Emily modeling her math-y diaper (Flip diaper in Albert print)

Why on earth would anyone want to use cloth diapers?!

Having grown up in a town where almost every family seemed to have someone who worked at one of Procter & Gamble’s diaper plants (including my own), I’m sure it was a bit of a surprise to hear Mark & I had decided to use cloth diapers. I expect we’ll have a number of posts about our adventures along the way, but we’re about six weeks in now, and still pretty happy with our decision. So why’d we do it? Well, there are a bunch of reasons people will quote when you ask that question, but to be honest, we’re cheap. The idea of spending hundreds of dollars on mountains of diapers really bothered me. So now when Emily poops just as I finish putting on a clean outfit, I may sigh about redoing the task, but at least I’m not annoyed about wasting money. We also don’t ever have to worry about running out and having to make a midnight trip to the store.

Along the way, we’ve found that using cloth really isn’t a big deal, and there seem to be a lot of misconceptions floating around from people who haven’t tried it:

• More laundry- Actually, we might be doing less. Yeah, I know that’s confusing. You know how babies manage to have blow outs and get poop all over their clothes? Doesn’t happen. The only blowouts we’ve had have been times we put her in disposables for one reason or another (like the first week before the cord fell off, or when the power went out and we packed up and headed to Mark’s parents… we now even travel with cloth). Personally, I’d rather just wash the diapers, which I expect to get poop on, and not have to change her clothes 700x a day. Plus, I now don’t worry about stains on her clothes.
• Pre-rinsing- Our diaper sprayer is awesome. Think of your kitchen sink sprayer and hook it up to the toilet. I don’t touch poop any more than moms of kids in disposables. Plus, if you actually look at that package of Pampers, you’re supposed to be dumping that poop, too, not just tossing it in your diaper genie.
• Having to change more often- It’s true that disposable diapers absorb an ungodly amount, but it’s not like she’s peeing more. You really should be changing just as often either way. The big difference seems to be that you can push it a little more with disposables when you have to, but I don’t want her sitting in a dirty diaper anyway. That’s how you wind up with rashes.
  • Speaking of rashes, we have yet to see a bad one. Really, we’ve only gotten a little red once.
• Dealing with pins- If you haven’t seen modern cloth diapers, you should take a look. Pins are no longer required, even if you choose to use traditional cloth diapers (“flats” or “prefolds”). There’s this wonderful thing called a Snappi, which is much easier to deal with when the baby wants to roll off the changing table. It’s kind of like the little metal clasp on an Ace bandage, but Y shaped and plastic. Even those aren’t required, though, because you could just use “all-in-one” or “pocket” diapers, which go on like disposables, with either snaps or velcro built into the diaper. Most of our diapers are “all-in-twos”, which have the cloth part that gets washed separate from the waterproof cover, which you can reuse.
  • Sidenote- Cloth diapers are also ADORABLE. Our current favorites are one with math equations and one with elephants. Emily even has matching elephant legwarmers that she needs to grow into. We may end up buying some ruffle butt diapers, but I’ve been trying to stick with gender-neutral ones.

I will say cloth is a much larger initial investment, but it pays for itself quickly, especially if you use one-size diapers. They typically fit starting at 8-10 lbs (though they can be pretty bulky at first), and work all the way up until potty training. That’s pretty awesome on its own, but think about if you have two in diapers at the same time! No worries about grabbing the wrong size. It does hurt a little to spend over $20 on one diaper, but- fun fact- you can easily resell your used diapers when you’re finished with them, and get some of that money back.

So what’s the downside? So far, the only one I’ve found is that we have more stuff in our diaper bag. Unless you count wanting to buy more diapers. (I did say they’re adorable.)