Cloth Vs. Disposable

Disposable diapers are a little easier... i use them when we are out and about and sometimes when i'm super lazy. I do feel better about using the cloth ones though and i think they are actually more absorbent, i use fuzzy buns. the av. family spends something like 2800 in the first year on disposable diapers...not to mention the huge enviornmental cost. anyway the cloth ones were a huge initial investment but totally worth it. =)

I have been using cloth with my son since he was about 1 month old. We switch because of all of the trash we were creating seemed disgusting. We have the Bumgenius diapers by cottonbabies.com. These particular diapers are probably the most expensive cloth diapers, but Matt and I loved the way they worked just like disposables. They are not so scarry for others who watch you baby who are not used to cloth. We still use one disposable diaper a day for overnights. We also found that diaperdoublers (which are disposable, but very reasonable- ToysRUs carries them along with some other grocery chains like Publix) were a good overnight solution until he reached about 15 months old. One other thing that was neat when we started was having a test drive package. This was an assortment of diapers that lets you try out the different kinds and see what works best for you. Sunshinediapers.com has these test drive packages and you get most of the money as a credit when you return the package. Then you can get your bumgenius from them and I believe they cost exactly the same as they do from cottonbabies. Since your baby will have runny poop for awhile, You can get these flushable liners which work like a charm. You put them in the diaper and when she poops you just dump into the toilet and flush. When we got them it saved alot of toilet rinsing. They are reasonably priced also. When the poop gets more firm you can just dump the load in the toilet. When I am in public places, it just takes that one extra step once Noah is all clothed again to the toilet to dump the poop. The have these bags that are specially made for diapers once they have been used and they have this water proof stuff on the inside that keeps the bag from leaking. Any of the websites I suggested have these.

One other thing I can suggest is getting some Arm and Hammer washing soda (it is a laundry additive you can get on the laundry isle at most grocery stores)and simple green which you use as laundry soap. Use about 3tbsp of the soda and 4-6 squirts of simple green (or a little less if you have really soft water). This is a simple recipe we found at sunshine diapers.com and is really cheap too. We use this detergent now for all of our laundry, but it is great for not getting residues into you cloth diapers. Also, if your diapers every start looking stained just hang them in the sunshine and I swear to you that the sun bleaches out the stains. We usually wash diapers at night. First we run the rinse cycle, then fill up the washer and add the detergent mix and leave the diapers to soak overnight. Then finish the wash the next morning. We hang our diapers to dry most of the way and finish the inserts up by drying them in the dryer. I think this has definately extended the diapers life.One other laundry thing is that you cannot use fabric softner because it makes the fabric unabsorbent, but white vinegar in a downy ball works great as a softner and also helps get smells out. Now you may be thinking, "vinegar? that stinks," but believe me it does work. Alot of this was just trial and error and I am sure you will be able to find tricks that will work for you.

However now that I told you all of this, I just read about this method of potty training the other day that I wish I would have know about sooner called Elimination Communication (EC). It requires no diapers and you might also want to check it out. I am beginning to try it with Noah, but if it works I will do it from birth with the next one. I know Matt's cousin went to Russia on a mission trip and they use it there because they cannot afford to buy diapers. You can find out more about this at diaperfreebaby.org. It is defiantely worth a try (in my opinion). We had Noah's first peepee on the potty last night after starting this EC yesterday. We have been putting him on the potty everyday since we moved up to Iowa 2months ago before his bath and no pee till yesterday...probably coincidence, but exciting none the less. This is probably more than you needed, but if you do decide to go with cloth, which I hope you do over disposables, you can contact me anytime you need with questions.

One more thing, I found that Noah had many more diaper rashes with the disposables than he did with cloth and I think it was because of all of the chemicals in disposables!

