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It seems to be a generally accepted idea that once babies are old enough, we are supposed to first feed them rice cereal and then move onto purees. Some people take the initiative to make their own purees, which I considered. But none of that seemed like how I wanted to feed my child. So instead, after some research, I decided on baby led weaning.
Baby led weaning means that baby feeds themselves their solid foods with your encouragement. Some people are scared off by the word “weaning” thinking that it means to stop giving breast milk or formula, but it simply means that you are introducing solid foods.
Now, when I was starting Mac on solid foods, I was a little nervous to begin with. Food is such a huge aspect of life and I didn’t want to somehow mess it up (Typical Mom Guilt!) But I feel like I struck a happy medium and now I want to talk about the process we went through in case anyone else is thinking of trying baby led weaning.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. That means if you buy through my link, I may receive compensation at no extra cost to you. For more information, see my disclosure page here.
When Andrew and I decided to cloth diaper, we got a lot of push back. Don’t get me wrong, it was all well-meaning. People were concerned we didn’t think it through and they wanted to make sure we understood our decision, especially because cloth diapers are a big up-front cost. But we found that a lot of their concerns were unfounded. Andrew especially considers himself totally on the cloth diaper side, despite being on the fence before Mac was born. (Make sure you also check out cloth diapering 101 and my minimalist’s guide to cloth diaper accessories.)
Our main, everyday diapers are Grovia Hybrid. We like the 2 in 1 diapers because we don’t have to change the shell as often. You just have to change out the pad. This was especially nice during the newborn stage. At night we use pocket diapers. A lot of them we bought second-hand, but my favorite to buy are bumGenius. Not only are the bumGenius diapers adorable, but we have really put them through a lot and they still are looking great! There are so many great companies, but these are two that we have used extensively and love.
I will also put in a plug here for using a diaper service. If you are not sure about the laundry part of cloth diapering, look into diaper services. They are usually pretty fairly priced and you get the best of both worlds: cloth diapers and a few less loads of laundry a week!
So here’s the deal, I change disposable diapers all day long at work, so I have plenty of experience with them. Full disclosure, we also used disposables with Mac for the first few weeks until her umbilical cord stump fell off. Someone had given us a box of newborn diapers, so we didn’t have to buy any. But you can purchase cloth newborn diapers, which I am considering the next time a baby enters our lives. Either way, I have experience with both kinds of diapers and after everything, I recommend cloth diapers. Here are 5 reasons why:
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. That means if you buy through my link, I may receive compensation. For more information, see my disclosure page here.
It seems to be a natural scene: parents going out grocery shopping, lugging their baby in a bucket seat that they set in the basket of the cart, parents lugging their baby in a bucket seat into the school to pick up their preschooler, parents lugging their baby in a bucket seat into the clinic waiting room where the baby hangs our while mom or dad fills out paperwork.
So it might seem totally weird when I tell you that we didn’t use an infant bucket seat at all, not even when Mac was a newborn. Right from the beginning, we had her in a convertible seat that had a padded insert and could tilt back for newborns. (In case you are wondering, we use the Britax Marathon G4.1 Convertible Car Seat . We have never had any problems. It fits in both of our small cars and Mac has been comfortable in it from birth until now! In fact, she is still rear facing in it at the age of 2.5.)
You are probably curious about why and how I came to this decision. So here are the list of reasons I picked to skip the bucket seat and what I did instead.