By the time she’s ten, my daughter probably won’t have any vivid memories of her cloth diapering years.  In fact, experts say that most people cannot recall much of anything substantial before they are three or four years old.  All I have to say is that it’s a darn good thing I’m taking lots of pictures.

Hopefully someday, she’ll look back at her baby pictures and notice her cute, fluffy bum poking out of her adorable outfits (though it will be a different experience from my own because my daughter has literally thousands of baby/toddler pictures while her mama probably has about 30.  Certainly makes me wonder how all of these digital pictures will affect the memory and recall of certain events for our children…But maybe that’s another discussion for another day).

Anyway, I know that she won’t remember actually being in cloth diapers, but I hope that somehow the knowledge that she was cloth diapered will remind her of a few things for the rest of her life:

• The earth is our only home and it’s up to us to take care of it.  Big things, small things, it all makes a difference.  And the difference cloth diapering makes really adds up. She can be proud of the environmental commitment her family made.

• She was a trendsetter.  When she’s reflecting on cloth diapering (perhaps it will be when she’s considering cloth diapering her baby), I hope – for all of our sakes – that cloth diapering is a much more mainstream practice.  She can tell her friends that she was cloth diapered back when wash-at-home pocket diapers were still in their infancy (or toddlerhood as the case may be) and they can ooh and aah and say that there is no way they would ever think about putting their baby in disposables!

• (And along those lines…)  She is the next generation in a long line of cloth diaper wearers.  Her mama wore prefolds with pins and plastic pants in the seventies when disposables were all the rage, her grandfather was doted upon by his mother and childless aunts and probably never sat in a wet cloth diaper for more than one minute.  And that brings us back to countless generations before that who were also cloth diapered because there weren’t any other options. That’s some serious tradition.

• Her mama loves her.  I’m not – AT ALL – saying that somehow cloth diapering mamas love their children more.  Not at all.  But I hope that she (and all children) will be able to look at the pictures of her in diapers and be able to see and feel the love that surrounded her in those early years.

• It wasn’t easy, but we did it anyway.  There are so many wonderful benefits to cloth diapering that her dad and I chose to plop, rinse and swirl poop into the toilet and wash diapers in our laundry room all in the name of protecting her cute little behind.

• She has our help with college. It maybe doesn’t compute dollar for dollar, but we did save money by reusing her diapers and we were able to start a college savings fund for her and her brother.  Truth be told, I think it’s so important to start saving for their educations when they are young, so we probably would have started a 529 anyway, but every bit helps!!

What do you hope your children take from their cloth diapering roots (whether they actually remember it or not!)?

I’ll admit, there have been times lately when I have a little bit of trouble coming up with topics to write about for this blog. It’s sometimes hard for me to believe because there was a time that cloth diapering was all I thought about, all I talked about and article topics seemed to be spilling out of my brain night and day.

I guess that’s how it is when something becomes completely ingrained in your day-to-day routines. I’m not thinking about cloth diapering quite as much anymore because I don’t need to. And because I’m not thinking about diapering very often, topics aren’t swirling around in my mind quite as freely. And that’s exactly how it should be.

So, here are the top five ways I know cloth diapering has become second nature:

1. It’s truly part of the routine. Like everything else with babies, cloth diapering quickly became part of the humdrum life of this mom (Yes, for all of you new-to-cloth moms out there or those still on the fence about cloth diapers wondering if cloth ever truly becomes easy…it does. And fast, I promise). The washing, drying, stuffing and adjusting that seemed so incredibly daunting at the beginning of the cloth journey is something I could do in my sleep these days.

2. I speak the language of cloth diapers fluently. I remember reading blog post after blog post trying to educate myself on cloth diapers before my daughter was born. I would have to google at least a word or two in each post just to understand what was being discussed. I’d sometimes say words like “PUL” and even “FuzziBunz” out loud to myself in front of my computer, just to see what they sounded like coming out of my mouth. It seemed like a foreign language and now it’s like I’ve taken an immersion course and can speak it like a native.

3. I’d much rather talk about my daughter’s latest word than diapers. Don’t get me wrong, I still love a good convo about cloth diapers (and still love to sell people on them!), but it’s not what I bring up during a lull at playdates anymore.

4. I feel like I’ve finally conquered the stink beast. When you cloth diaper, you are faced with challenging stinkies or leaks or rashes at least once (mine was a particularly long struggle), but when you fix the issue and get back to normal washing routines, it feels like you can take on the world. Just washing the diapers and knowing they will come out clean is such a nice, relaxing feeling. I’m more confident about diapers now after slaying the stinkies!

5. I don’t go on cloth diaper shopping sprees (as much) anymore. I think it’s also a product of knowing we are nearing the end of my daughter’s diapering years, but I’m not spending every naptime trolling cloth retailers for good deals, wondering what colors we need more of to complement this season’s wardrobe or dreaming about how to better organize the stash. Don’t get me wrong, I still buy a new diaper (or three) here or there and have started to rotate some old ones out, but I haven’t had to justify seven new diapers at one time to my husband recently. And I am happy with my stash. They are just our diapers. They work, they get clean and we are happy.

I guess that’s why I sometimes struggle with a fun, interesting or useful cloth diapering topic: its just part of life now. In a good way!

When did cloth diapering become second nature to you? And how did you know?