Before Mason was born, I had spent months planning and preparing and making all kinds of decisions including whether or not to use cloth diapers. Since Asheville is home of the hippy-bourgeoisie, cloth diapering is very de rigueur. Since I was born pre-1985, cloth diapering seems normal to me. I distinctly remember pre-folds lying around the house and the white-tipped safety pins everywhere. If my mom could do it, so could I and with stern conviction I dutifully went out and purchased an array of diaper styles, as there are quite a selection from which to choose.
Now, although my mom did it with ease, I admit to being thoroughly intimidated by cloth diapers. I'm not really sure why - perhaps it's the extra work involved, perhaps it's the comfortability one has to develop with poop. Cloth diapering requires a certain amount of conviction because you can't just throw a dirty diaper away and forget about it...nope you have to let the poop-filled diapers mingle in sudsy water and hope they get clean...over and over again.
But I was resolute! Upon suggestion from the sales lady (and in retrospect, more of a sales pitch) I purchased several different kinds - Lovely Buns wool cover and inserts, Imse Vimse newborn inserts, recycled wool-sweater covers, Mother Ease, and Little Beetles. She explained that babies fit into different styles of diapers and it's best to try a variety and find out which style is the best fit. I brought them home and cleaned per their instructions - putting the cotton inserts through 7 loads of laundry to get their wicking properties working and linolin-ing and air drying all the wool covers.
Now there have been great strides made in the world of cloth diapers and I wanted to be on the forefront of the technological advances. I passed over the traditional pre-folds (at a mere $2.25 a piece) and instead chose the snazzy built-in snap and elastic versions (at $17-27 a piece.) When I announced this to my mom, she was shocked and remembered only paying $.50 each 30 years ago. The thing that was toughest for me to adjust to was that all of these flashy cotton diapers still needed wool covers to go with them that would wick away the moisture once the diaper was soaked. On an 8 lb baby, it seemed very bulky, but I went along with it anyway.
After Mason was born and we eased into parenting at the hospital with the help of plentiful Pampers and learning within the first few days that babies need a diaper change about every 1-2 hours (so at least 10 times a day), the thought of launching into the cloth diaper experiment was even more overwhelming. I was too busy learning how to be a parent to even want to worry about washing diapers constantly. That and the fact that all the ones I had purchased were ridiculously big steered me back into the disposable diaper camp. I told Michael that we would wait a few weeks and try it when we had our other routines down.
A few weeks came and went. Occasionally we would try out one of the diapers, but it would quickly get pooped in and had to be changed and, as noted above, since most of the diapers were ill-fitting, he exploded right through them. Soon enough, he had grown so big that he didn't fit into the newborn-sized ones that I had purchased. They were obsolete before they had really been broken-in.
Although I was comfortable with our fate as a disposable-diaper family, I still felt...guilty. The environmental impact of cloth diapers vs. disposables is arguable. What is saved in landfills, is spent in laundry water and electricity. (Though water and electricity are for the most part renewable and landfills are not.) What kept nagging at me was the cost-savings of the diapers themselves. Even if I purchased the more expensive and snazzy diaper option, I would make up for the cost within about 3 months of using disposables (we go through about a package a week at $13 bucks a pop) and they would last until he would be potty trained. And research has shown that cloth diapers babies are quicker to potty train because they feel the discomfort of going to the bathroom in a cloth diaper more readily than in a disposable.
In my Mama/Baby group, 3 out of 7 babies are in cloth diapers. Granted, this is Asheville, but again I felt that if they could do it, so could I! I had noted last week that several were using the same brand, bumGenius One Size, and were very pleased with them. I went home and did a little research and found that it was a pocket diaper with velcro straps that was essentially designed just like a disposable and, best of all, was designed such that the outer later was the waterproof fabric and didn't necessitate an additional cover. Even pre-folds require a cover in addition to the Snappis or pins I would need, which didn't make them an option for me - just too many components and too much bulk. I admit that once I get something in my head, it's hard for me to shake and it happened with the bumGenius diapers. I had to have them. Obsessive-compulsive, moi?
After perusing Craig's List (I have purchased almost every baby item through either Craig's List or eBay), I found someone selling new and used ones. So, I skipped over there and found that she was selling new ones at a discounted price and promptly snapped up 3 just to try out. After taking them home and putting them through the paces for a day, I was hooked. Even Michael is a convert. I emailed her back and got 7 more.
Today is the first full day of dutiful cloth diapering. So far, so good. No leaks, no ill-fitting clothes, and best of all, a happy cost-efficient mommy. Now with only 10 diapers, I will be doing laundry every day, but hopefully we can expand our collection to, say 16-20, so I can cut back to every other day. A local baby shop, The Littlest Birds, sells these diapers and what I can consign there can be converted to new diapers, so I'll just slowly grow our collection.
In the meantime, I've got to get some laundry going.
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