Cloth diapering

Those of you who know me are probably not surprised that I want to cloth diaper my future one's little tush. I've been wanting to cloth diaper since before I even thought about having kids ... Plus, I recycle just about every damn thing in my house, so it seems unnatural for me to want to throw away a dirty diaper in the trash. There's also a question of cost, and while I'm not doing it as a cost savings I think there will be some.

I was not a cloth-diapered baby, but my husband was and he was born only 2 years before me.

On our last trip to visit Matt's parents, my father-in-law asked if I was going to cloth diaper. When I said, "Yes, that's my intention," he gave me a high five. Who knew that could bond 2 people together? Then I got to enlighten my in-laws on the new cloth diapers that don't involve a safety pin and come in cute names like Bummis, Happy Heineys, Thirsties, and FuzziBuns.

I think, though, that my mother-in-law had a diaper service.

I looked into diaper services -- Matt wants us to go this route because really, who wants to launder those things -- but there is only 1 that services the entire Chicagoland area. Isn't that crazy? Only 1 company?! They charge $18/week ($72/month which is on par with how much disposables would cost). My only concern is that when Prof Poopypants has to go into daycare at 5 months, they will probably require that I provide disposable diapers. So we'd only have the diaper service for a little while. (I plan on doing disposable --if I have to-- when in daycare, but cloth for evenings/nights/weekends.)

But what else is there? It seems more and more people are cloth diapering, but I don't know anyone personally to ask. A friend of mine recommended FuzziBuns (her friend used them), and on my pregnancy forum a lot of people have their own recommendations for different types and brands. But it seems that you won't know what fits and what you like until the baby comes.

Many people recommended buying different kinds so you have them ready for baby. So that's what I've done.

Mothering magazine had an excellent article on all the different kinds of cloth diaper systems. That helped me navigate, plus I found a store near work that sells them and the saleslady gave me some good information.

So far I've bought three different types of diapers.

1. Pre-folds with covers: This is the cheapest option. I bought 6 chinese prefolds @ $1.75 each and a Bummis cover for $13. You have to wash the pre-fold several times to get them soft and absorbant. The only downside is that they come in different sizes so as your baby grows, you need to get new pre-folds and covers. The recommendation is 24 pre-folds and 6-12 covers ($200 per size). This will make laundering every other day.

2. One size pre-folds with covers: Flips is from the maker of BumGenius and this is their answer to #1. The outer shell is softer than the Bummis cover and is a 1-size fits all with all sorts of snaps so you can make it fit your growing baby (many people on my pregnancy forum love these - they are new to the market). It comes with 1 stay-dry pre-fold that you can fold into 3 sizes. It fits into the diaper just like the cheap option. I'm not sure how much extra Flip pre-folds are, but I was told you can use chinese pre-folds inside the Flips cover. Cost per Flip/insert is $17. 12 of these would be $200+ and I can use chinese pre-folds to make up for the extra inserts I'll need.

The intention for both of these options is that unless the baby has a "blow-out", you only need to wash the pre-fold and the cover is reusable. If there's a blowout, the whole thing gets washed.

3. Inserts: This is the 3rd type of diaper I bought. I bought the BumGenius brand (although there are a lot of these types). For $18 you get a soft one-size shell (which folds up with snaps, but closes with Velcro) and a one-size insert (that you can snap close into 3 sizes). The insert is "inserted" into the shell which means that any time the baby soils the diaper, the whole thing goes in the wash. You'll need at least 24 of these so that cost is $400+. The velcro version of these is being discontinued, replaced with a snap version.

So I may be purchasing a couple more of each of these and when the baby arrives, see which ones I like better (with my stash of disposable samples for back up if I don't have enough). I also plan on buying some other brands just to see which I like more. It will be interesting to see how this goes, but encouraging that more people are turning to cloth so there's a lot of on-line help.