| | Cloth diapering has become a very natural part of our family life. My family and friends have gotten used to changing them and no one is surprised anymore. But why do we do it?
1. Diaper rashes- My daughter has a very sensitive backside and she got rashes from her sposies in the first two weeks of her life no matter how often I changed her. She seemed to be allergic to one of the chemicals in the diapers When we switched to cloth we didn't have so much as another hint of rash until she started teething.
2. Cost- My first set of diapers cost about $80 for all my wraps and diapers. My second set cost about $100. I wash about twice a week, and air dry, so my monthly cost is $8 or so. If I use my ancient gas dryer the cost goes up to $20 or $25. My friend tells me that sposies run about $40 a month, I've seen other estimates online upwards of $60, but I'll use her number. So, my total diaper cost for the life of my daughter, 26 months, so far has been about $450 (that's with $82 for dryer uses). For sposies it would have been at least $1040, that's without the cost of having garbage men come and tote away all the used ones. So far I've saved almost $600, but wait, it gets better. When Bean is born I can reuse the same diapers. So when Bean is 26 months old I will have spent $270 instead of $1040. So over the course of two children I will save about $1360.
3. Earth friendly- Cloth diapers are biodegradable. They don't have a negative impact on the environment. Disposable diapers supposedly will decompose after 200-250 years. Willow has used somewhere between 5000 and 5500 diapers so far. About 250 of them have been sposies. I like the 250 diapers in the landfill better than the pile of 5000-5500. I want my baby's bigest impact on the world in 200 years to be something other than her pile of diapers. I use unbleached diapers and organic laundry soap, so there's very little chemicals involved. The production of sposies uses all kinds of chemicals and leaves chemical waste.
4. Effectiveness- When we have used sposies we have had leaks of poop on Willow's clothes. In her first two weeks I had to change her onsie at least 1/3 of the times that she pooped. With the cloth diapers since then she's gotten poop on her clothes maybe 5-10 times. The cloth diapers are so much better at containing the messes. Between this and the rash factor i don't even use sposies when we travel anymore. I only use them when we don't get the wash done fast enough.
5. Convenience- Surprised to see this on the list? Well, I never run out of diapers, there's always more in the washer. I don't have to go out and buy them. If the money is tight one month, I don't have to worry about how I'm going to get more.
6. Smell- There are few things in this world that smell worse than a diaper pail. I'm in my first trimester right now, so this one is even more important to me. With the cloth diapers we can rince them with the diaper sprayer before putting them in the basket, so there is little to no smell other than wet cotton. I admit we don't always rinse the wets, so sometimes there is a pee smell, but it's still better than than a pail of sposies.
7. Early potty training- My daughter self initiated potty training at 18 months. Other cloth diapering families I've talked to have reported training complete as early as 14 months. The reason, I would guess, is that the kid can feel the wet. There's no moisture lock liners or feel-dry surfaces. If the kid is wet, they know it, and they don't like it.
I use bummis superwhisper wraps and prowraps with prefold diapers. The bummis wraps cost about $12 new and you only have to buy two sizes. The prowraps only cost $7.50, but you have to buy three sizes. Both work very well. I buy second hand wraps, which are much cheaper. Prefolds cost $1.50-$250. These I buy new and I get the thickest ones available because they don't cost much extra and they last much longer. With this system you only need a few wraps because you only have to wash them when they get pooped on or if they've been wet several times.
There are many other types out there. Most are more expensive. Some are easier to use.
What kind of diapers do you use? Why did you choose them? I want to hear from sposie users too.
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| | Posted 7/11/2009 10:55 AM - 25 Views - 2 eProps - 1 Comment
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