I’ve just finished making these cloth pads for after-baby bleeding. When Woozel saw them, he said, “Oh, cute!” Yeah. How often does someone say that about our lady products?

I copied the method of Lunapads, which uses a base pad that snaps around the underwear, then adds as many or as few liners as needed. This way, I should have some good versatility, to be able to use the same pads for the heavy days and the lighter ones. My pads are made from some old flannel pillowcases and a few flannel scraps I had about.

Calculations:
Cost of my 8 pads and 16 liners: 25cents for snaps, $1 for trim
Cost of a box of 20 throw-away PP pads: $6.59

Waste-free awesomeness!

And here is our similarly awesome diaper stash (the beginning of it). Mama-made flannel flats with knitted wool soakers. We choose flats over the other fancier cloth diapers available now because of drying time: since we line-dry everything, it would take 2-3 days for a prefold and longer for an All-in-One diaper to dry, and that’s rather ridiculous!
Flats are super-cheap, too, because the same diaper is folded in different ways to fit the baby throughout its diapering time. So no buying different sizes. And they can be made from anything! I’ve just finished tearing up a thrift-store flannel sheet to add to the collection.

Oh, and you do know about the wool covers, right? Our mothers used those yucky, sweaty plastic pants, but their mothers used wool. Once the covers have soaked in lanolin, they’re waterproof, yet still breathable and not smelly. Mine still need velcro sewn onto the waistband.

We’re working steadily toward a waste-free birth and waste-free baby! While most home births still produce a bag or two of garbage, we’re planning to use lots of towels, bath mats, and other things we’ve got around, as well as braided embroidery floss for the umbilical cord, and lots of handmades for baby. There’ll be a load or two of laundry, but no black plastic bags in the alley. Hooray!