I am going to be a first time dad in June and we have pretty much decided we are going to cloth diaper. I actually convinced my wife after probably 50 hrs worth of research and looking at the economics of all of it. We right now really like the rumparooz but they are way out of our price range so we will probably go with a more affordable model like the BG 3.0. I was just wondering if any of you are using cloth diapers and what your experiences with them are? I was kind of suprised at the lack of cloth diapering discussion on here. Any help will be greatly appreciated. This site has already helped tremendously. I think I did nothing but watch videos for the past month

Thank you

As fate would have it this is on our editorial calendar, and we should have a video on it soon, hopefully well before June. I will make sure to post here when it comes out.

As we do our research, we would love to compare notes with yours.

At our house we tried cloth diapers for a month or so and ended up converting to throwaways, for what its worth.

We've also decided to go with cloth diapering. We're looking at the BumGenius Organic and Fuzzibuns.

I've been wanting to do an episode on this FOREVER, but have never gotten around to it. I guess the number of options have always made me dizzy -- about half of the ABC Kids Expo is cloth diaper stuff -- makes my head spin. I would LOVE to know what kind of research you did, and how you came to the decision.

I will give all contributors love on the video.

(That sounded wrong.)

My wife did a lot of the initial research. It was something I hadn't even thought of, but once she proposed it, it made a lot of sense. We are interested in the economic and environmental benefits of cloth diapering, but also the purported benefits for the health of the baby give some weight to the issue. Arguments about the decreased incidence of diaper rash I think are pretty subjective (all babies are different), but the fact that cloth diapers contain far fewer chemicals that touch the babies skin is an important factor.

As we don't actually know anyone who is cloth diapering currently, what research we have done has involved looking through websites such as cottonbabies.com. Many such websites show you the potential savings that cloth diapers offer in the long run, as well as go over the environmental benefits. Another useful source of information is actually youtube. There are plenty of reviews, tips, and demonstrations (not with live ammo that is) that go over the pros and cons of particular brands but also cloth diapering in general. In fact, youtube is where I've been looking at demonstrations of a lot of the baby gear that I'm interested in, and that's how I ran into DadLabs initially.

We're looking to do the cloth thing too, and I agree there is so much on the market, this is beyond daunting.

There's a store in our area (Kansas City) that does specializes in cloth diapers called Happybottomus. The staff there were really helpful. They recommended registering for one or two of each kind we were interested in and then a bunch of diapers of the kind we thought we would most likely use the most. Once the baby comes the idea is to try them all and then decide on a favorite . . . if it's not the one we got a bunch of, we can exchange the unused for the one we've settled on.

Right now we like fuzzibuns all-in-one or the pockets. We're also looking at Swaddlebees. We may try some of the all-in-one/one size fits all, but that looks like an awful lot of fabric on newborn. The store recommends we get 25 diapers as that way we'll be doing laundry every other day.

If you're going this way, don't get anything with velcro. Go for snaps. I'm in the Army and our uniforms are covered in velcro. When you do a load, they come out as one tangled mass of nonsense, I imagine the same would be true of diapers.

Anyway, if you guys do a video on this I'd love to see it. Let me see some testing!

For our review/comparison piece I'm going to ask for samples from Rumparoos, Bum Genius, Fuzzibuns and Swaddlebees. Any others we should take out for a test drive?

Don't forget liners.

I had no idea that cloth diapers could be so advanced. No wonder diaper services haven't started advertising again. You can't buy these things and expect to get the same ones back, I'm sure.

I still don't know that we'd have gone cloth if we started over with the information I've gathered in the last month, but it would be considered. There was a huge argument between cloth and disposable advocate dads on another forum that ended abruptly when one of the cloth diaper dudes took the time to post links to what "they" mean when they talk about cloth diapers.

But it seems to me that disposable liners make all the difference.

We went with cloth diapers and have NO regrets.

We tried a bunch of different kinds but settled on just plain Prefold DSQ diapers with Imse Vimse covers. That's what's worked best for us and the boys.

We have a few of the fancy ones still, but the simple solution works best.

What makes this work is the diaper cleaning attachment on the toilet for rinsing them out.
That and the quality W/D we got before they arrived.

The two main reasons for considering cloth diapers seem to be economic and environmental.

I don't think that cloth diapers are definitively cheaper, or more environmentally friendly. There are arguments to be made on both sides, and reasonable people can disagree here.

But having had my first child 5 months ago, I want to say that neither money, nor my concerns about the environment, are nearly as valuable to me as convenience.

