James' 1st Birthday nappy

I have a nappy addiction. And no, before you all ask, I’m not sniffing the chemicals in the plastic disposables widely available and publicised in pretty much all mother and baby related literature. I mean beautiful soft fluffy cloth nappies, made from lush minkee, cuddlesoft, warm fleece, ethical cottons and bamboo fibres. I have to say, I wasn’t expecting to end up addicted to something as prosaic as nappies but from the first time I saw the new style of resusables I was hooked.

Gone were the days of rock hard terry toweling that my brother and I had been subjected too a few too many decades ago to mention. In their place were a variety of styles all with one thing in common, they could be washed and reused instead of chucked into the rubbish to go into landfill sites and spend hundreds of years not decomposing. It’s quite a scary thought, actually, that every single mainstream disposable nappy that’s been thrown away since they first started to become popular in the 70s, is still out there.

We were lucky, our local council provided a scheme where you could get a trial pack of reusable nappies if your baby was still under six months old. We got the form, filled it in and were sent a BumGenius birth to potty pocket nappy and a MamaBless sized fitted nappy with Cottontots wrap to go over it, plus 10 flushable liners to go inside the nappy. Now obviously you can’t go full time cloth with just the two nappies, so we got another couple of trial packs from the lovely Karin at Stratford Nappies, who patiently answered all my emails about what sort we should go for before we got another BG, a Blueberry minky one size nappy and a sized Fuzzi Bunz, plus an extra set of absorbent inserts to go inside the pocket and off I went on a mad Google search.

It was this search which was to lead, as my other half would no doubt say, having had to pay for most of them, to my cloth nappy downfall, as I discovered there were forums dedicated to cloth nappies filled with like minded women who also advocated breastfeeding, sling wearing, the use of ethical products, clothes made from Fairtrade Cotton, mums who worked at home and made fabulous things like clothing, jewellery, skin products, felted goods, children’s accessories and toys and knitted products which came in all shapes and sizes. Of course, as with any diverse group, there were also the mums who, although they loved cloth nappies, didn’t necessarily subscribe to the rest of the so-called “attachment parenting” or general “hippy” lifestyle that was often thrown out as an insult when discussing the use of resuables over disposable nappies. But it didn’t matter. The forums were friendly, full of great advice and help from all ends of the spectrum and on all subjects. Great recipe ideas, places to go on holiday, ideas for amusing a child during the long school holidays.

As I delved deeper into the world of cloth nappies, I discovered more and more work at home mums (WAHMs), who managed, somehow, to combine bringing up their children with working at a business and I was staggered at their commitment and amazed at the diversity of talent available off the beaten track and away from the run of the mill High Street chains. We started looking at wool and that became a new addiction as soakers, shorties, boardies and crops winged their way to our little bit of Yorkshire and onto James. Instead of  being a branded clothes wearer, he started having unique things from wonderfully named shops like Pickle Paints, Hollow Oak, Crafty n Clothy, Honey Bee’s Boutique, Beetles, Bugs and Butterflies, from Felt Fusion, from The Nappy Garden, The Soaring Sheep, Woolly Wumpkins, Halobaby, LanaVida, Tempestuous Poppet, Pixie Knits and Bobby Dazzlers, from Neelam on the wonderful Cloth Nappy Addicts forum, from my old school friend Kirsty at Wharfedale Woolworks. Whenever we went out in his WAHM made clothes, we would be stopped in the street and comments made on what he was wearing, usually from older ladies who loved his knitted trousers and hoodies, but sometimes from mums my age and younger, who wanted to know where I’d got his printed Tshirts from.

I can’t praise these mums highly enough. The quality of their work is fabulous and how they manage to run a home and a business is beyond me, who struggles to get anything done even though I know I do have the time (methinks my computer useage is probably one of the reasons why my house is a tip) and the feeling of community is incredibly strong among this bunch of independently minded women. While part of me wishes they could all be well rewarded for their talent and their efforts with proper wages and the recognition that what they’re producing is miles better than a lot of so called branded goods, the other bit of me is secretly happy that my son is likely to be the only one going to Little Rascals wearing a T-shirt with his name and some mushrooms painted by Chloe at Pickle Paints and that there’s only one other boy I know of who has a Camelot hoody and trousers set from Hannah at Beetles, Bugs and Butterflies but his hoody is yellow and ours is blue.