All about using Cloth Diapers

I had consulted a few experienced mommas and several articles on the web and FB. But Below is mainly my own experience. I wrote it cause I learned all of that the hard way and hope to make it easier for you!

Cloth diapers are best until you are losing sleep over managing them!

At night we would still do disposable.. .since we couldn't figure out how to control the rash that would develop overnight each night from a urine-soaked cloth diaper. So my quick fix was to use disposable ... plus my son peed and pooed more at night and so with disposable we didn't have to worry about waking up in the middle of the night to change him,

With a cloth diaper, you need three parts
1. the diaper - that holds the insert and wraps around the baby's butt
2. the insert - layer that absorbs
3. the liner - goes in the pot


Here's everything I bought:
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MJ8K092/
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LVWQY6K
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01C45QPCA/
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B009LGDGX2/ - Special stuff to clean them
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B076HJ1D54/ - insert

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DOGUZ0M/-  Another popular brand of diaper.

Both are good brands. To begin with, I recommend you buy only 6. You can reuse them mostly with pee; especially with a newborn. Poo usually spills out and you have to use a new cloth diaper.
Having said that, with just 6 on hand, you would have to wash them more frequently... almost every third day at the very max. And yes they either need to hand washed or run two-three washing cycles; with at least one of them separate from the rest of your clothes.
If you can handle that part while being sleep deprived in the initial months, then go ahead and buy another 6 to last a at least a few days longer.

There are several groups on FB where people buy second hand too. Look for groups called 'Crunchy Mamas'

Remembering the trip to the milk-man doodh-wala

Food is the one central thing that binds humans together. This is why we may love it, hate it, satiate it, drool at it, dread it, plan it, make it, buy it and when tirelessly still talk about it. After all we are what we eat! I am often asked why did I choose to be a vegan. I think this deserved a blog post. First a bit of my own history. I was a vegetarian starting from 2001 until 2011. In 2011 after reading decided it was time to quit the last animal product from my diet - dairy! And thus this particular blog will mainly focus on milk derived from cows (and/or buffaloes) I have to spend a majority of my adolescence in India and a good part in the US and so my references will mainly be from these two countries.  

My husband tells me to answer this complicated question in one line. So my shortest answer to why vegan is - 'For moral, health and environmental reasons'. But that's probably too concise. If I cover just one aspect, say the moral aspect, it would take me a while to describe the gory pain these poor animals go through. If you are willing to take the risk to read details - go ahead. There may be language and description which might against the use in some of our cultures or might not be withstandable, which is why I emphasize the word 'risk'. 

If you were grouping up in Indian some 10-20 years ago, chances are you must have accompanied someone to collect milk from a buffalo farm during the morning or evening hours. There would be a queue of people waiting with several times more demand than the supply. There would also be days, when the buffalo would refuse to give milk. After multiple unsuccessful attempts, the dairy owner would finally bring in a calf, let it suckle on its the buffalo for a minute or so, and then instantly drag the baby calf away from the rope tied around one of its the calves most delicate areas - the neck. That calf would first try try with all its might to go back on to suckling, but would soon give-in perhaps from the unbearable pain of a chocked esophagus and thus the starving baby would end up mercilessly tied away. While all this was happening we 'the mighty customer' - would shuffle eagerly waiting to get our share and go back. We would constantly recheck our watches on the time lost in this mayhem. Some would curse the doodh-wala (the farm owner) questioning him - in the absence of the requested 1-kilo milk how would they feed their kids and prepare tea to their husband that day. Even among these some super elevated human souls would even curse the buffalo for not producing enough. 

