Q & A: Cloth Diapering & Nursing in Public

I get a million questions about cloth diapering and breastfeeding in public so I’m going to kill 2 posts with one click. I’m going to answer the questions that always come up on these topics. 

Cloth diapers:

Q- How do I start? It feels overwhelming! 

A- It can absolutely be overwhelming. I remember feeling totally lost when I started researching cloth. There are a lot of different styles and a ton of different brands. Start by buying a few different styles/brands. Get some prefolds, pockets, AIO (all in ones), ect. Try them out to see what you like best. My personal preference is pockets with charcoal bamboo inserts. 

Q- What’s your favorite brand? 

A- I like several brands but my stash mostly consists of BumGenius, Nora’s Nursery, and Alva. I have a hard time spending $30+ for one diaper. I simply don’t do it because some of the cheaper brands work great. 

Q- Is there a big difference in pocket inserts?

A- YES! Yes. Yes. Yes. We had leak issues with microfiber inserts constantly. It was better with bamboo and hemp inserts but what takes the cake for us is charcoal bamboo inserts. I have heavy wetters so we need thick inserts. 

Q- How do you wash them? 

A- I wash them with Tide on a regular heat cycle twice then do 1 rinse cycle with cold. You have to be sure that you don’t use any fabric softener and that your water is not acidic. You can buy testers and water softeners at Walmart or Lowe’s. 

Q- What do you do with poopy diapers? 

A- I spray them off in the sink or wipe them out into the toilet as soon as I put a new diaper on.  With breast milk poo it’s runny and needs sprayed down with fairly strong water pressure. With solid poo it typically can be pealed off with toilet paper or a wipe right into the toilet. Just be sure not to flush the wipe of course. 

Q-What do you do about stains?

A- I wash the stained diapers in a regular cycle, I squirt spray and wash all over them, then I lay them outside in full sun for 30-60 mins. Sun bleaching is the shit. It’s all you’ll ever need to pull out 99% of stains. I check on the diaps after 30 mins. The ones that still look bad I respray and let set longer. 

Q- What do you do with them after your kid is potty trained? 

A- That depends on the person. If you plan to have more babies, keep the diapers. If you’re done having kids, sell them. Cloth diapers hold their value well. You can sell of your stash and make a nice profit or if you aren’t interested with recovering some of your money you can donate them to a mama in need. 

Q- Do you replace your inserts after a certain amount of time? 

A- I replaced mine between Brayden and Bentlee and Eilee. Meaning after the boys were done I donated all of those inserts and bought new ones. I will do the same with Eilee after 6 months to a year then again before our next baby is born. This isn’t necessary. I just do it because I like fresh inserts every so often. 

Q- Does cloth diapering save you money?

A- Yes. Cloth definitely can save a ton of money especially if you’re planning to have multiple children. For me, I have an addiction to them so I buy way more than I need but if you stick to only as many as you need you’re going to save a shit load of money. No pun intended hahaha. 

Q- What do you do when you’re out of the house?

A- I personally do disposables when I’m going to be gone all day because that’s easiest for me but what most do is exactly the same as you do at home. You just put the diapers in a travel sized wet bag. A wet bag is a laundry bag created for wet and dirty diapers. 

Q- How often do you wash your diapers?

A- I wash mine every other day. I pull the inserts out as soon as I take the wet diaper off and rinse it then I put it into a wet bag that gets washed with the diapers every other day. 

Q- Isn’t is gross to you?

A- Shit is shit. You handle shit with disposables exactly like you handle shit with cloth. 

I hope this helped any of you curious about cloth diapering. It sounds confusing when you first start but I promise it gets better. I’m happy to help you in any way that I can. If you’re local I’m even happy to let you borrow some of my stash to try it out before you buy any. 

Breastfeeding in Public:

Q- How did you get over the fear of nursing in public?

A- I hate answering this question because it’s not some great, helpful advice. I simply had this ‘ah ha’ moment when I stopped caring about what others would say or think of me NIP. With my bigs I always went somewhere private to feed or I pumped and bottle fed because I was scared of what society would think. With #4 I literally lost all of that fear in one single moment. I think being a mom for so long just taught me to do me. It gave me a back bone that I didn’t have in certain areas. 

Q- Do you use a cover? 

A- Yes and No. I’m as pro nursing in public as it gets but I’m not anti cover. I don’t think you’re more of a women if you nurse without covering or with your whole tit hanging out just like I don’t think you’re less of a mom if you always nurse in a bathroom stall. Eilee hates to have her face covered up. She kicks and screams. She fights it and me so I personally don’t use a cover often. I do however, use the 2 shirt method and nurse modestly uncovered. 

Q- What’s the 2 shirt method?

A- It’s wearing a tank top under your shirt so that you can modestly lift your outer shirt up and inner shirt down to feed your baby. The inner shirt covers your entire mid section. The outer shirt covers the top of your boobs. All that is exposed is your nipple which is covered by the baby’s head. 

Q- What’s your favorite nursing position?

A- At home is side lying for sure. I am lying on my side and the baby on hers. It’s by far the most comfortable nursing position. It’s also how I dream feed her if she gets hungry at night. In public it’s called the cradle carry. With the arm that’s on the side that I’m nursing on I cradle her so her head is right at my boob and her body cradled with my arm.  

Q- Has any one ever confronted you about nursing in public? If so and it was negative how do you respond?

A- Yes. I get confronted regularly by people to praise me for doing it. It surprised me the first few times. Breastfeeding openly has a rep for being taboo but honestly I get a lot of positive remarks. However, I have gotten a few bad looks and once I did get asked if I could ‘go somewhere else to do that’. It happened a few weeks ago at the Tulsa State Fair. My response was this exactly, “I won’t respond to you the way that I’d like to because that could land me in jail so I’ll simply say this, it is my LEGAL RIGHT to breast feed my baby with or WITHOUT a cover anywhere that I’m authorized to be. If you have a problem you can look away!”. She said that I was being disrespectful and I told her that if she didn’t leave me alone I’d find security. She left. It happened in front of my kids and Brian’s family which upset me more than the actual incident but as much as I breastfeed in public I was prepared for it to happen eventually. 

Q- How do you handle certain family members that are uncomfortable with you nursing in front of them or certain situations when there are a lot of kids around?

A- I am very mindful of those things. I breastfeed in a spare room at my in laws house because I think that it makes my father in law uncomfortable if I don’t. He’s never said that. He’s as sweet as sweet gets. I just know him well enough to know that he’s very modest. If kids are everywhere I honestly don’t do anything different. I nurse so modestly that children would never for a second know what I was doing. 

Q- Do you get crap for posting photos of you breastfeeding on social media?

A- I used to but only from my dad ha. He is super mouthy as it is but he picks on me about it. Says stuff like, “I’m your dad. I don’t want to see that shit.”. He knows by now that I’m going to post it anyways so he doesn’t pick on me anymore about it. He finds other ways to pester me. 

Q- What’s your advice to anyone who wants to be bolder with their journeys but are scared?

A- Be proud of yourself and your journey! Like, seriously breastfeeding is something that should make you so happy that you want to share it with others. I’m not kidding when I say that I get told a lot that my pictures made someone else feel brave enough to share theirs and that it one of the biggest compliments ever to me. I want to see all forms of parenting normalized. No one questions a mother posting a picture bottle feeding. No one should question a picture of a mother breastfeeding. If more women were open about it we’d see breastfeeding normalized in our lifetime. Don’t be scared of the negative. Be prepared for it but not scared of it.