Screw the bank account, screw the planet, I am exhausted.

Keep it simple, keep it easy...give me what ever works.

And in my experience, and from speaking with my friends who also have new babies, disposable diapers are just easier.

We've spent less than $1000 on diapers so far on 3 years worth of diapering...
With another one planned, the cost of diapering per baby-year will drop even more.

The number I've heard for disposables is $40 per week on the average.

The numbers aren't even close.

Environmental impact?
The manufacturing of disposables vs. cloth.
Petroleum usage in making the diapers and shipping them. No petroleum in cloth diapers and they are shipped once.

Yes, I wash our diapers and use that water.
But that water goes back in the system to a treatment center and back out.
And they don't take up space in a land-fill.

I am not going to tell people what choice they have to make for their family.
But please don't pretend that it's a break even proposition.

Just for the record, $40 a week is way high. We might spend $25 a week for both of our boys. If you bought them in 6 packs and without coupons, you might hit $40. But we buy in bulk at Sam's and go for a name brand. A box lasts us almost four weeks and costs less than $40.

Cost is about even, really. Close enough not to be worth debate. Break even might be around 2 years, but I'd think after a couple years, you'd be adding to the diaper ranks.

One of the interesting things we've learned so far is that you can put cloth diapers on your registry and folks will get them 'cuz they're cute.' We've already received 8. So the more we receive the more our diapering costs go down, and as we plan to have another child at some point, we can theoretically use them with our second baby, reducing costs even more. Add in a high efficiency washer and line drying (when available. We're in New England after all), and both our overall costs and environmental footprint drop significantly. I can't as of yet speak to the practicality of it all. I'll give a report in a few months.

I have to note, however, that we picked up some "Pure & Natural" Huggies, just in case. (Truth be told we both got sold by the umbilical cord cut outs on newborn diapers.) On the package they state proudly 2 things that I find funny in a product of this nature. 1) that they are made of recyclable materials, but of course you can't actually recycle them, and 2) they use less ink in printing an obligatory Winnie the Pooh design, which led me to ask, "how about using NO ink?"

@halldur

Rrgistering for cloth diapers is a really good idea. They are cute and gifters can give you more or less depending on their budget.

High efficiency washer and especially line drying will help contain costs (as will being a New Englander), and only running the diapers through once.

Please report your experience!

I also think keeping some disposables on hand (and especially in the diaper bag) is a good idea.

We actually just started cloth diapering at 7 weeks (Forester was too small to fit into the Fuzzibuns Smalls we'd bought until now). So far, I have to say I'm a big fan. They fit pretty well and we haven't had any leaks.

We have 24 pairs of diapers so we only have to do laundry every other day. At c. $25 a pair the upfront cost was substantial, but we asked for gift certificates to the local cloth store to help offset. The beautiful thing about the store here in KC is that they do a swap meet once a month, so hopefully we'll be able to swap most of our smalls for mediums and not have buy brand new ones when the time comes. Sure swapping used diapers for used diapers may not sound appealing but it sounds better than dropping an extra $600 every time the baby grows out of a set.

I have no idea what the energy cost are from doing a load every. What with the present heat wave, I'm guessing the electric bill is going to be through the roof no matter what.

TheDadAbides happy to see you mention Happybottomus here in KC. My wife and I are headed there later this week to pick up some diapers and diaper supplies ourselves. We've decided on the BumGenius and hoping to find some of their older 3.0's on sale since they now have the 4.0.

So. Our experience thus far has been quite good. We've used BumGenius all-in-ones, one-size & Flips, FuzziBunz one-size, GroVia all-in-twos, Earth, Mom & Baby Bumboos, g-diapers, and Kissaluvs. I would definitely say that the stand outs for me are the BumGenius all-in-ones and the GroVias with the FuzziBunz following close behind. I will say for the record that our newborn is breastfed so the amount of pooping has been a minimal factor. He's been only pooping every 10 days or so, fairly normal, so we're told. But that definitely has contributed to the ease of cloth diapering thus far. However, when those poops come, they're HUGE!! So far he's hit only hit the BumGenius with one of those monsters and it almost entirely held it all in, that is, until my wife opened it up of course. But we just sprayed it off and threw it in the washer, thinking it was a lost cause. It came out stain-free. We were truly impressed. I imagine when the pooping becomes more regular the experience might be a little less pleasant.

