Best practices - part 1

I've been asked (hi Claire) to share some ideas about cloth nappies, baby carrying, and some of the other strange habits we've recently developed. Content warning - some of the following will probably disgust normal people, but if you're the parent of a new baby then you won't even notice. If you're not quite yet the parent of a new baby and are put off by the following - don't worry - your tolerance levels to previously toxic and repulsive substances will be genetically altered during the birth process. Moving on...

So here are our best practices (From years in the global IT sector I now hate the term 'best practices', but it allows me to communicate what I mean. ie. It worked for us once and was an acceptable solution given the minimal project budget - we didn't document it and the risk analysis was non-existant - if you do the same it might work for you too but don't blame us if your company fails overnight as a result.)
Anyway - I'll just get on with it...

nappies
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Our approach with nappies was to balance ecological concerns with practicality. We're not hard-line cloth nappy militants, but we're convinced that shoving a bin-bag full of nappies into the ground once a week is a bad thing. There's also the minor concern of industrial chemicals on baby's skin etc... although to be honest, given some of the things he's put in his mouth at 7 months, industrial chemicals are the least of his worries.

LB's mum did lots of research on t'Internet. Lots and lots. There are tons of forums out there with parents (let's face it - mainly mums) sharing their experiences of nappies - what worked and what didn't. We first purchased a few different types of nappies second-hand from www.usednappies.co.uk, and then tried them out before ordering vast quantities (also second hand). My brother-in-law enquired whether that meant that another child had previously shat in the nappies. I replied in the affirmative. We got them delivered (previously washed :-) to our parents' and my sister's addresses in the UK, and then asked them to bring them out during the obligatory first visits after LB's birth.

The hits for us were One Life cotton nappies and wraps, and we also had success with Lolipop stuffables. The common feature with both these nappies is that you need some kind of booster/filler, which is an additional absorbant cloth which is used to soak up liquids (and you thought there was only one sort of liquid??). The hemp+cotton boosters with which we had the most success were actually bought with nappies which consistently leaked for us (HuggaBuns) and so we abandoned the actual stuffable nappies and just kept the boosters.

Stuffables, all-in-ones, ... lots of jargon. I don't know a single place where all this is explained clearly, but if you search for 'cloth nappies' and then browse the shops, you'll soon figure it out. Feel free to post any specific questions in the comments section and I'll try and answer them.

In part 2 I'll explain how we care for our cloth nappies and keep them working effectively...