

What IS this EC that you’ve been referring to on Twitter?

There are plenty of great resources out there (which I’ll list below) but here is my take on it.  EC is an acronym for Elimination Communication.  The other names for this practice include Diaper Free, Infant Potty Training and Natural Infant Hygiene.

I don’t remember the exact time when I first read about it but I am sure it was during my mad research phase when I was pregnant with our first daughter.

These are a couple of the beliefs around practicing EC that struck a chord with me:

1. Babies are born knowing when they need to pee and poo; they just don’t communicate it in a “conventional” way (ie say “mama I need to pee”).  They communicate it with signals such as body language or sounds.
2. Babies can learn to voluntarily “release” their pee or poo when given the opportunity.

And these are a few of the spin offs of EC that struck a chord with me:

1. I will develop a keen sense of my child’s needs by becoming aware of her elimination needs and responding to them (just like I learned about when to feed her and when to put her to sleep).
2. My child will learn that her efforts at communication are effective when I respond appropriately thus making her a more settled child.
3. My child will learn that going pee and poo in the potty is a normal behaviour and may be less likely to “unlearn” that her diaper is her portapotty.
4. My child will not be scared of the potty or have any shame/embarrassment about using the potty.

When I potty our children, its about communication, not training and certainly not diaper free.  Like most things, EC is not black and white.  You do not have to give up diapering your child and live in the bathroom.  Far from it.  You can use diapers (though you may use less as you become more in tune with your child’s rhythms) and choose to give your child the opportunity to go on the potty as many times a day as reasonably works for you and your family.

So what does it look like for us?

Here is a typical EC day in the New & Green household:

Clare wakes up and I take her to the living room, gathering her clothes for the day, the potty and my MCU.  I undress her, take her diaper off and wash her bottom.  Then she sits on the potty.  Most of the time, she’ll do a reasonable sized pee and a poo.  She gets her bottom wiped again, has some airing out time on the floor while I go and rinse and clean the potty.

Time to change the diaper again and have a snack before morning nap.  Diaper off, wash, onto the potty, maybe a pee.  If no pee, then the diaper stays off while I feed her and when she starts to pull off and on we try the potty again.  Usually this is a signal that she needs to pee.

Up from nap, diaper off, wash and potty.  Mid-day feeding.

And you get the picture.  We typically time our potty time with diaper change time and feeding time.  It’s great to capitalize on a phenomenon called the gastro-colic reflex where babies tend to poop after they’ve eaten. We sometimes rely on her behavioural cues, but mostly its an event like feeding or waking that precedes the potty.

I can happily report that we rarely have a poo in her diaper and yesterday, we only used 2 diapers from morning until late afternoon as she did most of her pees and all her poos on the potty.

RESOURCES:

• Diaper Free Baby
• Mothering Magazine

What is your routine, EC’ing parents?

For those of you who didn’t know…we were blessed with a daughter mid November.  We are two whole months into this adventure.  Some nights, it feels like it’s been forever and some days, I look into those two month old eyes and it’s like it’s the first time…ever.

I seem to have forgotten so much about the intensity and the sheer wonder of having a newborn in the house.  I sure forgot about how many diapers there were!  Though I say it over and over again at workshops and to clients over the phone and email, you really do change diapers every couple of hours…all day long!

So what have we learned?

• You can start cloth from day one!  Our little one entered the world and landed on a soft cotton diaper.
• There are some diapers that work better than others for those first weeks when you are contending with a baby that has a healing umbilical cord and is still all curled up like they are still confined to the walls of a uterus
• They poop a lot and it can be runny but lo and behold, we have not had leaks (with cloth, that is!)

So having a store FULL of product to choose from, what did we love?

1. A Hemp/organic cotton flat with a Snappi and a Bummis Super Brite in Newborn (love the notch at the front) and the diaper’s ability to fold down the front to make it ride under the umbilical cord stump
2. A Kissaluv size 0 was fantastic with respect to fit, ease of use and it’s ability to hold in the poop.  The umbilical fold down in the front is a bonus.  These were paired with the Bummis Super Brites.
3. A good ol’ cotton prefold – I could adjust it right down and with the folding technique we show you at the workshops, it really does work.  I loved that there was no elastic squishing those sweet little thighs.  So cost effective too, though a little bulkier of the options.
4. Monkey Doodlez Newborn All-in-Ones.  A super trim fit with super cute colours.  My favourite night time solution along with…
5. AMP All-in-Ones as they required one step and no thinking which is perfect at 3am!
6. And lastly a new product that we have been trialling for you…to be announced soon.

In celebration of our new learnings, we have put together a “Cloth from Day One” sampler kit for you to trial.  Our mistakes and successes passed on to you.  Check it out – we only made a limited amount of these kits and when they are gone, they are gone…!

Here’s to all you parents diapering and feeding at 3am – I’m right there with ya!