Cloth Diapers Explained

So, as many of you know, we have decided to use cloth diapers. Trust me, they're not nearly as scary as they sound. First of all, take out of your mind cloth diapers of old.....you know the ones with folding and pins that you (or your mother) used? Yeah, cloth diapers aren't like that anymore. Well, some are, but those are for crazy people (not us, hah).

I think we have 24 diapers total, so we expect to have to wash the diapers about every three days.

So, I present to you one cloth diaper, cleaned, folded, and all ready for our baby's bottom. Notice the velcro (no pins!) and elastic around the legs:


Here is the diaper unfolded, as you would do to put the baby in it. You can see the white liner. This is a very soft fleece type material that allows all of the "stuff" to move through it into the insert, which you'll see in the next picture. Just an FYI in case you babysit our child, you cannot put any type of diaper cream on the baby! This reduces the ability of the white liner to let the pee get through to the insert (which means leakage!). Most people say that their children never get diaper rash with these cloth diapers, because all of the moisture is wicked away into the insert.


This is a picture of the two different pieces of the diaper. The outside cover which you just saw, and now you can see the insert that gets stuffed into the pocket (I told you these were different than normal cloth diapers!). This is the "newborn" insert, which is pretty thin. After a few weeks, our child will graduate to the normal insert which holds a lot more. Also, for added protection at night, it is recommended to put one normal insert together with a newborn insert. The inserts are quite easy to "stuff" when sitting in front of the TV. Peggy and I knocked out this "chore" in just about 5-10 minutes.


And here is the outside of the diaper. The outside is made of a waterproof material.


It's kind of hard to see, but notice the small buttons on the diaper. These are to change the size of the diaper. These diapers are supposed to get your child all the way through potty training. I unsnapped the first couple of buttons (on the left side) to show you how to make them bigger. Right now, they'll be set on the smallest of the three sizes. I think the child "graduates" to the middle setting in a few months.


And here are our cloth diapers hanging out to dry. I'm constructing a clothesline outside to dry them (although it might not work too well on those cold winter days). Notice the large assortment of colors (these are much nicer looking than having winnie the pooh plastered across my child's butt for the next 2 years). I think we have 6 colors in all.


The Pro's and Con's:
As with anything there are many pro's and con's we considered before making this decision.

Pro's:
1. Cheap! Yes, our water and gas bill will go up a bit each month (although if I used the hang dry method, these bills won't be much more at all), but we expect these diapers to pay off in around a year or so. Actually, for us they will pay off even faster, because over half of the diapers were gifts from my parents!
2. Easy! Yes, cloth diapers can be easy. The worst part is no doubt going to be the laundry, but I'm pretty sure we'll just get used to it.
3. Environmentally friendly! Did you know disposable diapers can last in landfills for more than 500 years, and that 2% of all the solid waste thrown out every year is diapers?! That's crazy! We're trying to just do our little part.
4. Disposables have all kinds of nasty chemicals in them. I would prefer not to have those chemicals on my baby's bottom (or in landfills for that matter).
5. Less diaper rash. Diaper rash is rarely a problem in cloth diapers because they breath much better than disposables.

Con's:
1. The washing. There's no doubt washing the diapers is a con. But, we already do laundry twice a week anyways, so the only difference is 2-3 extra loads a week (plus the baby's clothes). Like I said, I think we'll just get used to it.
2. The "icky" factor. This is fairly limited with these diapers. There is no "dunking" like in old cloth diapers. They have a hose sprayer now that attaches to your toilet that we will be buying soon. You just spray off the diaper over the toilet, and throw it in a bin until you wash it.
3. Harder to travel with. For small/short trips, we'll just throw a couple cloth diapers in the diaper bag, and we'll have a waterproof bag to throw the old ones in. When you get home, you wash them out like normal. For long trips (out of state, etc), we'll probably just switch to disposables for the trip.

Anyways, this is all I can think of for now. Obviously we've thought a lot about this decision, and it is one we're quite happy with.

The baby may just be a couple days away! In other positive news, I'm off on Monday, so I get to go to the doctor with Peggy for the first time in several months! Wahoo!

And finally, here's a picture of Peggy from yesterday. She dressed up as a pumpkin!