Call for Submissions for The Freedom of Cloth Carnival

Logo created by The New Daddy
using an image from Erica Blonde on Flickr

As the Natural Parents Network works to compile your articles into a cloth diapering resource, we're excited to announce that we will also be hosting a week long cloth diapering carnival. The Freedom of Cloth Carnival is scheduled over the week of July 4th (July 3-9) to celebrate the beauty of finding independence from unnecessary waste through the use of cloth diapers, as well as to support independent, mama-run businesses.

The Freedom of Cloth Carnival, hosted by Natural Parents Network, is being planned and coordinated by two incredible NPN volunteers: Melissa at The New Mommy Files and Shannon, aka The Artful Mama formerly The ArtsyMama. We will be choosing themed posts from carnival participants to feature here on NPN throughout the week. In addition to the great posts by carnival participants, there will be several exciting giveaways featuring products from cloth diapering related WAHM (work-at-home-mama) businesses.

Freedom of Cloth Carnival Daily Themes

Sunday, July 3rd - Cloth Related Recipes
Do you make your own wipe solution or rash cream? Have a perfect system for lanolizing wool? Maybe you have gone so far as to sew your child's entire stash of diapers. Feel free to get creative and share any cloth-related "recipe" or tutorial from your repertoire.

Monday, July 4th - Choosing Your Cloth Style
Do you use a little bit of everything, or one style of diaper exclusively? Tell us why you love AIOs (all in one diapers), or why fitteds are all you could ever need. You can write a post focusing on one style of diaper, compare different types you've used, or explain why you love what you love. Share your style with us, however you'd like!

Tuesday, July 5th - Cloth Diapering Must Haves
Are there cloth diapering accessories you simply could not live without? Tell us about the most important items in your diapering stash and why you love them! Feel free to concentrate on a single item, talk about the pros and cons of different diapering-related products, or list off every single thing in your diapering arsenal - it's up to you!

Wednesday, July 6th - Wordless Wednesday
Feel free to share photos of your stash or your children with their fluffy cloth bums. Submit your photo by email, with preferred caption and a link to your blog, to Jorje {at} verthandi.org. The deadline for photos only is Monday, July 4th. If you choose to create your own fluff themed Wordless Wednesday post, there's no need to submit it in advance. There will be a linkup on Wednesday here at the Natural Parents Network, so visit our Wordless Wednesday photo montage to link up!

Thursday, July 7th - Cloth Through the Stages: From Infancy to Potty Independence
Did you find that what worked for your newborn suddenly failed to cut it when you had a mobile baby? Maybe you had to change your whole routine when your toddler learned how to open an aplix diaper. Do you use cloth as a back up for elimination communication, or cloth trainers with an older toddler or a preschooler? Share with us how cloth worked for your child through one or more stages on their path to potty independence.

Friday, July 8th - Cloth Troubleshooting and Laundry Day
Do you have the perfect wash routine? Tricks on how to get to the bottom of and fight smelly diapers? Did you find a way to keep your busy toddler from taking their diaper off, or to keep your heavy wetter from leaking through her pajamas at night? Maybe you love your wool dryer balls so much that you want to write a whole post about them. Share your best tips and tricks for solving any diaper-related problem.

Saturday, July 9th - Inspired by Cloth
Has cloth diapering led you to use cloth instead of disposable products in other parts of your house? Do you use mama cloth, un-paper towels, or cloth napkins? Tell us how cloth diapering has inspired you to become "greener" overall.

Submission Details

You are welcome to participate on just one day, or join us all week long. Write on as few or as many themes as you'd like, but please fill out the webform below once for each post you submit, or click here to open it in a new tab.
Send a separate email with the text of each submission to Melissa {at} naturalparentsnetwork {dot} com and ShannonR {at} naturalparentsnetwork {dot} com no later than midnight central time on the submission deadline of Friday, June 24th.

Posting Details

Once you submit your post, you will receive an email from one of the carnival hosts to let you know it was received. Once we have read all the submissions, we will follow up with details on when to publish your post and suggestions for any necessary edits.
You will also receive a separate email with code for the top and bottom of your post prior to each day you're participating.