I can say that we've been less that impressed with the Flips and the regular BumGenius. The g-diapers are just OK, and we've only had one experience with the Kissaluvs (I didn't realize they needed a cover so we had a soggy baby). But I do have to give props to the Bumboos. If you add the booster, you end up with like 4 layers of absorbancy, good for the night-time. They also require a cover-- we just use the Flip covers, so they're good for that. I find that stuffing the pocket diapers is kind of a pain, which is why the BumGenius AOI and the GroVias get the best grade, then again, they're also the most expensive of the lot. If I were to only go with one system, it would definitely be the GroVias.

More to come...

We are currently using a cloth diaper delivery service for our one-month old son. Tidee Didee operates in a few different cities. They offer different subscription levels, and right now we're getting 70 basic tri-fold diapers per week. You dump the dirty cloth diapers in a heavy plastic bag, and leave them on the porch for the delivery van, which comes once weekly.

www.tideedidee.com/

"Dirty Jobs With Mike Rowe" had an episode where he worked at a Tidee Didee franchise in California.

I am *very* happy to not have to wash any diapers, on top of all the other things we are dealing with as new parents. I don't know whether we are going to continue our subscription for the long-term, but right now, I wouldn't mind extending it at least through the end of the 'fourth trimester'.

One other product that we're using, to great effect, are Snappi diaper fasteners. They are easy and quick to put on and take off and do a great job of holding the diaper in place. I haven't had any issues with them coming undone so far. Of course, our son isn't even crawling yet... so I don't know how these hold up against the efforts of an ambulatory child. (Anyone have any experiences with diaper fasteners and an older baby?)

www.snappibaby.com/products/snappidiaperfastener.html

Our diaper covers are a mixed bag of hand-me-downs from other parents who no longer need them. They're pretty much all the same to me, and they work OK for now.

Another thing we bought before our baby was born was this cloth diaper sprayer:

shop.milagrosboutique.com/product/Diaper-Sprayer.html

It only took about 10 minutes to install, and it seems like a good product, but we haven't needed to use it yet, as our diaper service doesn't require us to wash their diapers. So currently I use it to wash the tub (located right next to the toilet). Time will tell how useful this sprayer is... we currently don't have any kind of diaper-washing routine in our house.

One final note is that breastmilk poop isn't all that noxious or foul, and changing diapers hasn't been an unpleasant task for me. But I'm not looking forward to when the baby is eating solid food.

Cheers

Roger in Portland

My wife and I have been discussing Cloth vs Regular diapers and we've come across Gdiapers. Has anyone tried these out? I like the idea of just flushing the insert down the toilet as opposed to cleaning/delivery service. There is a cloth diaper delivery service in NYC, but I'm wondering if this would be a lot easier/cost effective. Also keeping a diaper pail in a NYC apartment doesn't seem the most appealing.

Allen

my wife and I have been looking into using a cloth diaper service.


I've found three companies in my home town that do it. this costs around $80/month, and you get fresh cloth diapers delivered and old ones taken away every week.

the only down side I'm told, is that the opening and closing of the 7 gallon diaper bucket gets a bit rank after a couple days.

My wife buys used cloth diapers on Craiglist and thru the mommy cirlces she runs in. The going price seems to be about 50% of new.

I was very skeptical at first, but it's been a pretty simple deal. And our little girl is breast fed so the poo mess is minimal.

I'm a believer. So far.

My wife and I thought about this, well I thought about it in the name of saving a buck or two. BUT, then I did a little research and found that it won't be something we go with. For me, the gross factor is weighing quite heavy. Poop is inevitable I know, but I'll do what I can to mitigate my exposure to it in all it's glory. I've posted my findings.

As a parent you'll be faced with things way grosser than cleaning a cloth diaper lol.

We've used cloth diapers with both my boys. Now that you can get them with snaps they're way easier to deal with.

A coworker of mine said, you're not really a parent until they've crapped directly into your hand. Hasn't happened yet but I suppose it is hypothetically possible...

The worst part of cloth diapering, in my opinion, is hosing down soiled diapers that have been sitting in the diaper bucket for a while. They get all crusty and it takes a little water pressure to get them in "prewash" shape. Other than that, we are very happy with cloth diapering. Like many others on this forum, we bought our cloth diapers used, and they represent such a cash savings for our family.

(It has been argued that washing cloth diapers is makes them similarly expensive to disposables, but I've never done the math on that. I might offend or gross some people out when I say this, but I wash the peed-in cloth diapers along with the rest of our family laundry. Only do the soiled diapers get their own load.)

Of course, we still use disposables for when we're outside the home, and they are very convenient for that purpose.

Cheers,

Roger