Yesterday, I received a blog award from The Cloth Diaper Report. It’s wonderful to hear that a great blogger like Emi from The Cloth Diaper Report enjoys reading my blog.  Thank you so much Emi!

The Best Blog Award rules are:
To accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who gave it to you and his/her link. Pass it on to 15 other blogs you have recently discovered and think are great! Remember to contact the blogs you choose!

1. The Cloth Diaper Report

2. Newly Wed, Newly Bred!

3. The Modish Mamma

4. Domestic Dork

5. That Girl Blogs

6. Grudgemom

7. Mama Notes

8. My Green Family

9. Happy Green Babies

10. All About Cub

11. The Eco Chic

12. thinkPINK

13. The Cloth Diaper Experiment

14. Mama Rose

15. Natural Mommie

The AMP (Annie Marie Padorie) AI2 diaper has been created here in Canada by one of the friendliest women I’ve ever met (via email).  Today, I own three large AMP diapers.  I bought my first AMP diaper, when my daughter was 4 or 5 months old.  I was impressed with the quality and decided to buy two more a month later.

What I like about the diaper:

• Great quality.  The beautiful serging made me a little obsessed about how well I serged my diapers :-)
• It’s quite trim.
• Elastics in my AMP diapers have never left any really bad marks on my daughter’s skin.
• Still fits my daughter at 32 lbs.
• Comes in two sizes – not too few and not too many.
• Easy to clean insert.

What I do not like about the diaper:

• The leg elastics on the first AMP diaper I bought lost some of its elasticity.  It’s possible my early washing routines had something to do with that though.
• The microfleece is not the best I’ve seen however it seems to be a popular one for diaper making.

Overall rating: 4.5 out of 5

NOTE: I bought my AMP AI2 diapers more than a year ago, so please keep in mind that AMP diapers might have gone through some changes since I bought mine.

A few months ago, I decided to buy a GroBaby cloth diaper probably because I wanted to try something new.  I must admit that now, after a few months, the diaper gets used very rarely.  I thought that at least my husband would like the diaper, but it looks like he has more trouble using it than I do.

What I do like about the GroBaby diaper:
1. The insert can be snapped in and out.
2. Can use other inserts with the shell (they will not snap in though because of the different snaps).
3. The diaper is quite trim.

What I do not like about the GroBaby diaper:
1. Elastic at the back is way too tight and leaves major marks on my daughter’s back.
2. Velcro does not stick to the laundry tabs in the wash.  When I take the diaper out of the washer, the velcro is usually stuck to the lining of the diaper and not the laundry tabs.
3. It’s not as absorbent as other diapers I’ve tried.
4. I find that I have to wash the shell after every poop.
5. Can’t make my own more absorbent snap-in inserts for the diaper because of the different snaps.

Overall Rating: 3 out of 5

Lately, I’ve been playing a bit with natural disinfectants because chemicals in regular disinfectants scare the heck out of me.  Ever since the birth of my daughter, I’ve been cautious with the use of chemicals, but once she started crawling and putting everything in her mouth, I became almost obsessed with what’s in my household cleaners and disinfectants.

I’ve known for a while that tea tree oil can be used for disinfecting and I’ve been using it on cloth diapers for a few months now.  It’s worked very well for us when we had problems with yeast diaper rashes.  I’ve also used tea tree oil on skin blemishes and insect bites.

Tea tree oil has a very strong smell, so be prepared for that if you decide to buy it and have never used it before.  The smell does not last a long time though and if you use it to disinfect diapers, don’t worry, they won’t smell like tea tree oil after rinsing and drying.

More recently, I’ve started using eucalyptus oil from Wildroot Botanicals mixed with a natural cleaner for cleaning and disinfecting kitchen counters.  The smell of eucalyptus oil will definitely wake you up and clear your sinuses.  If you cloth diaper, you can also use the oil in the diaper wash.

Both oils – tea tree and eucalyptus – are quite expensive, especially eucalyptus.  However, they’re usually used in very small amounts so they last quite a while.  As for availability, tea tree oil can be found in quite a few stores.  I’ve bought tea tree oil at Costco and Zehrs (a Loblaws-owned supermarket store).  Eucalyptus oil is harder to find.  I would love to be able to buy it close to home in larger bottles.

If you’ve been wondering how to dress your newborn for night-time, you’re not alone. For the first few days of our daughter’s life, we had no idea how to dress her to sleep.  After reading online that overdressing babies can be dangerous, we ended up under-dressing her.  Then because she was too cold, we ended up overdressing her.

According to the experts, the ideal nursery temperature is 16-20°C (61-69°F). We kept the temperature at 19-20°C because I thought that anything lower than that would be too cold for our newborn.   At first, we dressed our daughter in sleepers (with feet) and then, mainly because we were tired of undressing her for diaper changes during the night, we decided to try a Grobag sleeping bag.  With the Grobag, I could stop worrying whether my daughter was overdressed or under-dressed.  All I had to do was to follow the Grobag recommendations on how to dress the baby at specific temperatures when using the sleeping bag.  I did find that I had to dress my daughter slightly warmer than recommended or her feet and legs would be a bit cold.

