Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love cloth diapers. We’ve had an amazing experience with prefolds, and we are a lot less broke because of them. Now, though, we’ve become spoiled.
.
A while back we decided that Axel was doing well enough with EC (elimination communication) to start wearing underwear. Or, at least, something similar to training pants, with a little padding. Sad thing was that the cheapest “baby” training underpants I could find were $4 a pair! There was no way I was paying that. My really nice prefolds were only about $2.50 each, so it didn’t make sense to spend that kind of money on tiny underwear.
.
Patrick had the great idea to buy some regular undies, and sew cut up cloth dipes into them. We went to Walmart to buy the whitey tighties, but the smallest size we could find was 4t. We bought them anyway, figuring we could probably shrink them pretty good in the dryer. After successfully shrinking them, we cut up some prefolds into thirds, and went to a friend’s house to use her sewing machine. That’s when the problems started.
.
The thing is, I had never used a sewing machine, and had to be taught how to use it in roughly 15 minutes. Needless to say, I must not have been the best student, because that stupid little wheel thingy at the bottom kept falling off, and my needle kept losing it’s thread. I spent so much time and energy trying to sew those darn things, but after 3 hours of frustration, I gave up. I wasn’t a complete failure, as I did end up with 9 pairs completely finished. Granted, they look terrible, but they serve their purpose well enough.
.
The sewing episode took place about 6-8 weeks ago, and we haven’t touched the subject since. My husband is starting to get really annoyed with the the bulky prefolds. The underwear are so much easier because you don’t have to worry about snappis, or finding a place to lay Axel down to put on his diaper. You can just pull the things on and off in a few seconds. Plus, Patrick loves walking Axel, and the prefolds make it harder for him to do so comfortably. (By “walking”, I mean holding Axel’s hands while he walks.)
.
Anyway, point being is that I need to get to another sewing machine and finish these things! Having the remaining 10 pair finished would make a world of difference, especially since Patrick does whatever he can to avoid using the prefolds, even if that means washing the underwear twice as much. (Which is ridiculous!)
.
So, my official New Year’s resolution is to have the underwear done before the new year. That’s ironic.
.
.
Also, just FYI, these homemade training pants are really inexpensive. We bought a pack of 6 undies at Walmart for about $5, and then we cut up our newborn prefolds into 3 pieces, and seamed the edges closed. Those prefolds were about $2 each, so, divide that by 3 and add it to the underwear cost. In the end, they came out to be about $1.35 each. A good deal, if you ask me, and so worth the effort!
) Anyway, we were excited because that meant that he could pee standing up.
.