First off, I’m not pregnant. When I am, you’ll know.
I am, however, exploring my options…and this is a stumbling block. I figured out that disposable diapers are 20 cents per at CostCo, while 24 one-size fitted “pocket” cloth diapers and stuffins are about $400. So it seems financially sensible to go cloth, but I’m not sure about it. I’m worried that the cost per load of laundry (both in soap/electricity/water and man-hours) would end up negating the financial benefits, and I’m not sure which is worse for the environment–all the washing and drying or the landfill space from disposables. Plus, I have no idea how one would travel while cloth diapering, and my hypothetical future child would have family to visit pretty far away from home.
We could go round and round breaking down every little variable but let’s just cut to the chase. Cloth diapers are pure idiocy from all angles and should be ignored as a viable option for rational parents. Cloth diapers have some certain false allure because they are made out of simple cloth and not created from billions of dollars worth of research at a mega-corp which seems to appeal to the inner hippy in many but it is a trap. Get your nostalgia fix elsewhere. Nostalgia has no place in the management of baby feces and urine. Disposable diapers combined with a Diaper Genie are your friend. They certainly beat having a giant waste management and diaper processing truck belching and lunging down your street every week.
Shagnasty - Father of two young daughters and self-proclaimed author on diaper choices
snort I wanted to do cloth with my twins, I really really did.
We were living in an apartment with an upstairs laundry room, though, which meant I couldn’t do the laundry myself during the day (you can’t leave infants alone while you’re out of earshot). Plus it was an expensive laundry room.
So instead I lined up a diaper service, which wasn’t terribly expensive for twins. They sent a video. I followed the instructions. They leaked. I thought, well, I can at least use them at home. Leaked again. Leaked some more. I decided the extra laundry (their clothes and bedding) (plus MY clothes) wasn’t worth it.
Re: the cost, at first newborns go through 12 diapers/day. Well, 20 the first couple of days if you’re hyper like us (“Is it pee? It might be pee. Quick, change it!”). Gradually it slows down BUT the boxes contain fewer diapers. Sneaky bastids, those diaper manufacturers. We spent about $160/mo for disposables for our twins (lurved those Costco diapers). They weren’t truly potty trained until age 3.25 or so, which isn’t unusual, particularly when it comes to boys, and they went cold-turkey (no nighttime pull-ups).
In the end it is really going to boil down to what works for you and your baby. In my case, no matter how nice the cloth diaper, how well washed, how often changed, my daughter was prone to the most godawful diaper rashes ever. When I switched to disposables, the rashes stopped. Well, actually, there’s a kicker to this – she still got the rashes if I used the expensive diapers (Luvs, Huggies, any name-brands), but if I got the el cheapo generic Fred Meyer diapers – nary a rash.
Of course, your mileage may and very well probably will vary, but you put this in IMHO, and that’s what you get. Well, technically, you got IME, but you know what I mean
A few years ago, The Union of Concerned Scientists published a book called “The Consumers Guide to Effective Environmental Choices.” In it, they do a cost-benefit type analysis to compare the two options. According to them: “…we can conclude that most people should not waste a lot of time or energy trying to decide which type of diapers to use based on environmental considerations.” However, this is partially dependent on the environmental concerns in your area. If you live where there is a water shortage (like I do), it’s probably environmentally better to go with disposable. If you live in an area with a landfill shortage (not as likely), it’s better to go with cloth.
Basically, though, if you care about the environment, don’t worry about this at all. Instead, eat less meat and use compact fluorescent light bulbs.
We (and this was over 20 years ago) started with cloth, and a diaper service. After a bit, the kids starting producing enough to leak through, and then we went to disposable. If we would have had to wash them ourselves, it would have been disposable all the way. Cloth diapers had other uses, such as burp cloths. Never a rash problem. But I agree that it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference.
I used disposable with my first and I use cloth with my second (although, if we’re going on a long trip with unreliable laundry facilities, we use disposables). From what I’ve read, if you use a diaper service, you’ll pretty much even out on cost and environmental impact. From what I remember, it was the impact made by the delivery and pick-up trucks that put cloth diapers over the edge.
