A few weeks back the wife and I began using cloth diapers on our baby. Not exclusively, just most of the time, and they’re probably not what you think of when you think cloth diapers.
They’re the Bum Genious brand and we ordered them all from that very site. Why cloth diapers?
1) Babies potty train earlier with cloth diapers. They don’t pull moisture away from the body as well as disposables so the baby knows it’s sitting in a pile of urine. There’s ups and downs on that point. Diaper rash is concern but if we’re attentive to her needs I think we can avoid it. On one pack of the disposables we do have they proclaim that you can leave your baby in them dirty for 12 hours. Uhm? OK, that might be useful if I was a freaking heroin addict.
2) We don’t like the idea of any “chemicals” being on the baby’s body. It’s a little hippie-ish but, whatever. I certainly wouldn’t feel safe putting a disposable in my mouth so I don’t like putting it on my baby.
3) Personally I hate the smell of disposable diapers. Not the poop or urine smell, the smell of them when they’re clean. See point #2.
4) Most importantly: Save money.
At $18 a pop they’re not cheap but in the long haul they’ll save us money. Disposables will run you about $950 a year if we’re to believe the Baby Bargains book we bought when we learned about the pregnancy.
You need about 24 of them on hand for an infant and that works out to $432. Then add in another $45 for a sprayer that hooks up to the supply line of the toilet for washing the pooh off them. Now we’re at about $480. That’s a fixed cost and they’ll be reusable for all of our children most likely. Add in another $100 in extra laundry detergent and we’re at $580 for the first year but over two years we’re looking at $290 a year instead of $950 a year.
And we’re not disliking the experience one bit. You have to plan a bit more, and tote dirty diapers back home with you when out and about, but it’s really not all that bad. Run a load of laundry at night when we start putting her down to bed and put ‘em all back together before we finally hit the sack. It’s a bit of a time sink but compared to that whole “having a baby” thing it’s a rather small drop in the bucket.
We do still use disposables at night right now for logistical reasons, and we keep them very handy for when we’re traveling like we were this weekend to visit the wife’s family. But, they’re backups, not the primary diapering system.
I’m liking it. I’d highly recommend it to other parents.
