On Cloth Diapers and Day Care

About a month ago, I stopped into my sons future day care with my deposit check and a bumGenius 3.0 cloth diaper ready to talk my day care into cloth diapering the little man. I was so nervous, especially since we had just decided that this was the day care for little man regardless if they took cloth diapers or not. We picked this day care for several reasons, it was (sort of) on my way to work, it was the most inexpensive of all the day cares, it was super clean, super friendly, and my cousin has her two little ones there. So the cloth diaper part was going to be a huge plus if they took them, if not I would have sucked it up and bough some chlorine free diapers, but I was going to be as convincing as possible for them to let me use cloth.

I prepared myself several ways for this (potentially) tough conversation. First I headed over to the RDA (Real Diaper Association ) website and read their Daycare tip sheet. This was a great resource and really helped me prepare the way I would approach the cloth diaper question. I made sure to go in with an example of the diaper I would be using, explain how they worked, and if they were hesitant ask them to do a trail run for a couple of weeks. I also made sure to read up on Pennsylvania's regulations in regards to diapering in a day care facility. Once I got to the day care I talked with the center director first and explained the diaper to her, she said that it wouldn't be a problem and to go talk to the women in the infant room about it. I was so relieved that the director didn't think it would be a problem! Once I got to talking with the women in the infant room I explained that we were cloth diapering little man and showed the how the diaper worked. I explained that they worked just like disposables, and they were all for it! They asked me some questions about how they worked and what they needed to do when they changed little man and I gave them the whole run down of how they worked. The one woman was so surprised at how easy the diapers were and told me that she wished they had something like our diapers around when she cloth diapered! I was so relieved when I left that I was shaking and I was so happy that I was able to continue to cloth diaper the little man full time!

So tomorrow is little man's first day of day care, I'm both sad and happy about this. I'm happy because I'm going back to work and starting as a full-time librarian this year instead of a part-time traveling one like the last two years. I'm sad because that means I won't be home with my little man all day loving on him and playing with him. I'm so happy I found a day care I really love, is relatively inexpensive (as far as weekly rates go around here), is clean, friendly, AND they agreed to cloth diaper him!

We have 20 bumGenius 3.0's (6 of those still need to be prepped...I better get on that!) and I have 2 medium Planet Wise wet bags (I may need to buy 2 more since we also use the medium bags for sprayed out diapers in our bathroom). I also plan on packing a few Ziploc bags for poopy diapers (maybe I'll even see if I can just use some of my small zip wet bags to save on plastic). I was able to show the two women in the infant room how to use the diapers (they were really impressed with how easy they were to use), and I'll explain again to them tomorrow how to use them and how to put them in the wet bag (I'll have the fold them up like disposables so I don't get a diaper chain with the aplix).

I'm going to make sure that I write out instructions for diapering and disposing of diapers for them as well as a sheet of what his routine is usually like. I'm hoping it will be successful and that little man will like day care!