Recently I’ve gotten quite a few questions about cloth diapering, and even though I try very hard not to blog about poop (because, ew) I love cloth diapering and wanted to share some of my thoughts!

So here it goes.

Cloth diapers: a road I never thought I’d go down…

Seriously, I am all about reusable items, but I just never thought of myself as the type of person who would reuse diapers… it sounded yucky to me. However, I read as much as I could about pretty much everything baby-related while I was pregnant, and after reading some articles, watching some online videos, and talking to a few moms, I decided we absolutely needed to give this cloth diapering thing a try.

And I’m super glad we did.

Here are my thoughts 3%20 months into it.

Pros:

+ They’re reusable, and I’m a big fan of anything reusable. You know, saving the Earth’s resources and all of that stuff. (Yes, I know it takes a lot of water to wash cloth diapers, but I can’t win every battle, so I pick and choose my causes.)

+ I’m fairly certain we’re saving money. No, I didn’t run the numbers because people have already done more research than I would ever want to do on this, but I’m confident enough in their number-crunching to say that we’re probably saving money on kid #1 and when/if we use cloth diapers on subsequent (God willing) kids, we’ll be saving way more money.

+ No blow-outs. Clara has only gotten poop on three of her outfits ever, and only a small amount on the leg-holes where it’s leaked out. No poop up her back, ever. No poop on our clothes, ever. Knock on wood, but I think we’re doing pretty well 4%20 months in!

+ We never need to order more diapers. It’s just one less thing to pick up at the store and less errands I need to run and one less thing to keep track of.

+ One-size fits all. She doesn’t grow out of the diapers so I don’t need to worry about wasting any packs that we over-bought!

+ Clara’s diaper rash disappeared. We used newborn disposable diapers for the first month and Clara developed just a bit of a diaper rash. But, once we switched her to cloth diapers, her bottom started looking way less red.

+ I like the feel of them. I hate wearing pads (sanitary napkins, whatever you want to call them) so I don’t. To me, a disposable diaper seems like a huge pad for babies that they need to wear 24/7 for years. So gross. If I don’t want to wear them, I’m sure Clara doesn’t want to, either! I feel much less guilty putting a soft diaper against her bum.

+ They’re cute. I love all of the colors of the diapers, and I think they’re way cuter than disposable diapers! I never mind if I can see them through her clothes or if she’s just hanging out in just a diaper… I think it’s adorable, actually!

I know it’s a blurry pic, but I love this photo of Clara and I, and she’s only half-dressed so you can see her little pink cloth diaper!

Cons:

– Laundry. We wash her diapers every other night. We rinse them with cold water, wash them with hot water and detergent (a special kind) with an extra rinse at the end. Then we line dry them. Ta-da! It’s honestly not that bad at all, but it is extra laundry. I bet it takes us about 5 minutes to do each load and then 5 more minutes to stuff the inserts into the diapers. 

– Upfront cost. We bought 17 diapers originally (and we still have that many) and each diaper was between $15-20 (I can’t remember exactly how much we paid). We registered for all of them, but it turns out baby shower guests don’t like to purchase diapers! It was a large cost for us, but we saw it as an investment.

– Transporting dirty diapers. For me, this is not an issue, but I guess it’s worth pointing out. When I change Clara in public, I can’t just throw the dirty diaper away, I need to put the used cloth diaper in a waterproof bag (I bought a few of these) and bring it home to clean it. I wash the bag right along with the cloth diapers.

Other Thoughts:

// Originally we were concerned that babysitters / family members / etc. wouldn’t understand cloth diapers and would refuse to use them. I guess we underestimated people because everyone has done fine with them! I mean, putting them on Clara requires a little tutorial because we use the snap kind and whoever is changing Clara needs to know how to adjust them to the proper size, but it really is super easy and no one has felt intimidated.

// We use Rockin’ Green Cloth Diaper & Laundry Detergent to clean the cloth diapers and love it.

// The only brand of cloth diapers we’ve ever tried are BumGenius 4.0 Pocket Cloth Diapers with snaps. Actually, we’ve also tried the All-In-One from this brand, but I don’t love them as much, even though we still use the few we have. I think the  snaps are better than the Velcro (from what I’ve heard) because they last longer.

// Originally Tim pushed back (about using cloth diapers) because he thought it was gross to put poop in the laundry machine. Here’s the thing: if you have a baby, there is going to be poop in your laundry machine. It’s going to be on the baby’s clothes and possibly on your clothes and basically it’s just going to become a common thing in your life to be cleaning disgusting things off of everything. Our laundry machine is doing fine and looks very clean and we do a cycle of bleach occasionally just to be extra-sanitary. Trust me, your appliances can handle the diapers.

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If you’re debating between cloth diapers and disposable diapers, I hope this provided you with at least a bit of insight as to why we’re using cloth diapers. Like I said before, we used disposable diapers until Clara grew out of the NB size, and I honestly wish we would have switched her into cloth sooner.

I know they aren’t for everyone, but I’m truly happy with our decision and I hope if you’re on the fence about using them you’ll give them a try! 

If you have any questions, let me know! It’s very intimidating to start cloth diapering (at least I thought it was) and I wouldn’t mind doing a follow-up post if there’s interest.