Adventures in cloth diapering
November 8, 2010 by Shannon
I never, ever, in a million years thought I’d be the type of mom to use cloth diapers. I mean, the default is just disposables, right? Those who choose to use cloth are like, earthy, hippy, save-the-world types. Who don’t mind touching poop.
So imagine my own surprise when I decided to give them a whirl. What prompted me to do so? Two things. One, I found out that disposables take 500 years to decompose. And I felt there’s just something inherently wrong with that. I mean, each one of those diapers will still be around for my son or daughter’s great, great, great, great, great grandchildren to deal with?!? Disgusting. (Okay, so I guess there is a little bit of earthy hippiness to my reasoning.) And secondly, I reasoned that as a stay-at-home mom, it would be easier to work cloth diapers into our lifestyle. My lifestyle, to be specific.
I decided to go with gDiapers. They’re kind of a hybrid diaper, because you can let your kid poop and pee in a disposable, flushable, biodegradable insert or use a soft, fleecy, washable insert. I figured I’d use the disposable inserts out and about, and use the cloth inserts at home.
Until now, I’ve really liked them. But now, Ella is leaking all the time. As in, every single diaper change. The other day, she went through 3 different outfits before lunch. That’s a lot of extra laundry! I’ve called the gDiapers hotline to see what’s up, and as far as I can tell, I’m putting them on correctly. But…she may be ready for the next size up.
Already?!?!
So here’s my dilemma. I’m still a believer in the cloth diapering system, but gDiapers have me a little nervous. Will the medium-sized diapers really solve our leaking issues? Should I try another brand? I’m also nervous about the cost. Some cloth diaper start-up kits run around $400! That’s pretty steep, considering that’s just about what I’d pay for a year’s worth of disposables. And I still have to buy those evil disposables, because – to be honest – cloth is just not going to cut it at night. I just can’t give up more of my precious nighttime hours to additional diaper changes in the name of leak prevention. I’m tired enough as it is.
What should I do? I’m looking for any advice I can get from cloth diapering mamas. So PLEASE help me if you can.
Oh, and one more thing to note: I don’t mind touching poop right now. Once Ella starts solids, my feelings on that will likely change. So any cloth diaper solution that minimizes my contact with poop is a good thing.
Comments (4)
You are a brave mama. I looked into cloth and gDiapers as well and after weighing the pros and cons of both ended up sticking with disposable. Everything I read was that if you are going off of the environmental stand point that you could potentially waste more water and energy washing all of the cloth diapers and potentially having a bigger eco footprint then if you were just tossing the disposables away. From what I read; unless you use a diaper laundry service you aren’t really helping out the environment that much. Since I live in a town that doesn’t have the laundry service option I figured disposables were best for us. sorry I can’t give any advice about the leaking issue… i have heard gDiapers are really messy like that. Good luck.
I never cloth diapered, so I have no advice for you… just wanted to say hi.
I won’t be any help either, but wanted to say I admire you for trying cloth diapers and doing it as long as you have…and for researching and asking for help to try and make it work. I’ve wanted to ask you how it was going…I really hope someone in the know replies, because I am curious too. I have talked to people that say they used cloth up until potty training. I tried cloth, and had the leaking issue too and gave up on day 1! So good luck and I hope you figure it out and let us all know!
I like Bum Genius and Smartipants. I also never thought about using cloth until I had kids and some of my friends think I’m crazy, but they work really well. I’ve diapered two kids in them. The younger is now 2+ and I’m hoping she’ll get out of them soon! We rarely have leak problems. I always “double stuff” the diaper inserts. What I like about both BG and SP is that they are “one size” diapers. I used BG from 2 months to 2 1/2 years on my son and my daughter still fits in both BG and SP at 2. The BG inserts will barely fit in SP but they will so it makes it easy to mix and match. As for touching the poop, before solids we just through the milk poops in the washer. After solids, we plopped what would go into the toilet then I run poopy diapers only on a rinse cycle before I throw the rest of the diapers in the wash. Then I run a full cycle with soak, prewash and extra rinse. That usually does the trick. Bum Genius actually makes a sprayer that you hook to the toilet, but I haven’t tried it so I can’t say how well it works. Diaperpin.com has great reviews of diapers. Good luck!