Hey H.- I went through the same thing when I was expecting my daughter last March. Now she is 5 months old & I have been using cloth & disposables, so I can let you know what I have experienced so far. I like using cloth diapers way more than disposables. I guess that environmental issues really came to a reality for me when I had a child...knowing that I needed to do something to help protect the world for her generation- so it doesn't make sense for me to ad 2 tons of diapers to already full landfills to sit there for the next 500+ years. Also, the cloth are cuter & easier in my opinion. At least while they are breastfed, all you have to do is toss the dirty diaper into the waterproof bag, and then throw everything into the wash (including the bag). It's then best to lay or hang them out in the sun...gets rid of any stains..but you can dry them as well. I like the all-in-one diapers, but I have some cheap prefolds & covers as well to have a larger stash. If I knew how to sew I would be making my own..but that is a bridge I have yet to cross. It's so much nicer than having to run out to the store constantly for more diapers. I am actually embarrassed if someone sees me when she's wearing a disposable! Let me know if you have any questions- I'd be happy to answer them :-). Good luck!

I am 15 years older than my brothers and sisters and my mother worked 3 jobs so I changed 1000's of cloth diapers and remember how dirty and stinky the house always was and when I would go to high school people would comment on I smelled like "babies". I remember the awful smell and the pin picks the most and hated 'cleaning' them in the toilet first before putting them in the laundry basket. I now have 2 little ones of my own and I used disposable and I would never go back to cloth. Just potty train them asap. There are several blogs and websites out there about potty training earlier. Americans keep there kids in diapers the longest of any country.

We use both cloth and disposable diapers. With our cloth, we have the pre-folded kinds and a wrapper cover that velcros. We insert the cloth into the wrapper and do not have to use pins. Just as easy as a disposable diaper.
We found that with a newborn, cloth can be very labor intensive. Young babies poop all the time!!! And it isn't solid; it can be very runny. Bur we found that both our cloth and wrapper leaked about the same rate as the disposables, especially Luvs. Pampers were the best by far. Once the baby started on solids, it was much "easier" to use cloth all the time, even out and about. You can buy bags to put the dirty cloth diapers in or you can use old grocery plastic bags. Just remember to take it out of your diaper bag when you get home! :o)
To clean: simply wash it in the washing machine. I hardly ever do anything extra. If there is a particularly great amount on the diaper, I shake it into the toilet and flush it away. Then I put the diaper in the wash. For less than solid amounts, let it soak dirty side down in toliet to loosen it up before washing.
We found disposables were better at night. Babies do not have to have their diapers changed during the night unless it is really bad, and cloth diapers get too wet.
We feel very satisfied with our choice of using both cloth and disposable. We buy the cheap disposable at Aldi and they work great; we use cloth whenever we can. We feel we are doing our share to cut back on the waste of disposable diapers and still have satisfying convenience.

Congrats on the kid! I use both cloth and disposables for my twins boys (1 year this weekend!). I use the cloth ones because of the cost savings and the feeling that we have our own personal landfill of plastic and poo at this point. But, for convenience sake, we use disposables when we leave the house and at night. The cloth diapers really have come a long way in terms of ease of use and there are some out there which are designed just like disposables and just as easy to use. Those are called all-in-ones (or AIO's). Personally, I use prefolds with diaper covers (you have to fold the prefold into thirds length-wise and place inside the cover) which then work like a disposable, and I have some AIO's too. I prefer the prefolds and covers because if there's no poo, you can just hang the cover to dry on the changing table and reuse it in a couple of hours with a clean prefold. When using the AIO's, anytime it's been used it then needs to be washed. The cost was a lot cheaper when you could buy/sell used cloth diapers on eBay but they've banned that now. You can check out www.diaperswappers.com for used cloth diapers and a discussion forum from lots of experienced cloth diapering moms.

In terms of being sanitary, I have never had a diaper come out of the wash with anything dirty still on it. We have a front loader and I use the sanitary setting on it but lots of folks without the high powered washer still have no issues with dirty cloth diapers. What I do is just shake the poo off if it's solid enough (which it will NOT be with a brand spanking new little one, they will all be wet and goopy). If they aren't solid, I use a large metal cooking spoon (previous cooking spoon, now just a poo spoon of course) to scrape the dirty diapers and then use toilet paper to clean the spoon off into the toilet. When that's done, I use clorox wipes to clean off the spoon and where the diaper was lying on the counter. I keep a small dry bucket (just as it sounds, some people keep a wet bucket with water and detergent) with a grocery bag in it to collect the dirty diapers. I keep the bucket small so that it won't get overpoweringly smelly and when it's full, I put the bag in the basement. When I've got two bags full (or if one bag is just super stinky) then I just put it in the washer on the highest heat setting with a presoak and extra rinse with some regular detergent. I dry them in the dryer on high heat without any fabric softeners. Lots of other cloth diaper users use a mix of detergents and borax and other stuff and will only line dry but my diapers haven't suffered from my comparatively lazy washing habits.

