Seattle Cloth Diaper Service: A Review from a Newborn Photographer
Are cloth diaper inserts right for you and your family?
Yes, this is a photography website, and I offer Lifestyle newborn photography across the Pacific Northwest... but why a blog post about reusable cloth diapers?
When we were awaiting the arrival of our first baby in the winter of 2012 we were faced with endless choices on how to parent and care for our child. Constantly bombarded with options and decisions... which stroller, baby carrier, breastfeeding and sleeping options. Not to mention deciding on a name and dreaming of our future together.
We were already overwhelmed, and the baby hadn't even arrived yet. We did know we wanted to be intentional about our decisions and try our best to stick to our core beliefs. We knew we wanted to try cloth diapers, but didn't know where to start. Reusable, washable diaper inserts. Absolutely, yes. But. What did that look like?!
Our first reason for trying reusable cloth diapers, less waste.
A family throws away on average 1,500 to 1,800 disposable diapers in a baby's first year. That is a lot of diapers. A lot of trash. As your baby grows, do does their bladder... so you end up lowering that number as baby gets older, but the waste never goes away. We wanted to reduce our footprint as much as possible, and finding a reasonable way to keep the disposable diapers at bay was a top priority for us.
We researched using cloth diapers, and realized we were in for an adventure. I mean, let's be honest... dealing with baby pee is pretty straight forward... but poop. How would we handle that?! I mean, ew. Hahah. Then there was figuring out all the different systems that were out there. Covers and inserts... where did we need to start with our newborn?!
Then we stumbled on Diaper Services. Several companies in the Seattle area were starting to offer delivery of clean cloth diaper inserts (keep in mind this was 2012. now these services are everywhere)... and then wait for it... they would pick up the dirty diapers each week... and replace them with clean ones!! CLEAN DIAPERS every week! This was exactly what we wanted without knowing it. Who doesn't want someone else to clean the really dirty stuff?!
Here are a few perks of a baby diaper service (most provide all of these and so did ours)
* Dirty diaper bin (easy for dropping all dirty clothes into once used)
* all natural cotton cloth diaper inserts
* pick - up of dirty diapers from your porch + drop off of new clean diapers at the same time
* options to purchase Diaper covers
Here are a few things we learned in our journey with cloth diapers;
* You can find a great selection of different Cloth diaper covers at your local Kids Consignment store. Test out different covers and don't be afraid to try different ones if their shape or fabric isn't right for your baby. We loved soft wool covers for our newborn, but found that we needed a really sturdy waterproof exterior cover as baby got bigger (and so did her bladder)
Our favorite in the North Seattle area was Childish Things in Greenwood.
* There is a learning curve, like with most things, with folding the insert and placing in in the cover quickly. Don't worry, keep going.
* Poop. Yup you will deal with it. Becoming a parent is going to have you facing all sorts of new things. Poop is just one of them, and it will be more often than you ever wanted to deal with poop. And there you go, I used poop 4 times in 4 sentences, you. are. welcome.
* You may run out of the clean diapers they provide you for the week... when this happened we started washing the "less dirty" ones ourselves (shhhh they don't want you to do this, but sometimes you have to).
* Most of the diaper services had the option to purchase "retired or used" cloth diapers. We used them after we stopped the delivery service and still use many of the inserts for clean ups and spills around the house. Even though we are finished with using them on our children's bums ;-)
* Real moment confession: We used disposable diapers overnight with our second child. This is mainly because she would sleep for much longer stretches when she couldn't feel her wetness. Cotton diapers are great for this reason... the baby knows when it is wet and will let you know... also encourages potty training earlier when they can realize they don't like it ;-) We used the disposables overnight solely for my sanity and sleep. It worked for us.
You might be wondering why I am writing this review. I am not being paid or sponsored, just passing on our experience with a product that made our life SO MUCH easier in those first months with our newborn baby.
Here are the 2 services we used;
Baby #1 in 2012: Seattle Baby Diaper Service
Baby #2 in 2017: Diaper Stork Seattle
Both services were amazing and provided a service that was a huge relief to us while we were adjusting to bringing our children into this world. Just knowing we would not need to do all the laundry that came with the Cloth Diaper decision was a huge relief.
There was no real reason we went with Diaper Stork in 2017, other than a different grandparent setting up our service and not knowing which company to choose. I don't think you could go wrong with either service. Both had wonderful customer service and were wonderful to work with.
Did you have a fantastic experience with a Cloth Diaper service in the Seattle area?! Leave a link in the comments!
