My son's a few days short of 42months but is still in diapers... Yeah, I know.. I feel so ashamed, like I'm a bad mother... So many excuses for not potty teaching him (I read somewhere on the net she prefers the word potty learning rather than potty training... training is like training a pet or something... good point there...). Juggling between work and being a mom, I don't have that much time to spend taking him to the bathroom constantly to potty teach him (one my excuses I guess). I know it's high time for him to learn, he's already using the potty when he has to go No. 2 almost 100% of the time. He'll make that face when his bowel starts to move and say he has to go poopoo so we better scramble to the bathroom pronto or he'll let go in his diapers.
In my quest to transition him out of his diapers I've decided against those disposable pull-ups. This is due to the fact that the kids are in a day care and I don't want their sitters and my son to treat the pull-ups as another form of diaper. I remember back in the 80s when my dad was a student in the States my mom bought my third sister a pair of cloth training underpants. They look like ordinary underpants with the exception of a thicker middle part to contain any accidents. I so wish to have one of those, I googled and found there are such a thing now days with look much nicer (the ones my sister had was plain white underpants that were unisex, BORING!). But my GOD! Those things are expensive.... Still sticking to the plan I've googled here and there on how to make my own...
I heard about cloth diapers for the first time about 18months ago after I gave birth to my daughter, but again, sending the kids to the day care where parents have to supply disposable diapers only I don't give much notice on cloth diapers by saying to myself those things cost a fortune each. See how low the concern about these kind of things are in Malaysia? I think the government should hold a wider campaign to create awareness among Malaysians and promote the use of cloth diapers just like they're doing right now with breast feeding, though this one needs some more fine tuning... Not many places are nursing mother friendly you know, we'll get to that later on in a different post.
So when I googled for training pants, ooooops my mistake, learning pants, I found this very nice lady of Lampin Kain. Though hers is an online store she was gracious enough to meet up with me in person to bring some sample of the materials that she sells for me to physically see what all those fabrics look like. After I saw the things she brought and physically touching them, and a bit of consultation and advice from her, I finally purchased some PUL, HEMP for the inserts and bamboo velour for the inner or is it outer? It's that layer that will be next to my son's bum... She suggested maybe 3 layers of inserts would be sufficient since these will be learning pants and not diapers. It was either the velour or this other material that I forgot what it's called. I chose velour because my son will feel the wetness as soon as he wets his pants. The other material takes a wee bit longer for him to feel the wetness and discomfort if he has accidents, which is not what I want. I want him to learn that it's not a good thing to wet in the pants and he'll be more alert when he needs to go.... We hope it all works out as I planned... In all I paid RM95 for the materials I needed.
It took me a few weeks more (I think close to a month) to actually sew one for him... After so many days of thinking and browsing for the perfect learning pants, I finally decided to just buy a store bought underpants and sew on a soaker instead... over the weekend we went to Jusco (they don't pay me for this, but since this is my blog I think I can mention names if I want to as long as it's something good, right? No? You don't think so? Well, tough! I'm mentioning anyways). Anyway, I bought the store brand underwear for 3-4year-old boys RM10 for 3 pieces (good bargain as it's of good quality material and workmanship). I finally summoned up the courage to some up with a pattern on my own (the freebies I got from the net simply won't fit with these smaller store bought underwear). I did the old-fashion-learning-to-sew-with-the-click-of-the-mouse trace store bought underwear and adjusted the pattern as I see fit. The prototype you could say was a success, minus the slightly lopsided soakers... I think that's ok, it gives it a more mommy-made-it-for-me look (I'm trying to console myself here, so bear with me! Just say 'Yes mommy' will you? hehehehe). It was not all @ one shot cutting, assembling, sewing and you're done though! I just did it as I go along according to the logic that I see fit @ the time, which ended up in me having taking it apart and starting over again beginning from the assembling part and using my serger instead to combine all the pieces together.... Again, thanks to the nice lady from Lampin Kain is where I got the idea. She was so nice as to give me a sample of one of her soakers where she just serged the edges to keep them together and I thought maybe I should try that and it worked much better...
So excited with last night's kind of success I got to thinking maybe I should try cloth pad making next... hmmmm... so I googled and found this site... One of the many tutorials to make cloth pads. One of her readers left a comment sharing the materials she uses for her cloth pads which made me realise I don't need comlpetely new materials to make those soakers. Yeah, I know, you could've told me that, but you didn't, right? So, let me ramble on... I got to thinking, to save cost further, there are so many materials I could use... I gotta admit, since I learn from the net, and I don't want to get it wrong, so if it says A, I'll so A, so variations or substitutions... I'm going to venture out using hand towels that I bought but haven't use, old t-shirts I need to get rid of (what a good way to re-use my clothes! I'm helping to conserve the environment, YEAY for me! hehehehe)....
I know, pictures are much more fun than words, but since I don't have my camera with me, this will do for now. I'll update this post later once I snap some pictures of my learning underwear... Hmmmm maybe I can join in on giving out tutorials... What say you? Do you want me to?
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