When 'Imi (my 4th baby) turned 4 months old, I decided to give cloth diapers a try. Long story short, it was something my husband wanted to try when we were both working full time jobs but after going full time with the Keiki Dept., I figured I could manage another load of laundry or two during the week.
To be completely honest, I already do laundry daily so it really was, what's one more load. To me, the pros outweighed the cons and if I could do something small to keep more disposable diapers out of the landfill, then why not! At least I could say I tried. You can read more about the start of our journey here.
There were a few learning curves for us...like how to avoid leaks during the day, then at night. And making sure we have the snap settings correct once 'Imi became mobile.
Why we chose a hybrid cloth lifestyle
With our lifestyle, we decided being a hybrid cloth diaper family would be best. If someone else was watching the kids, we reverted to disposable diapers to make it a little easier for them (because the snaps overwhelmed our family and having to manage the wetbags if we were not home was a little much).
And then there was the poop...I dreaded the poop diapers the most once 'Imi started solids. Without going into too much detail, if it didn't easily plop into the toilet, sometimes it was a little...gross LOL. At home wasn't that big of a deal but if we were out and about, then it was a smellier problem (and maybe we missed the solution along the way, let me know).
What we learned about leaking
Leaking is an issue whether you are using disposable or cloth. And if you have a boy, you know that you have to make sure it's pointing down and not up to avoid leaks!
As 'Imi got older we learned he is what some some call a "flooder" or heavy wetter. After almost a year of successful cloth diapering, he all of a sudden started to leak or soak his diapers. I got discouraged for a bit and we did take a break from cloth while I tried to figure out what we were doing wrong.
This is where having a cloth diaper buddy comes in handy! I'm so glad I was able to reach out to Pohai from Kaleimamo Hawaii to ask for her advice. Not only did she recommend we change him more often, she suggested adding an extra insert (and duh! We already did it at night but it didn't occur to me to do that during the day!).
Side Note: We did change the type of cloth diaper insert we use also. We use a thick (and wide) bamboo cloth diaper insert now and pair it with a thinner insert during the day. At night we use two of the thicker inserts and haven't had any issues with leaking! Yay!
What we learned about our cloth diaper preferences
Besides having a diaper that was nice to look at. I found myself a fan of both solids and prints. We had a collection of cloth diapers we got off Amazon and from Kaleimamo Hawaii.
Over the last few months of toddlerhood my husband and I quickly established a preference for our pocket diapers from Kaleimamo Hawaii. The inner athletic wicking jersey made for an easy poopy diaper change. While we no longer use the all in one diapers, we exclusively use the pocket and swim diapers from Kaleimamo Hawaii. We even invested in more of these diapers that feature designs inspired by our indigenous Native Hawaiian culture and stories.
Cloth diapering does require an upfront monetary investment but for us, it has been worth every penny. Being able to support another family owned business, a Native Hawaiian owned business, and to put money back into our local economy means so much to us on top of doing something for the environment.
If you'd like to see our Amazon Affiliate Store with our cloth diaper favorites, here's the link