Please do: Write well. Write on topic. Write a brand new post for the carnival. The carnival themes aren’t meant to be exclusionary. If your experience doesn’t perfectly mesh with the day's theme, please lend your own perspective. Please also feel free to be creative within the gentle confines of the carnival structure. If you’re feeling so inspired, you could write a poem, a photo essay, a scholarly article, or a book review instead of a regular blog post (though those are welcomed, too!), as long as what you write is respectful of the carnival’s intent. If you want help determining that ahead of time, please talk with us.

Please don’t: Please don’t use profanity of the sort that might be offensive to more sensitive readers or their children. Please don’t submit irrelevant or argumentative pieces contrary to the principles of natural parenting. You don’t have to agree with all our ideals — and certainly you don’t have to live up to them all perfectly! — but your submission does have to fit the theme and values of the carnival.

Editors’ rights: We reserve the right to edit your piece or suggest edits to you. We reserve the right to courteously reject any submissions that are inappropriate for the carnival. Please also note that since there are two co-hosts on different schedules and conferring over email, our personal response to your submission might seem delayed. Don’t be alarmed. We also reserve the right to impose consequences if the responsibilities of the carnival are not fulfilled by the participants.

If you don’t have a blog: Contact us (Melissa {at} naturalparentsnetwork {dot} com and ShannonR {at} naturalparentsnetwork {dot} com) about potentially finding you a host blog to guest post. Please write your piece well in advance of the deadline in that case, so we can match you up with someone suitable. But if you really have something amazing to write — why not start your own blog? If you want advice, we find Scribbit’s free Blogging in Pink ebook to be a very helpful and down-to-earth guide, for beginners on up.

If you have questions: Please leave a comment or contact us: Melissa {at} naturalparentsnetwork {dot} com and ShannonR {at} naturalparentsnetwork {dot} com

Links to tutorials: Our NPN co-founders, Lauren, Dionna, and Dionna’s husband, Tom, have written several tutorials for Carnival of Natural Parenting participants about how to schedule posts in advance, how to determine post URLs in advance, how to edit HTML — all for both WordPress and Blogger users. These will be extremely useful for The Freedom of Cloth Carnival as well. For these tutorials and more, please see this handy summary post at LaurenWayne.com.

Grab the carnival button for your site!

<br /> <div align="center"><a href="http://www.naturalparentsnetwork.com/freedom-of-cloth" mce_href="http://www.naturalparentsnetwork.com" target="_blank" title="Freedom of Cloth"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/9v9hJ.jpg" mce_src="http://i.imgur.com/9v9hJ.jpg" width="125" height="125" alt="Freedom of Cloth Carnival" /></a></div> <p></div> <p>

Guest Post: Flats Challenge with Elizabeth of Mothering The Maelstrom

This week is the Flats and Handwashing Challenge from Dirty Diaper Laundry.  Bloggers and others from all over are using flat diapers and handwashing them in an effort to demonstrate exactly how economical it can be to use cloth diapers. 

Cloth diaper use has skyrocketed in recent years, but the focus has been primarily on "modern" cloth diapers.  All-in-one diapers with the waterproof cover built in are very easy to use, there's no doubt about that.  With the elastic legs and velcro closures, they are basically a Pampers that you throw in the washing machine instead of the garbage.

But all this diaper technology comes at a cost.  A decent all-in-one diaper will set you back anywhere from $15 to $25 for just one.  While this is still a savings over disposable diapers in the long run, it can make it difficult for families on the bottom end of the economic spectrum to get started with cloth diapers.  All-in-one diapers (and their cousins, the pocket diaper and the all-in-two diaper) can also be tricky to wash.  Fancy fabrics require special detergents and special care to prevent build-up, leaks, and other problems.  It doesn't take long to learn how to take care of cloth diapers, but any additional effort makes them one step further from being accessible to needy families.  Let's face it, when you are struggling just to put a room over your head, you don't have a lot of time or patience to fuss around with diapers.

Quick Travel Tips from the Road

Forgive the quality of my photo - we are enroute home. So I wanted to share the little wisdom I have garnered from this trip before it escapes my road-weary mind. Here are my tips for traveling with toddlers, they are in no particular order.

Up-cycling Wool Diaper Covers

My Goodwill Find!

