Simplest answer: because I am cheap. Over the diaper-usage life of a kid, you will spend thousands of dollars on even the least expensive (effective) disposable. I also have a hard time with the thought of buying something just to throw it away. Yes, I have the same problem with plastic bags, foil, napkins… it drives me nuts.
There do seem to be clear environmental benefits – and we’re lazy. The idea of having poopy garbage to manage in addition to our usual stinky stuff overwhelms me. And in the summer? Ew.
So, cloth diapers. They’ve come a long way since the prefold + safety pin days, though many folks still use the classic style prefold diapers (hi, Jilian). Ask questions about prefolds and I’m sure someone will answer them for you.
My frugal ways and my husband’s hilarious ability to go with the flow (“Well, yea, cloth diapers make sense when you think about it”) made the choice easy. This also meant I focused on one-size diapers. They have snaps that let you smush them down to a smaller size and then periodically let them out as your child grows. They can be a bit bulky, but prevent you from having to buy new diapers every time your kid outgrows the ones you have. (Note: there’s a pretty active resale market for cloth diapers, so you can recoup some of your money, but I’m too lazy to go through with that each time.)
Our requirements:
1 – They must be relatively easy to put on. For us, this eliminated prefolds right off the bat and we eventually ruled out prefolds + diaper covers for the newborn period too. I pictured myself changing a diaper at 3:00 am and the idea of putting the diaper on and then the cover seemed like double work.
2 – They must be the least likely to end up covering us in poop. This eliminated pocket diapers, where you “stuff” an absorbent insert — or combination of them — into a pocket in the diaper. They’re great for versatility, since if you have a heavy wetter you can customize the absorbency, but Joey was adamantly against having to de-stuff the pockets after they were used. Okay, then.
3 – They must require the fewest number of steps in total. This eliminated pocket diapers for me, frankly, since you have to prep the pocket diapers by stuffing them before you use them. Most people recommend you do this after they’re washed so you don’t have to mess with it while managing a crying kid, but this is me. I would rather wear mismatched socks than fold them when they come out of the laundry.
4 – Bonus points for versatility.
At this point, I’d pretty well narrowed the options down to all-in-one’s (AIO) that are basically like a disposable diaper but cloth, and all-in-two’s (AI2) which are a cover with the option to snap in either a reusable cloth inner part or a disposable inner part. Score! I ordered three to look at: GroVia AIO, GroVia AI2, and a BumGenius Elemental AIO. More on that in a later post.
But wait, what about newborns?
Most cloth diapers don’t fit tiny babies. Some folks use disposable diapers for the newborn period until their baby is big enough to fit the one-size diapers, usually around 10 pounds. Other people have babies large enough to fit into the one-sizes right off the bat. Since I’m guessing our child will be on the small size, we needed a solution… and I didn’t want to have to figure out one routine for disposables and then switch over to cloth later.
The cool thing is that cloth diaper sellers know this and many offer newborn diaper rentals! For ~$40 a month, you can rent cloth diapers for three months. Different sellers require different deposits and many offer gift certificates to their stores when you return the diapers.
But most diaper rentals are for pre-fitted cloth diapers that require a diaper cover, although I did find a couple of places that rent the well-loved Fuzzibunz brand – pocket diapers. Remember my comment about not wanting to have to put two diaper-related apparatuses on? That left out the prefitted + cover option, though we resigned ourselves to it if we couldn’t find anything else; Fuzzibunz require stuffing so they were out.
Then I found a place that rents BumGenius diapers in XS… and you get 24 of them! {If you go this way, clicking on this link will get me a 10% commission. Am I recommending this just for the peanuts I’m likely to make? Nope. Spent $160 there myself already!}
Wee Little Changes
As I mentioned the other day, most of the rentals I found were for a variety of brands and types, which makes sense if you want to get a better idea of which kinds you’ll buy later. We don’t, though. We just want enough diapers to get us through the newborn period so we can put the kiddo into the one-size AIO’s/ AI2′s we’ll be buying. And honestly, the idea of keeping track of a bunch of different varieties of diapers so we could return them seemed like a pain.
Bonus: their customer service folks are really nice (hi, April whom I accidentally called Angela because pregnancy brain is clearly kicking in) and answer all sorts of questions. Also a bonus: she emailed me out of the blue to offer me a chance at the newest rentals they’re offering – Grovia AIO newborns. These are a hot (new) item right now so the offer was unexpected and very sweet. Ultimately we decided to stick with the tried-and-true Bumgenius, but clearly they are open to new packages to meet market need.
And although I debated buying this really neat gDiapers newborn kit, the cost of renting was much better than buying them. If we saved them for the next kid, owning them would be a great idea, but then we’d have to store them and… sigh, just seemed like too much of a pain. Plus, the gPants, while freaking adorable, aren’t waterproof (though the inserts are) AND I’m certain we’d quickly pill up the spandex/ jersey-ish fabric by forgetting to lock down the velcro tabs. So, those were out despite the potential long-term savings and awesomeness of the hybrid option.
Next time: more links and thoughts and suggestions on non-newborn size cloth diapers, plus our final decision.
