How it all began..

I never thought I would ever be labeled "crunchy" by anyone. Then I decided to stay at home with my oldest son. Well, actually it was decided for me by several doctors. I suffered from severe PPD and going back to a high stress job just wasn't in my (or my patients) best interest. Unfortunately that made a negative impact on our finances. So I tossed around the idea of cloth diapering for a while. And then tossed it around some more. And then discarded it as too much work, and too great of an initial investment.

Fast forward 18 months to the birth of our second son and the loss of even my babysitting income, the inability to breastfeed him for an extended time and we really needed to cut out something, somewhere. Then factor in two babies in diapers, the two bags of trash a day, needing an extra city refuse can, and the overall stench of disposables and we (mainly I, DH defers diaper duty as often as possible, sneaky man) were ready to take the plunge.

So off I went into blog, forum and shopping cart bliss, researching everything there is to know. I spent weeks glued to my computer. Where I quickly discovered that with my diaper budget (about $100 a month) I would only be able to buy about 5 quality diapers each month. WTH?? Hmmm, I thought cd'ing was supposed to save you money? Ummm, yes and no. You see, cloth diapering is in vogue now and it isn't the flats, pins and rubber pants of yonder years. These can be as chic as you want them, or those prefolds and birdseye flats that make most people shudder are still around. I stuck with my budget, bought the diaper service quality prefolds and vowed to find a way to get the good "fluff" without breaking the bank or swayiing from my original goal to save money.

And somewhere along the internet highway I found my calling, to be the crunchy/hip, cd'ing, babywearing, babyfood making momma I was meant to be.