Little Man has been soaking through his diapers at night - which means I'm wet as well.  So I put the word out through Facebook that I needed advice on wool soakers.  I already knew that was the route we'd have to take because I can't fit anything else in his diaper as is - at least not comfortably.  So I got a few responses that led me to etsy and a few other diaper shops.  I looked at the diaper shops and while the covers looked great I was not ready to spend that much.  I did catch a sale at Continuum Family for 44% off wool covers and snatched up two of those.  By they way their Spring into Spring Sale runs until March 28th.
Etsy had adorable covers at great prices but they did not have them in the size I liked or a color I wanted but they all said this really cool word - Up-Cycled. What the heck is up-cycled?  Well it is when you take a piece of old unwanted clothing for example and repurpose it into something new that someone would want.  So if I happen to say 'ruin' one of my husband's wool sweaters I can convert it into a diaper cover for Little Man.  Well I was not going to throw one of my husband's nice sweaters in the wash just to get a diaper but I did visit my local Goodwill and take a peek in the $5 sweater bin and came away with some beautiful merino wool sweaters.
So now I am felting the sweaters.  Felting involves washing the sweaters on hot and drying them in the dryer on hot as well.  This shrinks the weave of the fabric so it'll hold more moisture.  Then I will cut my diapers using a combination of the popular Katrina pattern and some of the things I liked about the other diapers I saw online.  I will most likely be making shorties with an extended waist.  I also found this really cute and easy to follow tutorial if you already own a soaker.
There are three styles of wool diaper covers, four if you count wraps separately.  Each of the styles fit over a prefold or fitted diaper.  You can also put a folded pre-fold or pad inside and pull on the wool cover.  Soakers look like underwear and cover just the diaper area.  The second are called shorties and they have a longer leg that goes to just above the knee.  Lastly there are longies, these look like wool pants.  Because wool is a natural and breathable product your baby can wear it year round.  It is just a preference as the style you want them to wear.  Little Man is wearing these at night to start so I am choosing the middle of the road style to keep him warm but not too hot either.
After I have finished the felting process I will cut and sew my diapers.  Then I will need to lanolize them to prevent leaks.  So in about 48 to 72 hours I will be the proud owner of at least 6 up-cycled wool diapers.  Wish me luck!

Give Away Alert: Mother of a Sale

Over on Mother of a Sale there is a current contest to win $250 cloth diaper set of three new lines currently coming to Mother of a Sale.  Head on over there to their site to check it out.  There are three ways to enter:
*Share their Facebook event on your wall to all your friends
*Blog about Mother Of A Diaper Sales event
*Post on their FB page “MOAS I want to win the $250 cloth diaper set”


So head on over there and try to win some new fluff for your stash!

Changing My Footprint: Laundry

This isn't going to be a long one.  I really wanted to share this with you all because this is such a time saver and so worth the money it costs (very little by the way).  A few of my fellow bloggers got me thinking about things I'm not doing that I should be. Joella over at Fine and Fair wrote about making Better World Resolutions and I got to thinking about what I could do to make my footprint just a little smaller. 
So I started with my biggest footprint in the home: LAUNDRY.  I looked into eco-friendly laundry and came away with a few things to consider.

Eco-Friendly Diapering Part 2: Cloth Diapering

Little Man in his Flips

When I think about my choices in how I handle the day to day with Little Man and what these choices mean in the present and in the future, this is probably one of my favorite choices I've made.  Due to his latex allergy these diapers really help because most manufacturers don't use it in their construction and if they do it is covered by other water-proof material.  Cloth diapering has come a long way since my grandparents diapered.  When I told my mom that I wanted to cloth diaper Little Man she told me that I would have made my grandmother very happy.  Apparently my grandmother wanted my mom to cloth diaper us but my mom said disposables were going to be her one luxury.

