Sorry I am a “bad earth steward” or whatever, but cloth diapers just. don’t. work. They simply do no contain the waste matierial well enough to justify their use. Plus, it’s debateable whether they’re more environmentally friendly and/or economical.
If you want to deal with piss and shit 500% more of the time, feel free. There’s a lot of other things occupying our landfills that are far worse/unnecessary than disposable diapers.
I don’t personally care what anyone else uses and, like I said, I occasionally use disposables. But I do want to say that if the diapers you tried to use didn’t work, there are a ton of other cloth options out there. Cloth diapering is a whole different ballgame than it was when prefolds and plastic covers were the only option. There are many more choices than the standard Gerber cloth diapers that are found at Target or Babies R Us. One kind that I use is: Bumgenius all-in-ones. They look like disposables and work like disposables. I’ve never had any blow-out problem or leaks with them. I’ve also heard that many daycares will take these because there’s no pinning or folding or anything involved.
There are a million different choices out there for all different body types - chunky thighs, high rise, slim babies, etc. If cloth diapering is something the OP wants to try, finding a diaper that works is just a matter of going to some of the diapering boards and asking for people’s recommendations.
Here’s a really cute (but not very economical) diaper, just for fun: Starbunz.
First of all, I can tell you right now as a parent that 24 cloth diapers is ridiculously, woefully insufficient. You’re not gonna have as much time to do laundry as you think.
Secondly, the posters so far are, sadly, right. Cloth diapers just don’t work very well. Disposables are a miracle of engineering; every once in awhile your baby will have an assplosion that no human invention can contain, but for the most part disposables have an ability to absorb and contain feces and urine that, to be quite honest, I found genuinely amazing. Cloth diapers fail easily no matter how good you are at putting them on. The good ones are better than they used to be, but IMHO, they’re not up to the level of the top disposable brands.
But most importantly,
You are not going to have any time. You aren’t going to have a spare second in your day. Taking care of babies is easy in the sense that they have simple needs, but it’s insanely hard in the sense that they occupy a huge, huge amount of your time. Especially the first 4-8 months when they don’t sleep normal hours. Believe me, please believe me, that you do not want to waste time scraping shit off cloth diapers and doing extra loads of laundry. You want to take them off, wipe the baby down, and throw the resulting package of horror into a diaper pail and then take the trash out. Every minute counts.
I’m following this thread closely, because the pro-con arguments and vast number of different types of diapers bewilder me. My kid is due in early January, I’m leaving my job at
the end of this month, and for the time I’m off (probably until next fall) money will be tight.
My main worry right now is the amount of money I could sink into buying cloth diapers, only to find out that my kid hates them/they don’t work/I hate them. After paying what, $15 each for them? For the FuzziBunz/BumGenius whatever types? It makes me antsy.
I really disagree with this characterization of babies. Unless you have a high-needs baby (colicky, sick, or otherwise unwell), babies just don’t produce the kind of frantic, can’t-get-everything-in work that you seem to be portraying (please correct me if I misunderstood you). Pre-crawling babies pretty much just lie there and stare at the ceiling. Or lie there and sleep. Or lie there and nurse. You have a ton of downtime with an infant. Granted, a lot of that you’re going to want to use to catch up on sleep, but I swear I never got more screentime & knitting in than when my oldest was a baby. Plus, if you choose to use a sling, you can strap your baby to your back and go about your daily business.
Now, toddlers are a different story. And I have a four year old and an 18 month old at home with me. My house is the definition of chaos. But, still, it’s really no big deal to use cloth diapers.
Lissla Lissar, if you really wanted to try cloth, you could just buy one or two (maybe one prefold & cover and one all-in-one, or whatever) and just try them. There’s really no need to invest in a huge stash if you’re still in the deciding stage. Also, some of the companies (like Bumgenius) sell seconds for much less than they’re regular price. They’re new diapers but may have a snag in the fabric or some other imperfection. If you’re worried about changing sizes as your baby grows, some brands have one-size diapers that are made to fit newborn through toddler age. Also, cloth diapers can be saved to use for later children, so if you do decide to go with cloth, your savings will grow with each child.
Oh come on now. To say that cloth diapers “just don’t work well” is not true at all. I’ve posted as have others that cloth diapers worked just fine.
I understand that others prefer disposables, but that doesn’t mean they work better. It’s a matter of preference, like pretty much anything else centered around raising our kids.
Well, I have a 4-month-old infant, and I am sitting here leisurely surfing the Dope while he naps. Not every second of my life is taken up by a whirlwind of non-stop frantic baby handling. Sheesh. And anyway, it doesn’t take me any longer to change my baby into and out of a cloth diaper than it does to get him into and out of a disposable. It’s like two extra loads of laundry per week. Big woo.