Just pause for a minute and think- what did the small-scale business owner or cattle farmer do here? Well he did not have a ton of technology on hand to fool the mom to start giving milk, so it just used the baby as a means to start the mom's milk flow. Let's take a further step back to reflect on how is that milk produced. Yes just like humans, when their baby is born, their bodies produce it as a food product for their-new-born-infant. What intrigues me is that when I discuss my reasons for being a vegan, the first and most common reaction I get is oh we never thought of that. was that an animal or a factory machine designed to produce food? Interestingly, when most of our parents would reminiscence every single detail around our births, there would never a single conversation around  Cows and buffaloes, just like humans carry their fetuses for nine months. Now whether in India, or the US, or any part of the world, half of these babies are male. Male calves are not needed. Why - since they cant produce future babies nor produce milk. (We will come back later to how do cows get pregnant then) What happens to those male calves - do the farmers let them suckle on their mom's tits? No way! What use is it to a business owner if he lets his 'waste by-product' use his most 'precious resources'.  To give you some perspective, to meet our daily requirements of dairy-based milk, curd, cheese, whip cream, sour cream, ghee, khoya, butter, paneer, milk powder etc. which go into our tea, coffee, shakes, cakes, pizza, gulab jamun, rasmalai, icecream, kadhi, lassi, malai kofta, saag-panner, panner samosa, panner pakodha.... and this endless list slowly creeping into everything served on your plate. Coming back to the perspective point - to meet this crazy demand which has grown 10 fold in India alone in the last 10 years, today's cattle farmers have found the perfect equation as to exactly how many babies (calves) are needed to meet it. Do you know whats that number is US alone? 22 babies a second. And coming back to male calves - the half which are an 'unnecessary' by-product of the dairy industry are killed at that rate. In the US we force the cows to produce as many babies that in US alone 11 male calves are killed EVERY SECOND!. India has far beaten US in beef production, and definitely the number is much more than 16000 calfs a day! (yes more than SIXTEEN THOUSAND male calves a day in India are killed! (Ironically human girls in many parts of Asia are treated much like bovine male calves - unnecessary by-products, 10 million killed in the last 20 years. 

Another 200 million missing from China and  http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=2728976&page=1 and http://www.lifenews.com/2012/11/02/200-million-girls-killed-in-china-where-are-the-feminists/ ). These numbers are NOT mere statistics. Every single one of those calves is killed, at the very latest within a month of his birth!  If you are a parent, grandparent, or just know a baby, just imagine that helpless creature brought into this world a few hours or days ago, still struggling to adjust in this worldly environment away, being forcefully town away from its mom, and kept hungry and thirsty. 

There is a whole separate industry to cater to the needs of those white and tender meat-loving folks, who would spend any amount of money to sit on the softest leather made from a newborn 1-10 day old calf.  

And if you thought the girl calves were better off, they lead ever a more horrific life. 

In smaller farm settings we 'Hindus' worship the cow, so we don't kill the calf, just allow it to die a slow 'natural' death by starving it, and STEAL all the milk from its mother, to fulfill the greeds of their buyers - like you and me! Once dead, we make money by selling it to for example Muslim buyers! And this is how we Hindus, 'worshippers of cows' - still manage to make money on the dead baby!!! I am NOT talking about one-off isolated cases, where that one farmer friend takes care of that one cow he owns! I am talking about EVERY commercially owned dairy farm in EVERY part of this earth, including sacred places like Kashi and Mathura! 

Did you ever stop by and wonder why there is this sudden need to open 
http://www.peta.org/features/cows-dairy-farm-secrets.aspx
http://vegan-india.blogspot.in/2013/07/introducing-krya-sustainable-goodie-no.html#sthash.mzv6yTPv.GdWx8GKX.dpbs

I leave you with a few links to checkout... 

http://www.amazon.com/Pregnancy-Children-Vegan-Michael-Klaper/dp/0961424826 - book on vegan diet, starting with pregnancy 

http://www.circleofmoms.com/top25/top-vegan-vegetarian-mom-blogs-2012?trk=t25_top-vegan-vegetarian-mom-blogs-2012 - vegan mom blogs 

http://wrd.mydigitalfc.com/knowledge/make-way-superfood-025 - please focus of eating right, if you are truly concerned about their health 

Vegan Groups in Greater Seattle

If you are new to Seattle and looking for your tribe, start from here.

If you like to be personally introduced to some awesome vegan folks out there, leave me a comment or shoot me an email, and I would be happy to connect with you directly!
 
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I am part of many of these groups. These are loving, passionate people who truly care about the animals 
http://www.meetup.com/Seattle-Tacoma-Veg-Curious-Families-Group/
http://www.meetup.com/seattle-veg-happy-hour/
http://www.meetup.com/Seattle-Vegan-Families-Group/
http://www.meetup.com/Seattle-Vegan-Activists/

https://www.facebook.com/NorthwestAnimalRightsNetwork

Related, but where veganism is a small part of their bigger plans:  

http://www.meetup.com/Gluten-Free-Redmond-at-Flying-Apron - A vegan and gluten free shop 

http://www.meetup.com/rawfood-213/ focused on raw food. None the less a bunch of wonderful and helpful people.