A "__________" Life

My Little Man turned 8 months on Monday and has 7 teeth and we are still going strong. I've been having to get up twice a night with him and he is taking 40 minutes to go to bed but it's all quality time as far as my heart is concerned. My body and brain though wish he'd sleep better and longer.
That lack of sleep has cost me a bit of time and extra money. I forgot a load of diapers in the wash and they were stinky so I was going to wash them again. Well without thinking I dumped clorox2 into the load and ran it. Errr, brighteners and whiteners in my diaper load. Thankfully my cloth diapering mama partner came to the rescue and assured me it happens to the best of us and what and where to get to clean the diapers.
Little Man has been having major milestones and a lot of fun. He is on the verge of walking. Cruising, I guess has become monotonous and he is letting go more often which, as a result has been having quite a few bumps and bruises. He now says "Mama" and refers to his Daddy as "Baba" which, my poor husband isn't taking to very well. We try so hard to get him to use the "D" sound so it doesn't sound like my son thinks of his father only as a vehicle for expressed milk.
I have noticed a pattern in my supply. I start the week really well and am able to produce a fair amount of milk. As the week progresses though my supply dips and then I need the weekend to catch up and breastfeed and pump to get extra just to last through the week. Though I believe the pattern will be changing shortly as my field hockey season draws to a close and I can get Little Man from daycare earlier.
I also have made a step in a new direction that I was going to save until the Summer and that is to give private art lessons. I had an interested party contact me while I was in the process of thinking about and researching how to begin. Well someone was looking out for me and now I am taking on my first student. I figure this is a good way to test the waters and see how I like this. I plan to use the same time slot that I was using for field hockey practice once or twice a week so Little Man is at daycare and I don't have to worry about where he is going to be.
So about the title of this post. I wasn't sure how to put into just one word how my life is going at this moment. Work is still stressful, home is stressful, lonely at times, rewarding every moment and I don't think I would give up or change anything about my choices. So I leave it to you to fill in the blank.

This may be the day that broke this mama's back

Daycare has been driving me bananas. They complain about EVERYTHING. They complain every day to my husband when he drops off Little Man. The harp on the diapers everyday. But when I pick him up there isn't a peep about any issues unless I ask about it and then it's like 'oh yeah, we did have a problem with...(fill in the blank)'
It's frustrating because I chose this daycare precisely because of the level of communication they claimed to have and the fact that they said they would do cloth diapers, no problem. They showed me these wonderful communication sheets and told me that I could expect to see one every day and it would tell me what they did in class that day, how many and at what time he had a bottle, diaper change, nap etc. The first day I dropped him off back in September it said they read Rainbow Fish and sang Alligator Purse, after that it seemed they never read or sang anything because that part of the sheet remained empty. They were doing fine with the cloth diapers until he got an ear infection and had to go on antibiotics and got diarrhea. He apparently leaked out of the diaper and onto a chair. They got extremely upset and talked to Hubby (not me) about it every time he dropped him off. Then they called the house one morning and said that Hubby needed to put plastic pants on Little Man and bring a covered container to put the soiled diapers in. Now mind you we have been at daycare for a month and I had asked prior to coming to daycare what I needed to do in order to be compliant with State regulations for daycare and cloth diapering. I had done my research prior to asking these questions and I had come up with a plan just in case they tried to tell me that the state wouldn't allow it. So I had already read what the State requires and it states there must be a cover over the cloth diaper. Well, correct me if I'm wrong but the Bumgenius 3.0s have a built in cover which, should preclude the requirement to have a second cover.
Well in order to avoid conflict Hubby puts a Blueberry cover over the Bumgenius and sends Little Man to daycare that way for 2 days. So for those of you not keeping track he already has diarrhea from the antibiotics and now we are double wrapping him in PUL fabric. So yup he gets diaper rash. I try to call the head teacher and explain some of these facts to him as well as state once and for all that they need to change the diapers more often then they would a disposable which would prevent accidents in the first place but he isn't there.
So now I'm battling the worst diaper rash he's ever had. I call his pediatrician and it turns out to be a yeast diaper rash which I need to treat with antifungal cream and switch my diaper cream to one not approved for use with cloth diapers and use non latex disposables and purchase $40 infant probiotics. Luckily the diaper rash goes away after just two days using the cream combos.
So now back to daycare we go and they question my Hubby and ask where is the second cover. Hubby tells them exactly what I had said about that would not work because of the rash it caused. They tell him State regs state he needs a cover and Hubby caves and tells them that we could send disposables without latex. Even thought I'm right there with him that they are annoying about this and that it would just be easier to give them disposables and not have to hear their complaints, I could smack him. We wanted to save money. We went with this place because they said they would do the cloth for us. Now we have to shell out money to purchase disposables. GRR!
Another thing that drives me nuts is that they said that they had very strict rules about people picking up the babies. They stressed that everyone would have to show ID and be on his pick-up list. So I fill out the pickup list and explain that I coach and would have a babysitter pick him up on the days I had late games. I put her on the list and figure all is well. SO I send the sitter to get him. First time no one checks her ID (WTF), second they wouldn't let her leave because they weren't sure if she was allowed to pick him up (check the list, duh!) The next time my sitter gets sick so my sister in law is going to pick him up. She is not on the list but she waltzes in and picks him up and takes him home. No one looked at her ID. So my feeling is some crazy could walk in there and as long as he smiles at them, they are going to let him walk out.
But anyhow pumping has been going good. I still have to get up in the middle of the night just to get comfortable. But I do this for him and that is always my motivating factor.

