So tiny they fit in your hand.

Quite a few years ago, before we began the diaper manufacturing adventure, a friend of mine gave birth to her baby more than four months premature. I still remember visiting him in the NICU, his bottom as big as a tangerine. He was as healthy as a 4 1/2 month-baby could be, but she ran into one problem that she passed on to me: find diapers because nothing fits.

The two of us had lived on the same street and cloth diapered our first babies together using exactly the same flat diapers. She knew I would get diapers she would like. I figured, how difficult could it be? Finding preemie cloth diapers was difficult. I found no fitted diapers, no flat diapers, and in the end I produced a pile of wash cloths as diapers for her 4-lb baby. The wash cloths worked, though the covers were much too big. The baby didn’t move around much, so he just had to put up with the giant covers.

The problem of preemie cloth diapers stayed with me. Once I began designing cloth diapers, I knew I needed a size small enough for a premature baby. The Firefly Diapers Extra Small is the result.

We have just stocked Extra Small in trim Firefly Quick Dry Diapers for daytime and extra layered Firefly Sleep Tight Diapers for nighttime. Check the measurement details.

We have quite a few Easy Wool diaper cover colors available in Extra Small.

And, you could always opt for future usefulness of the diapers by choosing a pile of organic cotton wash cloths to be used as diapers now and cloths later.

Our stock of diaper bags is low–really low. Exactly one. I’ve been dreading replacing the hemp batik diaper bags we carry, but the company had gone out of business, so we just have the stock we have.

A customer called this past week. She already had one Mom about Town hemp batik diaper bag, but she thought she probably needed another because the rainbow batik was just calling to her. We talked about why she liked the bag–the softness, the shape, the nylon tote bag to keep wet diapers separate. I told her I was just about to ask customers to help me replace this favorite diaper bag with another, and she said she would like to help.

She surprised me by digging to find out that Mom about Town diaper bags are going back into production. Yeah! She didn’t have to dig very far. There it is right on their front page.

So, I wrote to tell owner Paula Vaden how excited I was to hear this and let her know that I would be very happy to restock her bags the minute they are available. Paula confirmed. Mom about Town diaper bags are coming back. What good news. I love to support small, woman-owned companies–especially one with such a great owner as Paula Vaden.

Have you heard of the triple bottom line? We consider Firefly Diapers to be a triple bottom line business.

1. people
2. planet
3. profit

Profit ought to come first, but it often doesn’t when one gets too caught up in people and planet.

Not everyone is a fan of the idea of triple bottom line. They say it’s a rhetorical device lacking substance, but I see evidence to the contrary in my own business and in the stories of other businesses told in the recent, wonderful book, Getting to Scale: Growing Your Business Without Selling Out. One of my business organizations sent this book to members. (I didn’t pay enough attention to which! Either Co-op America Business Network or Organic Trade Association.)

There are also other sustainable business models, including the UN’s Agenda 21 and Ceres Sustainability Reporting.

One way or the other, if you expect to run a green business, you need to create an effective plan for your sustainability efforts.

If you doubt whether your choice to buy “Made in USA” apparel, including cloth diapers, has any effect on the domestic economy, read about the difficulties in “A Loom with a View: The U.S. Organic Cotton Industry Has a Tough Row to Hoe.”

The challenge of supporting U.S. farmers is compounded by the fact that the domestic apparel industry has been, for all intents and purposes, dismantled.

The choice, the author writes, is in the hands of consumers. There has been more interest in where food comes from. Perhaps consumers will also think about where their clothing comes from. Who touches your clothes from field to loom to sewing machine?

So maybe supporting domestic, sustainable cotton production is less an issue of economics than a test of values. Do U.S. consumers value domestically grown, processed, and manufactured clothing? Is it important that the fiber keeping us warm is made closer to home? Or are we content with having all the clothes we wear be grown and sewn overseas?

Does it matter to you where your clothes and your baby’s diapers come from? It matters to us. Remember, Firefly Diapers are proudly MADE IN USA. We are concerned about the long-term viability of the U.S. economy, about fair labor, and about clean fibers. If you buy new clothes this season, investigate the supply chain. I know you care, too.