Confessions of a cloth diaper addict

With my oldest child quite a few years ago, ahem, I had the old safety pin/folded diaper with a diaper cover. We had a diaper service and that lasted for exactly three months. It lasted three months because my daughter had such severe diaper rashes all the time that I thought it was the cloth and I switched to disposables. I now know that it was most likely the detergent that the service was using to launder and bleach the diapers.

When Rylee came along I decided to try cloth again. My good friend sold these prefolds with wool covers. Again, severe rash and we switched to disposables. I didn't know at the time that my baby girl, as do a lot of young children, had a lanolin allergy.

Even though by the time Zoe was born in 2005 I was a natural parenting fanatic, I still refused to use cloth. I did not want to put another baby through that rash. My friends kept telling me that diapers had evolved in the 5 years since Rylee was in them. I wasn't having it. Until I went to visit my good friend Nicole in Minnesota. Her baby was in Kushies. I fell in love. I went home and ordered my first pack of Kushies from Melissa, of all people. My good friend Lisa also mailed me a box full of gently used Kushies. Zoe did not get a rash, I felt so much better about not throwing diapers in the landfills and then I discovered EBay.

On EBay I could get a myriad of cloth diapers new and used. I think I bought at least one of every kind. Work at home mom diapers, Fuzzi Bunz, Swaddlebees, Wonder Alls, Sweat Pea, Just Ducky- the list could go on for ages. I would wait for Zoe to pee just so I could put a new adorable diaper on her. I loved, and still love, washing diapers. I know it's weird. My, (follow me here), ex husband's grandmother once told me that she loved hanging diapers on the line. Why we find happiness as women by cleaning poo, I don't know...

At the time I was managing a Curves for my mother and I took Zoe to work with me. It was amazing how many women asked me how to get cloth diapers. I had suggestions but no brick and mortar store to send them to. It seems like a lot of them didn't have computer access.

I began fantasising about walking into Safeway and being able to pick up some cloth diapers. IN my vision, they were prominent on the shelves next to the major disposable diaper brands. I could not stop thinking about it but all I had was a vision and I had no idea how to make it happen.

Little by little I started telling people in my family, (I come from a family of entrepreneurs). I got a lot of encouragement and a lot of interest. I decided to try and make a prototype. Knowing nothing about sewing, I hired someone to make a few diapers.

That didn't work out so I called Melissa at the advice of our friend Chanda. Chanda changed my life that day she suggested I call Mel and ask her to do a little sewing. For the first time, I really believed that my dream of mainstreaming cloth diapers, could become a reality.

Anyways, I am off topic, Mel took my idea and ran with it and changed the whole purpose of our company. It was because of Melissa that I learned about the danger of PUL, the nasty processing of "organic" bamboo and so much, so much more I can't even begin to try and write in 2000 words or less.

So here I am, a cloth diaper addict, feeding my addiction while saving the Earth and our babies, one butt at a time.