Cloth Diapering From Day 1: Using Cloth Diapers at the Hospital

It's hard to believe it's been more than 2 weeks since my little guy came flying into the world! At just over 38 weeks, he surprised us by coming earlier than we expected. He also surprised us by being the smallest of our children, weighing in at 7 pounds 12 ounces! He was 2 pounds lighter than my first born and 1/2 pound lighter than our second born! I'm proud to officially present to you, Emmett McIntyre, born at 1:48pm on November 22nd! Here is he in his first cloth diaper ever at not quite an hour old.

We had an incredibly positive experience using cloth diapers at the hospital that we delivered at. In fact, before we were even admitted to the hospital, we were getting great feedback! While in triage, one of the nurses asked me if I worked at Nicki's Diapers. She was a blog and facebook follower :) This brought up the topic of cloth diapers with another nurse and she was very interested to hear about modern cloth diapers and wished she had tried them on her children. While in labor, we told our nurse that we wanted to use cloth, gave her the first diaper for him and showed her how to put it on. As you can see from the above picture, after nearly an hour of loving on our new baby, the first diaper on his bottom was a GroVia Newborn All-In-One.

After we were transferred to our family suite, I set up the "bassinett" drawers with everything we would need to use cloth diapers for the next 2 days. I hung our Planet Wise Large Wet Bag from the handle for easy storage of dirty diapers. All-In-Ones, pockets and fitteds went into one storage slot. Prefolds, Snappis and covers went into another storage slot. Liners, CJ's BUTT-er and my Planet Wise Small Wet Bag filled with Imagine Flannel Wipes went into another slot along with the provided disposable diapers. The picture below is actually taken just before discharge so many of the diapers have already been used.

I think the most important thing to do when trying to have a good experience with cloth diapering at the hospital is to have good communication with anyone providing care for you or your baby. Everytime a new nurse came on shift, we let her know that we preferred the cloth diapers and showed her how they worked (this was the main reason we brought some "easy" diapers like the pockets and all-in-ones). We also let her know that we were ok with a disposable diaper being used on the baby. While it was mainly my husband and I who changed Emmett's diapers, there were a couple times he was brought to the nursery for exams/tests and he returned in a disposable diaper. I'm happy to report they put the dirty cloth diaper in the correct place, though :)

We came home with a nearly full wetbag, and just emptied them into the washer along with the diapers left from my middle son's pail. One load of laundry is a drop in the bucket to the laundry that newborns produce, and in all honestly cloth diaper laundry is my favorite because no folding is necessary :) I highly suggest anyone who is interested in trying cloth from birth bring their diapers to the hospital. I'm so glad we did!