Our Grobag worked well until our daughter got bigger and felt trapped in the sleeping bag.  She started moving a lot during the night and the bag would wrap around her tightly.  So, we decided to switch to sleepers.  The cotton ones we tried, didn’t keep her warm enough and she didn’t seem to like wearing the fleece ones.  I ended up dressing her in a cotton sleeper with a long-sleeved shirt and cotton pants underneath.

Next we tried wool longies from recycled sweaters which would work as diaper covers at the same time, but I found that her belly or back were too exposed.  So, we went back to cotton sleepers with cotton shirt and pants underneath and tried to keep her covered with a blanket as much as possible.

After months of using cotton sleepers, we decided to try fleece sleepers because we keep our new house cooler.  I’m not sure what it is, but my daughter does not seem to like sleeping in fleece sleepers.  Partly, it’s not a surprise because I don’t feel comfortable sleeping in fleece either.  I need something lighter and more breathable.  So, we might be switching to cotton sleepers again.

As you can see we’ve had to experiment quite a bit.  What works for one baby, doesn’t always work for another.  If you’ve found something that works for you, then you’re one of the lucky ones :-)

Recently, I re-designed my bamboo fleece inserts for gDiapers.  The original inserts had two rectangular doublers of the same size attached at one end.  I found this a little too bulky for walking toddlers.

So, in order to remove some bulk and to make walking a little easier, I decided to make the second doubler a contour one.  The contour doubler can be either attached at both ends or it can be snapped in.  The snap-in version, allows for more thorough cleaning and faster drying.

The new insert is seven layers thick which should be enough for most babies.  If you have a heavy wetter, then another layer of bamboo fleece could be added.  If you have a light wetter and would prefer less bulk, the insert can be made thinner.

If you’re interested in giving this insert a try, they are available at the Doublers and Wipes Etsy shop.

Did you know you can use gDiaper inserts with cloth diaper covers?  Since my daughter never seems very comfortable in her gPants (the gDiaper cover), I recently decided to try the disposable gDiaper insert (gRefill) with a Bummis PUL cover.  It worked great and my daughter did not try to remove the diaper like she does her gDiapers.  So, whenever I’ll need to use a disposable I’ll probably use a gRefill with a cloth diaper cover such as Bummis or Thirsties.  I haven’t tried it with wool and fleece covers, but I assume it’ll work just as well.  I do wonder though, what the wool and fleece covers might absorb from the gRefill.

I tried the gRefill with a Bummis cover at night as well and it worked great.  I did use a wide Zorb doubler along with the gRefill because I’ve heard one gDiaper insert is not enough for night-time – whoever said it was right because the doubler was quite wet in the morning.  I could have used two gRefills, but that would create extra waste which I’m not comfortable with.

I ended up using the refills with a PUL cover two nights in a row because we’ve had a hard time getting rid of my daughter’s yeast rash.  Usually, I use bamboo fleece fitteds with wool covers, even when my daughter has rashes.  If she does have a rash, it usually heals quickly thanks to the fitteds and wool, but this rash has been really stubborn.  I wonder if potty training had something to do with it since she hasn’t been wearing very absorbent diapers anymore.  Anyway, I decided to try disposable diapers because I wanted my daughter to be as dry as possible between changes since as you probably know, yeast loves moisture.  Well, it turns out disposables do not help heal yeast rashes, the rashes stay the same or get worse.  So, the next thing I decided to try was the gRefill with a PUL cover that has been neglected for at least a couple of months.  I was happy to discover that her rash did look better in the morning.  I suspect the gRefill and cloth diaper combination is more breathable than a disposable diaper which sped up the healing process.

So, if you do like gRefills, but not the gPants, you can get out your PUL covers and start using those with the disposable refills whenever you can’t (or don’t want to) use a cloth diaper.

Most of you have probably heard by now of the Indonesian woman who gave birth to a 19.2 lb baby.  For those of you out there who are more familiar with kilograms, that’s 8.7 kg!  My daughter was 9 lbs and 4 oz at birth which I thought was quite a bit, but not anymore.  I’ve heard of newborns 10-13 lbs at birth, but I never imagined a human was capable of giving birth to a baby bigger than that.

I’m just really surprised that this woman didn’t have the baby earlier especially since she had diabetes.  I suspect she would’ve had the baby quite a bit earlier if she was living in Canada.  Most doctors here probably would’ve been freaking out if they saw a pregnant woman that big.

Want to know more? You can read the complete story here.

And the winner of the Northern Baby Zorb doubler giveaway is…

April ~ EnchantedDandelions (@magicdandelions)!

CONGRATULATIONS!
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