Actually, I use cloth diapers

My daughter was born at the end of May.
Compared to when she was born weighing just over 2,000 grams, her face has become rounder, and she has started to develop two rolls of fat on each of her thighs.
Her bright, wide eyes are set a little far apart, and they look very much like my son's did when he was an infant.

My encounter with cloth diapers

Actually, I have been using cloth diapers for my son, my first child, since he was about two months old.
It has been about a year since he stopped using diapers during the day. Now that my daughter is born, I am enjoying cloth diapering a newborn for the first time in a little over three years.

Cloth diapers are, as the name suggests, diapers made of cloth. There are two types: flat diapers and pre-folded diapers.
Flat diapers are rectangular pieces of cloth that are looped. The materials include cotton and organic cotton. You fold them to your preferred size, place them on top of what is called a diaper cover, and put them on the child in that state.
Pre-folded diapers are pad-like items that are thicker than flat diapers. You can use them as they are, placed on a diaper cover, without needing to fold them.

I became interested in cloth diapers when I was pregnant with my first child.
I had a vague interest in and longing for natural-style parenting, and I wanted to try things that seemed doable once the child was born.
Then, while I was looking at parenting accounts of people with similar interests on my smartphone, I learned about cloth diapering.

Come to think of it, I remember hearing about cloth diapers and disposable diapers in a home economics class back in high school.
We did an experiment where we had a cup of water absorbed by a disposable diaper and a cloth diaper, respectively,
and I thought, 'Well, it's cloth. It's going to get wet. Wow, the disposable diaper really absorbs a lot.'

Thinking about it now, maybe I had a slight interest in cloth diapers even back then.
Strangely, I didn't think, 'I would never use cloth diapers,' but rather, I remember thinking, 'Did people in the old days use these? Can't we use them now?'

What my son and cloth diapers taught me

So, from the time I was pregnant, I read several books on cloth diapering and what is usually mentioned alongside it, called 'diaper-free parenting' (a parenting method where you sense a baby's signals for elimination and time it from a young age to have them eliminate in a potty, etc.), and I thought I would like to try it once the baby was born.

Well, the laundry seems like a lot of work, though.
I'm happy that it reduces trash.
And it's a bonus if they get out of diapers early.

The cloth diapering I started with that level of commitment has surprisingly continued.

The laundry has increased, and it certainly gets wet and sometimes leaks.
Even now, as my son is about to turn three and a half, he still has accidents when he gets absorbed in play or refuses to go to the toilet.
If you ask me if I've gained anything tangible in exchange for the effort, I don't really know yet.

How should I put it? Through cloth diapering and diaper-free parenting, I find it fun to observe my child's elimination.
My son taught me that.

Newborns have a very high frequency of elimination. It often happened that they would go the moment I changed their diaper.
That gradually decreases as they grow older.
Just when you think that, they might wet their diapers excessively again at the change of seasons.
If I sit them on the potty after nursing, they poop with a high probability, which makes things easier because the cloth diaper doesn't get dirty.
The state of their poop changes once they start eating baby food.
While I was sitting them on the potty over and over again, before I knew it, they started sitting on it by themselves.
Before I knew it, by the time they were one, they stopped pooping in their diapers altogether.

I never thought I would be able to feel my son's growth by focusing on his elimination.
Although there were many times when my focus tended to be on 'What, it's this wet!? Isn't the laundry crazy!?', I think that facing his elimination in that way (or rather, being half-swayed by it, haha) was a precious time, looking back on it now.

I'm going to enjoy it more!

And now, having welcomed a newborn again.
Since returning home after my postpartum stay at my parents' house, I have been able to start and happily continue cloth diapering and diaper-free parenting.
Because I have the experience with my son, I can anticipate the degree of wetness and the timing of elimination to some extent, so I spend my days observing my daughter's elimination with a more relaxed mind.

When she wakes up from sleeping with a little whimper, I check her diaper.
If it's not wet, I try offering the potty for a moment.
When she goes 'whoosh' and pees there, I talk to her, saying, 'Oh, you feel refreshed, don't you?'
My son also looks at the newborn's poop, which looks like grainy mustard (?), and asks, 'Why is this poop like this?' (You were like that once, too, you know.)

'When will she be out of diapers?'
When it was my son, I had feelings mixed with such expectations and impatience, but this time, I feel like I will be able to enjoy the process of my daughter's growth itself even more.

Because of the season, the laundry dries crisp and well. The sight of cloth diapers hanging out, full of the scent of the sun, is also somehow a happy one.

Aside: I decided to write about it

Actually, this topic of cloth diapers is one that I had a huge mental block about, both in writing and talking to people.
After all, there are few people who use cloth diapers these days.
Since it inevitably takes more effort to change and wash them compared to disposable diapers, it is full of the 'Why go to the trouble?' vibe.

"Wow, that's amazing."
"You're so conscious about these things."
"I could never do that."
"Is there really any need to try so hard there?"

I had kept it a secret because I was afraid that by telling someone, I would be labeled as "some weird, overly conscious person" or seen as "a difficult person with strong obsessions."
Perhaps a big part of it was that before my son was born, when I told my own mother I wanted to use cloth diapers, she strongly opposed it, saying it was too much trouble, too hard, and that there was nothing to be gained from it.
I felt like I was being told that what I was trying to do wasn't normal, that it was heretical.

In particular, I had the impression that child-rearing involves different values, obsessions, and family circumstances for everyone, and that human relationships could become strained over unexpected things.
That's why I thought it was safer to hide anything that wasn't "normal."

But gradually, I started to think differently.
Isn't it a loss to worry about what others think of what I'm doing because it feels comfortable, and then not be able to enjoy that comfort?
It's not something I need to go out of my way to talk about, but it's not something I need to hide either.

In the first place, most people probably aren't interested in the diaper situation of someone else's household.

With that change in my state of mind, I decided to try writing about it.

By the way, this article was started at an event called "Moku-Moku Blog Writing Session" (where you connect online with peers to focus on writing a blog or similar for 25 minutes, then read each other's work and share thoughts) hosted by the "Kyoto Living Editorial Office" I belong to.

At the beginning of the event, when the organizer, Yuko Ezumi, asked, "What topic will you be writing about?", I timidly brought it up, saying, "About the cloth diapers I use for my daughter..."
Then, Ezumi-san said, "I used to do that too—diaper-free parenting."
Furthermore, another participant, Miyu Yuzane, also said, "We use cloth diapers too!"

Wait, there were people like me so close by!?!?

It was a summer day when I learned that the blocks are always just things I've created myself.
I'm glad I tried writing it.

My daughter is sleeping soundly.
These days are so precious.