Adventures in cloth diapering

I’m sure half the people who actually take the time to read our little blog here currently have their jaws on the floor just by the title of this post.  I know what you’re thinking: “CLOTH diapers? Are you f*&king insane?!”  I know so many of you are thinking it, because a large majority of the people I’ve made this admission to say it to my face.  Oh, there has been some SERIOUS judgment about this decision to use cloth diapers, even from my family and closest friends – you know who you are! Honestly you’d think we were suggesting we were going to be raising our baby on a hippie commune the way people would react! Its fine, I forgive you.  You probably just had my best interests in mind.  :-)

While I was pregnant and it would come up in conversation that we intended to use cloth diapers, the general reaction I would get was shock and horror – but also a lot of condescension.  The knowing, seasoned mothers quietly rolling their eyes and smirking at the inexperienced, naive soon-to-be first time mother’s ridiculous assumption that she would have the time or patience for such a silly endeavor.  I mean, as much as I hated it, I get it.  I GET why people have that reaction.  But cloth diapers aren’t what you think they are!  Trust me.

When disposable diapers are SO easy and so accessible, WHY would anyone in their right mind voluntarily regress to a practice that was the only option 50 years ago?  Well, here are a few of our reasons:

1) Cloth diapering of today is NOT cloth diapering of 50 years ago!  I’m not using a terry cloth dishtowel and a safety pin.  What I’m using are these “all-in-one” cloth diapers that have convenient snaps, elastic around the legs, and are lined with super absorbent materials.  They also have snaps so you can fold down the front until the umbilical falls off. They also are available in a wide variety of super cute colors and patterns!  Bonus!  Since I’m breastfeeding, and the stools are organic, I can just toss them into the washing machine dirty. When I start solid foods, and will need to dump the poo into the toilet first I have a diaper sprayer hooked up to the toilet to make it easier. (By the way, you are TECHNICALLY supposed to discard poo into the toilet even with disposable diapers…)  There are a few things to keep in mind - you are not supposed to use bleach, fabric softener or the sanitary cycle and you are supposed to use little detergent. And because I have a front-loading washer (that uses very little water) I have to do a quick pre-wash without a spin cycle to saturate them before running the actual wash.  This is because they are so absorbent, that the small amount of water that a front loading machine will inject into the drum will just get absorbed and the diapers won’t be sloshed around in a volume of water while they wash, but just bounce around the inside a mostly dry machine.  This doesn’t wash them very well, obviously. But as long as you keep those things in mind, you get lovely, clean, absorbent diapers that don’t leak or cause diaper rash!

So tiny! And so cute!

2)  It is WAY cheaper.  They say that you can spend around $2,500 on disposable diapers from birth to potty training – of course this varies greatly depending on when the kid is potty trained, but that’s the general average number.  If you have 2 kids, that’s $5,000.  3 kids, $7,500.  You get the idea.  So far, I have purchased 18 newborn sized diapers that I will use for the first ~3 months approximately (even with a baby who was 9 pounds at birth). I have also bought 12 diapers that will be used from that time up to potty training. I will need more of those eventually, probably about double that depending on how often I want to do laundry, but that’s the stockpile I have now.  I have spent less than $400 so far and will probably spend about $600 on diapers when its all said and done. AND I'm doing it the expensive way with the all-in-ones.  There are other types of cloth diapers that are cheaper or you could buy them used.  But $600!  Versus $2,500!  AND because we know we want Tess to have at least one sibling, we can re-use these when the sibling arrives… whenever that may be.  Sure, I run 1 extra load of laundry each day or every other day, which adds some cost to my water and electrical bills.  But since my water bill is only about $4 every 2 months, even if it DOUBLED it wouldn’t make a dent to my yearly budget.  

These are the next size up that I will use - these ones have an absorbent insert that I've placed on top of the diaper so you can see it.

3)  They say that there is less diaper rash with cloth diapers – but to be fair, this one is up for debate. Supposedly the synthetic materials in disposable diapers can irritate the skin.  Others say that disposables are more absorbent so cause LESS diaper rash… but just judging from my own experience so far, my cloth diapers are incredibly absorbent so I can’t imagine absorbency being an issue – at least while she’s this small.  And even if it is, there are toxic chemicals, dyes and carcinogens in the materials used for disposable diapers that can lead to adverse health effects or trigger allergic reactions.