I use fitteds with wool covers that I knit myself or “all-in-ones” (no separate cover)…not the old-fashioned prefolds or flats. I loooooove our cloth diapers. Cheaper for us (I do one small load of laundry three times a week), soft on my child’s skin, they don’t smell like chemicals (if you’re not used to disposables, you can really start smelling the chemicals), they don’t leave little gel balls all over him when he wets, and they’re cute. Plus, I think he’s going to potty train much earlier than my older son because he feels the wet diaper and doesn’t like it. At 18 months, he comes to me every time he pees or poops and tells me - usually he brings a clean diaper with him. I really think it’s a matter of months until he’s fully trained. My older son didn’t potty train until he was 3 1/2. That right there is a cash savings.
We’ve never had problems with leaks or rashes. Oh, and did I mention that they’re really cute?
I had a diaper service with the first and used disposables with the second. I don’t know that there’s a whole lot of difference, though it’s probably a bit easier to potty-train with cloth (and Pull-Ups are the devil, just don’t go there IMO). Cloth was more work, but there were advantages too. If finances are really tight, plain ol’ cloth diapers–the regular kind-- and plastic pants are cheaper as long as you have your own laundry facilities, esp. if you use a clothesline (you can fluff them in the dryer!).
Disposables with the first, cloth with the second. I have to second the idea that they are really cute!
But that aside, I chose cloth for the second because of comfort questions. If I was a baby having to pee and poop in my pants, I’d rather wear fabric next to my skin than cloth full of funky chemicals that do indeed leave little gel balls on the genitals. Yetch.
I truly believe that environmentally they are a wash, and I launder my own diapers, so I know it is way more work to use cloth. But in terms of my baby’s comfort cloth was the clear choice.
That said, with the second kid I’ve been a stay at home mom which gives me the flexibility to do cloth. First kid I was employed out of the home so we had to go disposable because no day care provider was wiling to deal with cloth.
Finally if you want to compare the many many choices for cloth diapering, check out diaperpin.com. Obviously pro-cloth, but within that framework, it is a great non-biased resource.
Just wanted to add that for our first we were living in an apartment with an illegal apartment sized (tiny) washer and drier, so doing our own laundering was not an option. I think the diaper service was about the same price as disposables, and an added advantage was fewer trips to ToysRUs for the diapers.
My parents tried this when I was born with identical results. Most redheads come with delicate skin and apparently everything they tried to wash the diapers in, even that baby detergent, hated my skin; severe diaper rash + colic = more hours of crying a day than sleeping. They eventually gave up and the rashes went away. They didn’t even bother trying cloth again when my brother was born.
Nearly 30 years ago, I used a combination. Cloth when my daughter was home, and disposables when I went out with her or when she went to daycare. If I tried to keep her in disposables all the time, she got a rash. For about the first year, I had a diaper service, and I loved it. After that, I laundered the diapers myself, and it wasn’t too bad. The diaper service had prefolded diapers, and when I bought my own, I got the unfolded type.
I try not to care how other people diaper their babies but really, disposables ick ick ick. And a diaper genie to wrap them up all nice so they can be saved in a landfill forever. Not real appealing.
Of course the subject of diapers is not real appealing any way you sniff it.
I had a diaper service and I loved it. My service supplied disposables too ifyou wanted a few so I had those for outings and trips. No diaper rash ever with cloth, diaper rash (but not too bad) with disposables.
The diaper service cost about the same as disposables, including when I asked for disposables, with the added convenience that the service brought them (all nice and fluffy!) and the service took them away.
If the kid’s in day care they’ll probably insist on disposables, though.
I used cloth for both kids and had a diaper service. When I travelled, I arranged for a diaper service where we were going before we went. It typically took one phone call.
For the actual trip, which was by plane, I used disposables except for the first time. Ideally the carry on should be lighter at the end of the trip, not heavier. But I wouldn’t say it was a huge problem even when I took cloth on the plane.
