Cloth Diapers

Cloth Diapers

We decided to use cloth diapers. We knew a handful of people who used cloth diapers, but most of our friends, family, co-workers, etc. was on the disposable track. When asked about cloth diapers, they all expressed “Well, we thought about cloth diapers, but…” and then an excuse is used on why they did not take that route. I never want to come across as expressing that these excuses are bad. On the contrary, I think you have to be a little weird to choose cloth diapers in the first place; they are a lot of work. Disposable diapers are easy. That is quite possibly the most used, and simply put, the best reason anyone can use. Excuse me cloth diaper users, but it’s true. Don’t deny it.

It seems that every other factor between cloth diapers and disposables is a wash. Cost? Wash. Seriously. The only difference is you’re paying for diapers $20 each time you go to the grocery story, or $100 each time your baby gains eight pounds. Buying both is just plain silly. You have to choose one or the other. Oh, and cloth diaper people, don’t kid yourselves. You don’t just buy cloth diapers once. Sorry. You buy different sizes. You buy different brands. You buy new diapers because the old ones get a funky smell that you can’t get out. It happens, I don’t care what you try to do to stop it.

Cloth diapers don’t travel well either. When you have to do laundry every three days, a week-long trip to Disneyland sucks. A two-day road trip sucks. A weekend at the beach sucks. Trying to use someone else’s laundry facility sucks. Cloth diapers are work, and they are a big commitment.

With that said, we actually are so happy that we chose cloth diapers. Shocked? Yeah well, it’s all about perspective. When we chose cloth diapers, we talked about it and decided that to do both cloth diapers and disposables was not an option. It was one or the other. But that doesn’t mean we stuck with a single kind of cloth diaper.

We originally bought a package of 30 Fuzzybuns, which consisted of a diaper cover with an equal number of inserts. Upon further research, for our purposes it didn’t make sense to have 30 covers that we had to keep track of. We ended up selling most of them, but kept some as a nighttime diaper option. This way we could use a double liner for longer periods.

When Michelle first came, she was a skinny little chicken-legged thing. We chose G-diapers because they do very well with skinnier legged babies. Plus, the diaper consisted of a cover, and a liner, and an insert. The great thing about a G-diaper is that if the mess is contained, you only need to change the insert. Bigger messes may soil the liner, and the biggest messes soil all three. But there’s flexibility, and that is what we like about G-diapers. We love these things, and using these diapers actually convinced several people in our lives that cloth diapers were actually kind of cool!

Between months six through nine, we tried some pre-fold diapers. They were okay, but our daycare providers, and myself for that matter, truly didn’t like this option. Once Michelle grew out of them, they were gone.

We tried a larger size of G-diapers for a toddler Michelle, but they don’t work the same magic for a thunder-thigh toddler. After many many instances of the diaper leaking, we decided to try Best-Bottoms. These seem to work great for our busy girl, and we will hopefully use these until she’s potty trained. The great thing about them is that they adjust in size, and have a nighttime insert you can buy.

The trick with cloth diapers is you have to commit, but you have to be flexible enough to try different brands to find the one that fits you and your child best. It has taken me a long time to adjust to this flexibility piece because my wife used the argument that they would be less expensive than disposables. The good news is that we have only bought disposable diapers twice in Michelle’s existence: once when she was an infant, and the second was when we moved to Virginia and went two weeks without laundry facilities.

There’s so much to say when it comes to cloth diapers, and I feel like I’ve already rambled enough. We have only experienced a sliver of the cloth diaper brands out there, but we have some feedback about all of them, good and bad.

Until next time.