As of yesterday, we've gone cloth. I had pledged to cloth diaper MJ even before she was born. I could pat myself on the back for my environmentalism (disposables sit in landfills pretty much forever, so like styrofoam, they are the devil), but really, it's all about the money. Some estimates place the cost of diapering a child to potty training at near $1,200. This, for something that gets tossed out with the garbage! Yikes.
I know what you're thinking. Gross. Those things get poopy and then have to be hand-rinsed. Yeah, true. When I told my cousin, Hilary, that I was going to cloth diaper, she almost threw up on the dinner table. But cloth diapers have really come a long way. They have inserts that don't have to be folded, and with the advent of snaps and velcro, there are no pins to wrestle with. The covers come in all kinds of adorable colors and patterns, and some brands even have one-size covers that grow with your child.
Admittedly, cloth diapers are more expensive up front; our first set of gDiapers, purchased on Saturday, hit up our checking account for $53.98, plus tax. This included two diaper covers and six cloth inserts. I bought them at Babies R Us for convenience; I'm sure they're cheaper somewhere online. The great thing about cloth is that even if you end up spending as much as $400 to diaper a child to potty training, you can reuse all of those diapers for future children. Let's say we end up having four children (permit my insanity for a moment, just to illustrate the point). Through disposable diapers, we'd spend approximately $4,800 to collect their waste until they were all potty trained. Through the use of the cloth, we'd only spend about . . . $400. That's a generous estimate which even includes the energy costs of machine washing up to age 18 months. Let's even throw in another $100, to replace a few that got lost or ripped or stained beyond repair. That's still a savings of $4,300 over the diapering lives of all four children.
Unless we suddenly win the lottery, a little extra cleaning work on my part is worth it.
Last night was our first cloth diapering experience. gDiapers are easy to load. The diaper inserts don't have to be folded; they already come sized properly for the diaper. Made of a highly absorbent blend of hemp and cotton, they are soft as those sweet little cheeks! I kind of wish I had some sleep pants made out of them. Anyway, the diaper covers are cotton, and the nylon liners simply snap in. Then the inserts rest inside the liner. The covers velcro-close in the back, which apparently keep little hands from ripping the diaper off, but we don't really have to worry about that yet, since she's only recently even discovered that she HAS hands. Ha.
After a battle over fit (I wanted to make sure they were tight enough to stay on, but not so tight they squished her fat little tummy), she seemed not to notice a difference. I certainly noticed that they are a bit bulkier than their disposable counterparts, but what is cuter than a padded baby bottom? As she begins to sit on her own, and eventually takes a tumble or two, she'll probably appreciate a little extra padding.
She woke up twice in the night. We're not sure if she's always done this, and she only wakes us up because we're in the same room with her, or if she's just begun reverting back to newborn sleep patterns, but she didn't seem to need a change or feeding, so she went back to sleep. Waking up for good at 7:30 this morning, I scooped her up and placed her on her changing pad. I patted her little bottom, and noticed a slight dampness.
Darn.
She'd leaked through her left leg opening a little. Really, she was only slightly damp on the outside of the diaper cover, and it seemed not to get on her sleeper at all since the diaper covers are cotton, and therefore also absorbent. Disposables can't boast that! You leak in a disposable and end up having to change everything. Unfortunately, as I was pulling off the old diaper, I realized I didn't have anything in which to put her wet cloth insert. The diaper pail is still home to soiled disposables.
Darn again.
As I went to replace the cloth diaper with a new Huggies Little Snugglers Size 2 (I left the other loaded diaper cover downstairs - oops), she suddenly began peeing.
Sigh. Well, that's not unique to cloth diapering. That's just fresh air hitting the pee-pee parts.
Overall, I'm pleased with the first attempt. I think I will check out the website and see if I can figure out what's up with the leg opening fit. Do they adjust somehow? I also need to get something to put the dirty inserts in. Today, I had enough laundry to simply run a load of baby things, so I just threw in the wet insert, but I'm sure that won't be the case every time I change her.
So far, happy baby, happy mommy. We'll see how it goes.
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I love using the cloth diapers on Max. I do know that Mekala has "wet bags" made of the same PUL cloth as the diaper covers. They just get thrown into the washer with the diapers - she's got two that fit a hamper, and one with a zipper that goes into the diaper bag. She's also got a little sprayer that attached to the potty, so it's easy to spray off the "muddy" diapers, at least at home. The thirsties diaper covers have a sort of leg gusset that's elasticized, so it grips the leg; as long as you make sure that the diaper is INSIDE the cover all 'round, it doesn't leak out unless it's absolutely soaked. She does a load of diapers every day/every other day - washes them separately, hot water, no bleach or fabric softener. They seem to wash up really nicely, because nothing's stained yet! I've heard of people keeping a lidded pail with water/hydrogen peroxide in it, and they dump the soiled diapers in that - peroxide disinfects and helps whiten without bleach, and you can just flush the water or dump the whole thing into the washer, spin it out, and then wash.
ReplyDeleteJust a few thoughs - if I had to do it again as a mommy, I'd definitely cloth diaper!!
Amber