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