Accidentally Cloth

In my bio and the description of this blog I stated I am a mother that uses cloth diapers. I have been for around 3 months now. I didn't intend to be cloth either, I mean what new parent actually says yes I'm going to cloth diaper when their mother nor anyone else they know hasn't cloth diapered? I just fell into it and then I proceeded to fall in love with what it did for my son and for our wallet.
When Patrick was born he screamed every time he wet his diaper. I mean every time full pee or not. In my new parenting skills I thought, "wow, he's going to love potty-training!" Well this continued until he had reached size 2 and it was becoming difficult to find sensitive diapers which I had chosen to use because myself and Hubby have very sensitive skin so we thought it best to baby our baby. When I couldn't find a diaper in his size at the store that was sensitive and didn't have the dreaded "dry-max" on it I grabbed a package of 7th gen natural chlorine free diapers. Ran to the car and changed my boy on the back seat because he was screaming yet again. Now typically he would have been complaining yet again by the time we finished the 30 minute car ride home but he wasn't so I thought he hadn't gone. Well after he had been in the diaper for 2 hours my Mama gut said change the boy already. I did, he was soaked, he wasn't screaming. Okay I like these new diapers. What I didn't like was the price tag though $11 for around 30 diapers was going to he a lot of money. So next time Hubby got the diapers he found our old brand in sensitive and we put them on. 15 minutes later screaming so it's the diaper we need to switch it must he the chlorine because he didn't freak in the other non-chlorine.
Well this is my boy that I just went through 2 months of he'll for and we've got the breastfeeding down pat now so what are our alternatives? We can buy the bank-braking natural diapers or we can look into cloth. So look I did, I mean I've done crazy stuff for this little guy why not do cloth. Word on the online street is they aren't what they were when my mom said no way I'm not doing that. So I research find two options I like and buy a few. Well they work out so I buy my stash which was expensive to start but saves a whole chunk of change in the long run. (enough for two medical textbooks for my fingers crossed pre-med darling) As time goes by I figure this isn't so bad let's try cloth wipes. I do they aren't hard I feel even better about my investments. Well, real food poop comes along and makes cloth wipes less practical in those situations so we compromise and use disposables and paper liners to clean that.
So here is where my story for today comes to an interesting turn of events. I drink a lot of water which makes for many trips to the bathroom which are usually snuck in between entertaining and comforting. More so today as it was our 6 month shots and he was more active then usual and wanted Mama all he time. So I ran to the bathroom used the last of the roll, which was okay because in the 2+ years we've been married my husband never forgets to put another roll under the sink if we have to change it. Well since I've been using the hall bath instead of our bath he hasn't used that one and wouldn't you know I used the last roll and forgot to replace the back-up? I find this out when I race back in there to relieve my bladder yet again. Oh crap well at least not literally. Maybe tissues? Nope didn't replace those either. Air dry? Not happening today I can already hear him. Ah-ha, a wash cloth from bath time the night before is hang drying in the shower. Ok initial ick but do you know how far I'd have to walk with my pants down to get toilet paper? Not happening so I grab the washcloth, use it, shimmy up my pants one handed, toss the wash cloth in the diaper Paul and vow never to do that again. Because it's one thing to use cloth with Patrick or in a pinch but if I can avoid it I will. Only so far will I venture down the Green-living path and I'm drawing the line at adult cloth.