Soaker

I have never purchased a disposable diaper.

Once upon a time, I thought only hippies used cloth diapers. I thought of cloth diapers as complicated, leaky things with lots of folding and safety pins involved, and wrote them off. However, when my son was about a month old and we were nearing the end of the disposable diapers people had given us as baby shower gifts, I started to re-think my position. He was going through a 72 pack of diapers in about a week (about $20 worth every week. What are we made of money?). Soon, I found myself researching cloth diapering.

The kind we ended up going with are very simple and quite modern, something called "all-in-one" pocket diapers. I'll spare you the details, but here's the key: there are no pins and no special folding involved. For the most part, they operate just like a disposable diaper- I just have to do laundry more often.

The biggest problem I've had to face with cloth diapers is nighttime diapering. My now 5-month-old son now goes to bed at around 8:00, I wake him for a quick nighttime feeding at 10:30, and then he sleeps until 5 or 6 the next morning. This system works great, but almost inevitably when I come to his crib in the morning there is a big wet spot on the front of his pajamas. This is despite the fact that he is wearing triple the protection he wears during the day (for those experienced in cloth diapering- this means 1 microfiber and 2 bamboo inserts). What to do?

I went back to my trusty friend the internet, and found that many cloth diapering moms (and it's almost always moms on these boards, where are all the men? I digress...) use something called a soaker over the diaper, especially at night, soak up the... well, you get the point. Their purpose is exactly what it sounds like. Being a knitter, I quickly decided that something small and made of wool to go over my baby's bum was right up my alley. I purchased the pattern for and cast on the Vanilla Soaker. I'm very impressed with the pattern- it gives instructions for 5 different sizes and three different yarn weights, and the end product is very practical (read: stretchy in all the right places!) with no seaming.

So now should be the time when I tell you how great the soaker actually works. I finished it up just the other night, but as you can see...

A little large, don't you think?

The fault is all my own. when a pattern tells you that the finished measurements they have given are for when the item has not yet been stretched you should pay attention to that. I was wondering why my 5 month old was already in the large size. I think I could wear this thing it's so big! Maybe he'll wear it in a few years.