I never had leak problems or really any problems. I used cloth because I got a diaper service as a gift before Eldest was born and, well, I never had any problems. So I just kept doing it.
Economically, cloth tends to be cheaper - but not by much and if you do the pricey diaper wraps and have plenty of them, and use a diaper service compared to buying generic cheap disposables, its probably pretty close to a wash.
But wash…unless you are going to use a diaper service, you’ll do a lot of wash with a baby WITHOUT diapers in the mix. And you’ll be in zombie state (unless you get lucky and get a baby that sleeps through the night early - mine were around 2 1/2 before I could dependably string together eight hours). More wash may simply add more stress.
There are lots of things when you are sitting around pre-kid that you are convinced you will have time for once they come around. “I’ll make my own baby food.” “We will go for long walks every day in the stroller” “I’ll read them Lord of the Rings when they are toddlers” and “we will use cloth diapers.” You’ll find in reality your ideals may slip - they may not - I do know people who did accomplish much of this - sometimes giving up with number two, sometimes with all three kids. Me, I threw ideals out the window.
If you use cloth, you’ll probably find having some disposables around convenient for going out. Course, you can do the messy diaper in a ziploc thing, too.
My kids are now 25 and 23, so my advice is a bit elderly, but here it is. Being raised to be frugal and make my own, I figured I would buy cloth diapers and wash them…but my extremely frugal mother nixed that idea and told me to use a diaper service, which I did for both kids. I was a stay-at-home mom, and the cloth diapers worked just fine…few leaks, no rashes to speak of, and the kids potty-trained really quickly! We used disposables when they went to day care, or when we travelled, but the cloth diapers were never a huge problem, and the best part was that I didn’t spend hours washing and drying and folding them. I think the super-absorbant diapers let a kid sit in a messy diaper too long, and the cost per diaper makes some parents want them to get more than one load per diaper! Yes, there were days I spent a lot of time changing diapers, but it wasn’t a huge burden.
22 years ago when I had my first, it was a lot more common for folks to use cloth. I was a broke college student, and the cost of running the washer was a lot cheaper than paying for disposables; I had a clothesline so drying them was free; and I never had to worry about running out of diapers - that was important because we lived 12 miles out from the city.
The managment of them was fairly simple - I emptied the diaper pail and put them in the washer first thing in the a.m. (along with the rest of the dirty baby clothes) and hung them on the line before I went to class. By the time I got out of class in the afternoon they were all dry.
Back then there weren’t many day care places, but you could always find someone who ‘kept kids’ for working women. The woman who kept my daughter didn’t bat an eye at cloth diapers … after all, she had raised her kids in cloth. I used to save my bread wrappers and put one in the diaper bag; she rinsed the diapers out as they were used, wrung them and saved them in the bread wrapper. At the end of the day they went into the diaper pail at home.
As far as leaking, the disposables of the day were not any better for it than cloth (with rubber pants). I started baby off with one diaper; as baby gets bigger you can double or triple up the diapers.
My advice to someone contemplating this dilemma is: try each one and see which better fits your finances, lifestyle, and habits of your child.
My father and grandfather both worked in The Industry (for Johnson & Johnson, back in the day when they were in the diaper business, and my dad still when they were out of the diaper business, but it was still his business to know about such things) and his report, based on lots and lots of market research, cost/benefit whoojeejobies and more data that you can shake a stick at is: whatever you feel like. They come out a dead heat, environmentally, energetically, pollutionarially, and medically. That being the case, I decided to go with disposables. They’re just so much easier - they don’t have to be changed as often, they don’t have to be cleaned, and if you run out while you’re away from home, you can get more anywhere, and not have to worry that your baby feels funny (and cranky) in something that’s unfamiliar. Plus, daycares will accept disposables, but usually not cloth.
But if you like the huge baby ass and warm fuzzies of cloth diapers, by all means; if nothing else, you’ll be set for dustrags for life.