So, hopefully this book I've written here answers some of your questions! Send me a message if you have anything specific you want to ask.

I didn't read any of the other responses, so I'm not sure if anyone else suggested this (sorry if they did). Anyway, go to www.gdiaper.com. It's kind of the best of both worlds. They are enviromentally friendly & the insert is flushable. So it's kind of like a disposable, & cloth at the same time, but better for the enviroment & easier to maintain (i think). Basically you have to buy the outside "little g" pants, they are like a little diaper, except made of cloth, and then you also purchase these pads that you insert into the diaper, and then you can flush them when you change the baby (very convenient), they are also biodegradable if you don't choose to flush. Anyway, I think it's the best of both worlds... enviromentally friendly & convenient (arguablly more so than disposable since you flush them) If nothing else, you should definitely look into it, they explain things way better on the webiste.

H.,

I used to work in an infant room and had experience with both cloth and disposable. I found disposable much easier to use, however the number one reason I am going with disposable is the babies that wore cloth seemed to always have terrible diaper rashes. The cloth diapers don't have the new technology that pulls the wetness away from the babies skin. Also, the babies with cloth often had leaks. I hope this helps.

I did a little research on this before i had my first, and both types are just as bad for the enviroment. Disposables end up in land fills but cloth use energy because of all the extra loads of laundry plus people normally use bleach and other harsh chemicals.

personally i use disposable

Sounds like you've heard a lot, but as I was discussing this with a family member when I was pregnant, I wasn't quite sure how cloth diapers would work when I'm out and about...that was my biggest hang up on the whole cloth diapers...also, I'm not the best at doing laundry like I should, so that was another one. Well, their suggestion was to do both...cloth when you were going to home, but disposables when you went out. Still more environmentally friendly, but slightly less expensive than doing only disposable. I went disposable all the way---SO much easier in my opinion...but just thought that I would pass this tidbit along.

Hello, I have two daughers 27 months and 5 months. With our oldest daughter we always used disposable diapers. But wih the birth our second daughter, we found out that she was allergic to the Pampers diapers that they carried in the hospital so we had to explore some other options. For the few days that we were in the hospital, we used cloth diapers and if you ask me they were a disaster (even with the help of the nurses) After we brought her home, we soon found some natural diapers at Greatest Grains that were chlorine fre and she was fine with these, but while in the check out line with aour case of these diapers a man told us about "g Diapers" They are kind of the best of both worlds - clot and disposable. The outer cover is cloth and the inner - snap-in liner is plasic (and reusable) the absorbant part is disposale but very earth friendly. You can either flush it down your toilet or throw it in the trash can ( the diaper will fully dissinigrate in 60ish days while it takes a regular diaper years!!!) ANyway, I just wanted to let you know about another option as if you don't have enough on your mind with the arrival of your new little one. Oh, and just ti let you know, we do keep some disposables on hand for trips, etc. If you have any questions please let me know!! Also, if you are interested you can visit the (g Diapers website) You will have to google it because I can't remember the website. They have also startedto carry some at Greatest Grains in Davenport.
Good Luck, I now that it is a tough decision when you only want the best for your baby!
T.

