Well, where to start, I guess the beginning of this cloth dypee journey would be good!! I have been married now for 14+yrs. My hubby and I are both from a small western washington town, right by the canadian border. We have both lived in here since we were in middle school or highschool. We met at work, coming from a small town, when the ripe old age of 16 came along, and it was time to find a job, there was either Dairy Queen or the nursing home.....well I was not going to work at Dairy Queen, so off the nursing home I went. I worked there until I graduated, going to work directly after school 3 times a week. Spending my evenings caring for all the grandmas and grandpas I could, learning about love, family, dementia and even death. By the time I was 18 I was graduated and thought I would make my way in the world and sought out a nanny placement center and before I knew it I was off to New York for another adventure. I only stayed on for a short while, finishing up the school year with 1 child and then home again, back the small town, back the nursing home, and, although I didnt know it, back to find my husband.
Well, long story short, we met, we dated, we married, we honeymooned, we got pregnant. Within our first year of marriage we had moved 3 times, including a few months with my parents. By the time July hit of 1998 we were in a tiny little shoe box house, and about ready to have our first baby! Josiah was born on a hot July day, he was the perfect baby, we had no idea how well we had it till the following year when...SUPRISE, Malachi was born in october of 1999, now we had moved that spring to a house that was a little bigger and almost in the center of small little town. With two boys in diapers and hubby and I working fulltime things were busy at our house. At this point I had tried cloth dypees with Josiah, but not having acsess to the internet at that time, I had no idea what I was doing and everything leaked and it just seemed to much to deal with along with all the other things in our hectic lives at that point. We went along, just the 3 of us for awhile, then in august of 2003 Adin came along, he was our only planned baby, lol, and another boy, my husbands family is very strong on the boys, actually only having one girl every generation or so, and as it happened my brother in law and his then wife were expecting my niece that winter. So there were, a family of 5, always the joke, Micah and his three sons!! And so life went on..
I was working at the hospital when I got pregnant with Adin, I went back fulltime right after my 3 months maternity leave was up and realized that this was not for me anymore. I dropped down to on call, working a mandatory 1 weekend a month and started watching my brothers daughter, she was a year younger than Malachi, so they had eachother to play with all day long monday thru friday. I had Josiah going to school parttime and baby Adin. Soon a collegue at my sister in laws work was looking for childcare for her twins, one was diabetic and the daycare centers didnt want the responsibily of dealing with his sugar testing and insulin giving, having grown up with a diabetic mom and working in healthcare it didnt bother me a bit so I took on the twins when they were 2 and so started my new career in childcare, my goal was to watch kiddos till Adin got into school fulltime and I could find something else to do.
Well, we moved again when Adin was 3, to the house we now call home, this one we bought and will be ours in 27 yrs!! Once we moved here, it was only a matter of 2 weeks or so before I had 4 more kiddos to add to bunch and every day we were taking my niece to school 1/2 days, life was busy, but I was happy, the kids had a mom home every day, I got lucky and got a baby girl to watch monday thru friday and life was good! Once Adin was in kindergarten, going to school monday, wednesday and everyother friday I started thinking about what I was going to do when he started school, while I loved watching friends and families kiddos, I was ready to move on from that point in my life, onto something new..
February of 2009, I was late, hmmmmmmmmmmmmm, when I broached the subject with my hubby of being pregnant, he was rather taken aback, this was not what he wanted at this point in his life. He made the comment that the kids were almost to the age of not having to take all of them when we run errands, and no more in diapers and so on and so on, I agreed but really, really would have loved to be pregnant... I went, got at test, and yep, I was carrying baby #4! When we went in for the gender U/S I knew, hubby knew, all who knew us knew that baby Fisher was another boy.
This pregnancy had been different for me from the start though, no weight gain, no wanting to eat anything and everything in sight. I had morning sickness, which I never had with the boys, and I couldn't eat anything sweet. I wanted baby soooooo bad to be a girl, that this would be the last one, hubby was getting a vasectomy, I would have loved a boy too but I REALLY wanted that girl! So when we were sitting in the U/S room, the tech is doing all of her measurements and we start talking about gender, we told her about how hubbys side doesn't have alot of girls, and his brother had had a daughter, when our youngest son was born so this baby, we were pretty sure, was a boy. She was sooo very happy to say that we would be expecting a girl!!!!! Of course Micah and I were in shock for awhile and when she was born and laying on my stomach I had to have the doc look and make sure she was a girl before I hugged and cuddled her!!
It didn't take long to realize that Myah had sensitive skin. I had bought her diapers from costco in the big ole' boxes, thinking I was ahead of the game and she just seemed to have a perpetual rash... I did some research online and thought maybe she was allergic or sensitive to the diapers, after switching brands and brands and brands, I went back to the internet and decided to try cloth diapers. I first started with fuzzibunz, the system looked fairly easy and I had found some used for a good price, tried them and drn if she didn't still rash......back to my friend the internet.....after more looking and more trying I found that bamboo worked for us but I figured I would break the bank, what with, after shipping, it was almost, if not $30.00 a diaper. I decided to try my hand at making some and when I got that down pretty good, I thought, hey I wonder if I can sell these and hopefully help other moms out there find economical solutions their cloth diaper needs. And that is how Dippee Dypees was started!! Now I have been in business for just over a year and always trying to make better the patterns and put on fabric my ideas and plans for the future!! I am happy to report as of the beginning of this year I have quit entirely, watching kiddos and spend my days with Myah and my dypee making!! Please stay tuned for more articles, pictures and contests!! Without the fanbase I have now via facebook and Etsy I would not be able to be home with my little girl now!!
