Cloth Nappies Wales

I’ve neglected my blog a bit. I’ve been busy with ReeBee Baby and a new venture. I’m very passionate about cloth nappies (as you might have noticed!) so I’m taking this passion into my work (well it’s working for embroidery lol).

www.clothnappieswales.co.uk

I’m now a Fill Your Pants nappy guru here in South Wales. I’ll be advising new parents/old parents/any parents on cloth nappies and hopefully being able to guide them in their choices. I was shocked at some stats I read in Waste Awareness Wales that every baby in disposable nappies in Wales adds 150 black bags of nappy waste to landfill. Also that for every £1 spent on disposables we pay 10p in tax to pay for their disposal!

Wales isn’t big enough for another 20 years of 150 bags per baby is it?

Reusable cloth nappies.. guess how many nappies I’ve saved from the dump?

I will admit to being slightly bored, so to fill time with something downloading I thought I’d write up my cloth nappy stash for my little boy. Thrilling idea lol.

Sooooo….

20 Bumgenius version 3. The ultimate in cloth nappying. It’s bombproof, slim fitting, fab colours, and birth to potty. As it’s a pocket no need for a waterproof wrap so it’s just like using a disposable. This makes it ideal for hubby as he refuses to do anything other than snap some velcro together and if I’m around he’ll cunningly wait until I notice his nappy needs changing. Suppose there’s nothing new there to anyone!

2 Baby Beehinds. Both fitted so need a waterproof wrap over them. Excellent nappy although the only hemp version I have gets quite crunchy, prefer the bamboo version.

2 WeeNotions. The ultimate in designer wahm nappy (find them at www.weenotions.co.uk) and for patriotic Welshies they also do a welsh flag one! I love the pocket birth to potty one size.

2 Upsy Daisy pockets. Sadly they’ve stopped trading but another excellent wahm nappy. Hubby thinks ds looks like bam bam from the flintstones in one of his upsy daisy’s and I will admit he’s totally right!

1 Cuddlebub one size all in 2 nappy. Has a great dino print, all-in-2 are great if only wet just change the inner absorbant layer and keep the same outside (obviously not all the time that would be manky)

2 Little Lamb microfibre fitted nappies (and boring white wrap). A great nappy, dries mega quickly and is so so soft you want to wear it yourself. Except my bum isn’t that small anymore, so I won’t :-p

I think that’s it. I bought all one size birth to potty nappies so that wouldn’t need to change the sizing later on. The best bit is he’s starting to realise when he’s weeing because obviously cloth absorbs a bit more slowly, so I hope by 2 he’ll want to potty train. That is probably inexperienced mum wishful thinking 🙂

I have a ticker on www.clothnappytree.com and so far I’ve saved over 1,600 nappies from going to landfill. That’s shocking for just one little boy. I can’t even imagine the mound of plastic that would be sitting rotting in the dump if I’d used disposables on him. They get a pretty bad press with people worrying about what they’d do ‘touching poo’ I just think I’d rather touch it now than live near a rotting dump of it in 20 years time….

ReeBee Baby’s Cloth Nappy Clothing: Dungarees

I’ve been spending a while making some new clothes for ds that are a bit bigger around the bottom to accomodate his big cloth nappies (they’re not that big), ordinary clothes work okay but sometimes he’s out grown them before he really should.

So far I’ve been making dungarees I’ve nearly finished these for the summer they’re dungaree shorts. I have to edge the legs. I’ve made some bias binding from the same fabric I did the aeroplane applique in to give a bit more detail. Just blue can get a little dull. I think I’m also going to add some more embroidery to the other side, it looks a bit bare!

Available from http://www.reebeebaby.co.uk

I’m going to be selling a range of these at my next craft fairs and also adding them to my shop next week!

Hyena Cart

If you’ve never looked at www.hyenacart.com then you really should! To be honest I find it a little hard to navigate around but there are some absolute gems in there. The best thing is they’re made by wahm’s or most items are only made in small numbers or unique. I recently bought a pocket nappy made with smurf’s fabric for my son (his dad collected them obsessively when he was little so I’m just adding to it lol). It’s here http://hyenacart.com/prod_details.php?id=48928&vid=3448

Here are a few of my favourite finds:

I love these http://hyenacart.com/babybugcreations/index.php?c=11&p=66628 but think hubby might have a heart attack if I put G in them lol.

I love the puppy dog and jungle AI2 nappy here http://hyenacart.com/prod_details.php?id=44951&vid=3569

The best way is just to browse go to the category you’re interested in and hit on a shop name that grabs you and hope your paypal balance is full!!

Cloth nappy cakes: eco friendly baby gift

My hubby thinks I’m a little odd for being so ‘obsessed’ with cloth nappies, indeed if I had a lot more money I would have about 3 wardrobes full! It got me thinking that maybe as a crafty person I could try and expand this interest into my shop.

Sooooo my cloth nappy cakes were born. If you google nappy cakes there are pages and pages of ones made with disposable nappies that look beautiful but lets be honest after about a fortnight you’ve used everything you’ve been given! In no other way would you be giving a gift to go in the bin… hopefully.

Reusable nappies/washable nappies/cloth nappies whatever you call them don’t get binned but re-used over and over again. And if you’re really savvy then you always have the possibility of re-sale too!

Cloth nappy cake ingredients: 6 terry towelling or prefold nappies (not as difficult as you might think), a wrap in a gorgeous colour or pattern (no boring plastic pants), embroidered baby grow/onesie, bib and muslin cloth with the same design and 2 pairs of socks. All decorated with ribbon. I specifically don’t wrap it in cellophane to make it more eco friendly – that bit only gets chucked away. It goes into a 100% recycled cardboard cake box.

Cloth nappy cakes from http://www.reebeebaby.co.uk

What if you buy it and they don’t like washing nappies? By using terry towelling or prefold nappies then you have a stock of large highly absorbant cloths and trust me you’ll need them! The wraps would look equally gorgeous over a disposable nappy as a second line of defense against leaks. And the clothes … well they’re self explanatory 🙂

I hope by introducing cloth nappy cakes as a newborn baby gift I can start to spread the word on cloth nappies in Wales and the rest of the UK.