4) The environmental impact.  Again this point is controversial – some people insist that the extra water and electrical usage from washing cloth diapers is “worse” than throwing out diapers into a landfill.  I’m not an environmental scientist, but it just seems that throwing away 12 diapers every day for 2 or 3 years for just one child is far more than I want to contribute to our nations landfills.  The EPA says that 20 billion disposable diapers are dumped in landfills which equates to 2.5 million TONS of waste! Yikes.  AND they do not degrade without exposure to oxygen and sunlight and take about 500 years to decompose in a landfill. Furthermore, 200,000 trees and 2.4 billion gallons of fuel are used each year to make disposable diapers.  Granted, cotton and other materials are used to make cloth diapers… In any event, the debate continues but for me personally I think the impact on landfills out weighs the water usage from doing extra laundry. 

Anyway, so those were Andy and my reasons for wanting to use cloth diapers. 

How is it going now that Tess has been in them for a month?!  Honestly?  Its great. I know that with time things will get more complicated – when she goes to day care (the day care we will use DOES accept cloth diapers though – already looked into it), when I’m no longer breastfeeding and she’s on solid foods, when we go on vacation, etc.

After bath time!

For now, really the only “extra hassle” is needing to do an extra load of laundry every day or every other day.  And frankly, I am doing so much laundry anyway I don’t even notice it.  Tess spits up a LOT, and so I change her clothes numerous times throughout the day and use about 10 bibs each day, we go through a hundred receiving blankets that we use as “burp cloths” (aka PUKE cloths! Let’s call them what they are!), and have to change her bedding nearly every day as well.  (Her excessive spitting up is another blog post I have planned… stay tuned!)  And then because Andy and I are getting spit up on constantly, we go through multiple shirts every day.  What’s an extra load of diapers every other day when I’m already doing 2-3 loads every day anyway?

Sidenote:  Honestly, if anyone ever asks me whats the ONE thing you can not go without as a parent of an infant my answer will not be a bassinet or crib or changing table or baby bjorn or breast pump or stroller or any of the other things we spent so much time researching and purchasing during my pregnancy.  I would say a good washer and dryer!!!  I can’t even imagine how people have children who don’t have their own laundry machines – doing this while living in a high rise apartment building in New York and needing to go to the basement to do laundry? Or to have to drive to a Laundromat?  Good God I can’t imagine it!  Fortunately we already had a kickass washer and dryer so I’m all set.  But any new parent who doesn’t should be given some kind of tax break to be able to afford one if they can’t.  My mom just emailed me an article about how health insurance needs to provide a stipend for purchasing breast pumps (Breast pump stipend article)  Well, I think something similar should be done for laundry.  Just saying – as much as I love my breast pump, I love my washing machine more!

Of course, there have been a couple of hiccups.  When we first got home from the hospital, for the first load of “used” or soiled diapers I would have to wash, I realized we only had 3 clean ones left.  I thought, oh 3 diapers should last me the 2 hours or so it will take to wash and dry a load of diapers.  In theory yes, but of course I was tempting fate by thinking that way.  I loaded our dirty diapers into the machine and went to change her into the first of 3 spare clean diapers. Five minutes after changing her, I heard (and felt) her have a MASSIVE bowel movement.  Uh oh… so I had to change her again…. and only had 2 left.  And of course, AS I was changing her into her next fresh diaper she decided to have a pee all over it!  I swear she even laughed a little bit. She totally did it on purpose.  So now she was in her last clean diaper, but the laundry was already going. Hopefully we can make it 2 hours in this diaper, that isn’t too much to ask, I thought.  But then, almost as if the stars were aligned against me – the power went out!!!  I kid you not! It wasn’t storming or even sprinkling – it was a beautiful day out and all of a sudden the lights went out and we could hear the transformers blowing. I was just like “Are you f’ing KIDDING me?!”  Apparently a tree went down on the next street over and took out the power lines with it.  The power was out for quite a few hours, so of course she needed to be changed before I could finish off that load I had started.  But this was exactly why we had a stockpile of disposable diapers to use for emergencies like this one.  It was actually pretty funny how it all went down.

 Other than that, its been pretty smooth sailing.  I do want to finish up by saying I’m not trying to be preachy about cloth diapers at ALL here, I don’t think anyone who uses disposables is poisoning the Earth or something. This is just something that works for us, the minimal extra effort it requires – at this point – is not excessively taxing and I’m happy about our decision.  If there is anyone else who is considering the possibility but is intimidated by the idea of it, please don’t be!  It isn’t as bad as you might think!  And look at how damn cute she is (although that might not be because of the diapers...)!!!