why we cloth diaper

First of all, I could talk about cloth diapers for days. So this will be a series. But, I will do my best to keep each post as brief as possible so as not to bore you. For those of you who really don’t care how I diaper my baby, don’t worry, I will break the series up with lots of food and decor in between.Before I was pregnant I had decided I really wanted to use cloth diapers. This decision was mostly because I thought they were cute, at least, thats what caused me to start researching them. The more I read about them, the more reasons I found to favor cloth. Soon the reasons to use cloth far out weight the reasons not to.

Here was the list

1. They are really cute – this may seem ridiculous but I promised honesty
2. Cloth diapering has come A LONG way. They are much more like regular diapers, no more pins and plastic pants.
3.  Huge money saver! – There are lots of different estimations about how much you’ll spend on disposable diapers from birth to potty training. On average its about $3,500 per child. We dream of having a big family so we’re talking $14K-$17K in diapers alone! Yeesh! Compare that to about $600-$700 for cloth. TOTAL! For all our kids!
4. What exactly is in disposable diapers? I have started examining the products I use with more of a questioning eye, making effort to make decisions because I think is best not because its normal. And I was uneasy about soft baby skin sitting in some sort of absorbent goo for two years.
5. Promise of less diaper rash and fewer blow-outs. Sign me up for that!
6. No emergency-we’re-out-of-diapers trips to the store.
7. No diaper genie/dirty diaper nursery smell. Bleh!
8. The whole ‘less waste thing’ seemed like a responsible decision.

Once there was a baby on the way I had my mind made up. Jake was a little leery at first but we made a stop by our local baby to take a look at the diapers, just to get a better idea of what they would be like. The ladies at the botuique were so knowledgeable and helpful. And once Jake saw the diapers in person he was quickly convinced they weren’t as scary as they sounded. He was in!It is a good thing we both had our minds made up like we did because we got a lot of negative input about going cloth (all unsolicited, as most baby advice goes). The funny thing about that was, none of the people telling us we would hate them had ever used them before. Weird. But we did it anyway and we couldn’t be happier with our decision.

Ultimately we finalized the decision based on the fact that there are pros and cons to all the decisions we make. But at some point, you have to just make a decision and stick with it. So though there may be some negatives to the cloth diapering world, we think that the positives are good enough for us.

We LOVE using cloth. We have already seen the financial benefits of using cloth, no diaper induced rash yet, since passing the early newborn stage there have been no blow outs, her nursery smells great and, like I thought, they are really cute! Since she was born in the summer she spent the first two months in her diapers only, they were so cozy we didn’t see the need for clothes! Look how much she likes them!

Upcoming cloth diapering posts:

cloth diapering – the newborn days 
cloth diapering 101: fuzzibunz
cloth diapering 101: GroVia
cloth diapering 101: Flip
cloth diaper care
cloth diapering accessories