Today someone asked me about the benefits of cloth diapers, over disposables. They asked because they knew that I was using cloth now, after 3 babies in disposables.

I gave her all of the environmental/cost/coziness answers. Those answers are all good ones. Keeping dirty diapers out of landfills. Diapering for hundreds of dollars less. Cozy cotton on baby's bum. All good answers.

There was one answer I couldn't quite put into words though. One I have started a million blog posts on, and then left them half finished and unpublished. the answer that I'm going to try to give again.

When I hold Zoe, there is something even more precious in her big blue eyes, something even sweeter in her toothless grin, than with the babies before her. There is a knowledge of how fragile and miraculous her little life is. I want to drink in every second, every act of parenting her. I want to rock her to sleep in my arms and rest her warm cheek against mine, every minute.

The rush of "when will she...?" is replaced by a desperate desire to slow her down. She is my baby. My last baby. The baby born after a baby lost.

When I diaper her in cloth, it's a little more effort. It's a little slower. I wash them, i hang them on a line to dry. I smile with every clothespin because I am savoring a tiny part of her babyness in those moments.

I am taking the part of parenting her that is least precious, and I am making it special.

I never got to diaper Eden. I never had to meet that basic need for her...and that has made me choose to be fully present in that need with Zoe.

So there you go. In many ways I don't even want to post this, because even I think it sounds a little crazy. In other ways, maybe I'm not alone in finding such a simple way to connect with my baby, and someone else out there will read this and think, "Yes. That!"