Just had to add a couple websites for great cloth diapering tools. Best cloth diapers by far are the Pocket Change diapers at www.mtdiaperstore.com. We've tried all kinds of brands!! We use bleach free, biodegradable disposables for my son when traveling and part-time day care otherwise we use cloth and I love them! Aside from the enviro. factor, they're far more absorbent and you can stuff or unstuff to your hearts content. I found hemp to be more absorbent than cotton so when I double stuff (at night) I put the hemp closest to my son's body and the cotton as the outer layer. I also found that velcro fasteners will start to wear out so snap is best though anything 'snap' drives my husband crazy. lol Also using cloth wipes when cloth diapering helps a lot as you just tuck everything together just as when using disposables. The website to find this is www.cottonbabies.com along with a the wipe warmer which can be used for cloth and disposable wipes. Also Allens Naturally Detergent gets diapers clean no problem! For laundering, I do a cold rinse then put in the detergent and do a hot wash followed by another cold rinse. I usually hang dry but now and then I'm in a hurry and need to just throw them in the dryer. Also a little more mess and smell is to be expected with cloth diapering so if that's something you simply can't handle then you won't want to go the cloth diapering route. I myself love it! Oh and check out the Magic Stick for diaper rash at the Diaper Company (mtdiaperstore.com). I just put it on everytime I change a diaper and we're at 7 mos. with never a rash yet! Hope this helps some.

Congratulations!!! I've used both. I had fewer diaper rashes with cloth then with disposable. Yes, disposables are convenient, less hassle. But I have one daughter that was allergic to something in the disposable so I couldn't even use them on her when on vacations. We'd put one on her and within 2 hrs she'd be so broke out it that is was already beginning to bleed and it would take a week or longer to clear up, from ONE diaper. Cloth we didn't have that problem. So, it may be up to the baby in the long run. This daughter also potty trained quicker then any of my other kids that mainly used disposable. With cloth, there are the disposable (flushable) liners that help with clean up of the "poopie" diapers so don't need to rinse in the toilet first. After baby, cloth diapers make great rags for all kinds of things :)
Hope this helps. God's Blessings

Hi H.,

I have two boys and have used both. With my first, I used cloth diapers for the first two years. Then the flow got too heavy (they are able to hold it longer and then go all at once), and he leaked too much, only a premium diaper can keep up.

The ease of use and convenience are the same both ways, if you use the bummies wraps (with velcro, no safety pins needed), and if you have a diaper service. I used Tidy Didy Diaper Service in Boise; don't know if they pick up in Nampa, or if Nampa has its own service. My service picked up diapers twice a week, and delivered clean diapers at that time. You keep the soiled diapers in a diaperpail, provided by the service, pretty convenient. When your child starts pooping solids, then just drop the poop in the toilet before depositing the soilded diaper into the pail. (Everyone should do this regardless of what type of diaper is used. Landfills are not made to handle sewer material.) This doesn't happen until your child starts eating solid food.

I found the cost of the service to be about the same as disposable diapers. If you plan on buying diapers and laundering them yourself, then be advised that you will have to purchase different sizes, and your baby will outgrow the first couple of sizes almost instantly! The cost of quality cloth diapers can be quite a bit, and in my estimation only pays off if you plan on having lots of kids.

I usually used cloth diapers on outings, but you could always use disposables for such events, especially longer outings. I always carry plasic grocery bags or ziplock for soiled diapers and clothes.

With baby number two, we moved to Horseshoe Bend. To continue with the service, I would have had to drop off the soiled diapers myself, and that was just too much work for me, so I switched to all disposables. Neither one of my boys ever had a diaper rash, but I changed diapers quite frequently. One side note, you need to change a cloth diaper more frequently, since it doesn't keep the urine away from baby's skin, like a "gel-filled" disposable. But you also don't have to deal with gel beads stuck to your baby's butt, haha.

About your sanitary concerns, the diaper service launders diapers with environmentally friendly soap, no chlorine. I found the diapers to always be very clean.

I am all for cloth diapers, but I don't think I would have laundered them myself. You have plenty of laundry once your bundle arrives! Congrats and good luck.

T.

P.S.: I will be selling my used bummies on Craigslist. They are in very good condition, as they have only been used for one child. Let me know if you're interested, could save you the shipping!

Another resource to check out in your area: www.motherhoodsociety.org

I used cloth with my first and it lasted a week. I was constantly changing a diaper and his clothes! Too much laundry! Do you want that in your washer? My mom washed ours in the toilet first! YUCK! I found it way easier to use disposable, especially when they are infants and peeing as soon as you put a new diaper on! However, I do have a friend with a 2 1/2 year old who is in cloth and she has managed to do it. I also have driven by a few homes with cloth diapers hanging out to dry. I say that if you have the time go for it but I couldn't and din't have the funds to afford a daycare that was willing to work with me!