All About Cloth Nappies

With both my children there was one shining light which helped me feel as if I was achieving something special, whilst pinned under a breast-feeding baby unable to do much else. That something was cloth nappies.

Introduced by a friend of a friend, I started using cloth when my eldest was 12 weeks old, and never looked back. She wore them until she potty trained at 2 and a bit, and our youngest has worn them since her very first nappy went on in the maternity ward. So far we’ve saved about 7,000 disposable nappies going to landfill and about £1200 in hard cash! I now run free advice sessions for local parents keen to use cloth…helping others discover its joys is such a privilege.

Many people worry that cloth will be hard work, smelly, or dirty. I hear you mamas…poop is not something any of us wants to embrace! But I can honestly say it is none of those things. All babies come with their fair share of the brown (and yellow) sticky stuff. With cloth the main difference is you pop it down the loo rather than into your bin. So much more hygienic ☺️ And yes, there’s more washing…but on average only one extra load a week - you stick the nappies in with the baby clothes you’re inevitably washing in any case.

Plus, for me, it was something positive and enjoyable at a time in my life when in most other things I had no clue what I was doing. It has always made me feel that I was doing my best to protect the planet which takes me to my happy place. And I know of other mums for whom using cloth has helped them battle post-natal depression both through having something positive to focus on, and because of the incredible on (and off) line community of supportive cloth nappy mums.

This week was meant to be Real Nappy Week 2020. Although it has been postponed because of Corona Virus, we feel that there’s no time better than lockdown to be trying something new. So if you’ve any questions about cloth nappies please do feel free to get in touch on hello@thelittleloop.com, or head to one of the incredible online resources which exist over at thenappylady, babipur, or real nappies for London.

p.s. many of our brands design their clothes to be cloth nappy friendly. Checkout Frugi and Little Green Radicals for the best cloth bum friendly designs.

Also, we’ve created some fab infographics all about cloth. We’d love it if you’d download them (right click and save image) to use, and share them far and wide to help spread the word about the wonder of cloth. 👇🏻👇🏼👇🏽👇🏾👇🏿