Also, to address all of the claims that “cloth diapers just don’t work”, I beg to differ. If they don’t work for you, fine, but don’t claim that they don’t work, period, because that’s not true. As a matter of fact, when Whatsit the Youngest (previously-mentioned 4-month-old) was born, we planned to use cloth at home and disposables for outings. I quickly changed this plan when he managed to have very messy blow-outs every single time we put him in a disposable diaper. I don’t know if we just had the wrong brand or the wrong size or wtf was going on, but I never, repeat, never had this problem with our cloth diapers. So I said, screw this, we’re using cloth for outings as well. Has not been a problem.
Regarding the “poop scrapage” issue: for breastmilk (and, I assume, formula) poops, you just throw the diaper in the washing machine. Once they start solid food, you just shake it out into the toilet and then throw the diaper in the washing machine. As for those who are squicked out by the thought of washing soiled diapers in the same washing machine that launders your clothing, I have to wonder where you launder clothing that has vomit or bloodstains on it. Or, you know, poop and pee that leaks out the side of the diaper and onto the clothing, as I don’t know a single parent that hasn’t had this happen at least once.
Once again, I’m certainly not suggesting that everyone should use cloth diapers or that it is the “right” thing to do or anything ridiculous like that. But it’s just not true that cloth “doesn’t work” or is hideously unsanitary or will take you 500% longer to deal with than disposables or whatever. Good grief.
I agree. And, again, cloth diapers make awesome dustrags, so if you buy a few to try out and decide to go disposable after all, then you’ve got some awesome dustrags that will last you until the kid moves out and steals them on you. If you buy a bag of disposables to try and don’t use them all, take 'em with you to the store and hand them to another bewildered looking parent in the diaper aisle, if you don’t know anyone else who can use them.
Learn this rule: **there are very few decisions as a parent that are permanent. **Circumcision is permanent. Um…that’s about all I can think of. Everything else, from cosleeping to what sling to buy to what type of diapers to get - all that can be changed, as often as you need, until you find what works for you and your family - all of you, not just the baby. Even formula feeding is, with a lot of work, reversible for the first two weeks or so after birth, for most women. If you have friends and family that play the “I told you so game” when you change your mind about something, tell them to fucko off. Better to appear wishy-washy while conducting the only research that really matters - in your home laboratory - then sticking to your guns stubbornly when something’s not working.
I actually had this conversation with some women on another board who were totally grossed out by putting diapers into their washing machines. They actually said that any item of their child’s clothing that got poop on it was put into the trash. That’s right - they threw away whole outfits instead of washing them. That grossed me out on another whole level.
Well, that depends on baby, and mom and dad. If you have an easy baby, you’ll have one that lies around for the first six months, takes two long naps every day, and starts sleeping four hours at night within a few weeks, feeds once or twice during the night.
Or you could be breastfeeding a snacker - one that never sleeps for more than a few hours and falls asleep mid feed - and you try the whole tickling toes and stuff to keep them away and “zzzzzzz…” And with a baby like that, Mom lives in the land of the walking dead.
You could get a baby that starts being mobile as young as four months - making the go go years of toddlerhood start early.
Or you could get multiples. Or have “Irish Twins.”
Or you could be facing PPD yourself. Or your husband could resent the baby completely out of the blue and you are facing marriage issues. Or you could be going through a home remodel (I know more than one person who did that). Or continue to work outside the home. Or you could be my sister - her second child couldn’t handle milk, so she cut all milk from her diet after spending months with a screaming baby - then within months was going through treatment for stage II invasive breast cancer. Or me - who got my first baby while pregnant with my other baby - so had two kids arrive in six months.
If you have an easy baby and a life you can spend on baby, there will be lots of downtime. There are two components to that and in my experience, most people aren’t lucky enough to get both.
I’ve seen analysis (carefully done) coming out either way. You can argue about what to include or not in your figuring. I’m not sure there is one “right” way to determine what one will cost over the other.
Ultimately, I think it comes down to what feels right to you. There are pluses and minuses to both. We chose disposables primarily because I’m lazy. But I’ve seen a number of convincing testimonials from families who made the cloth choice. And there is a very successful, well-thought-of child-care center here in town with three branches, and they did the analysis and decided it was better, financially, to cloth diaper all their infant charges. It was just never a question for me because, like I said, I went with what felt like it would be simplest.
Or you could be blind and have to work 80 hours a week in a button factory. There are all sorts of what ifs, but in my experience, for the women I’ve known (and I’ve known some really busy women with very high-needs babies), most people have plenty of time to change a few diapers and do a couple loads of laundry. Seriously, if you’re so overwhelmed by a new baby, I don’t think cloth vs. disposable is going to be what throws you over the edge. If no other person ever chooses to use cloth diapers again, that would be perfectly okay with me, but I really don’t see a need to be dramatic about it. I’m really not getting why people who use disposables are so invested in scaring people off cloth.
Well I have thrown away stuff with puke on it (copious amounts! With high gross out vomit-inducing smells and chunks!).
But not the poop. Just do the ol rinse-a-roo in the toilet, drop the diaper in the diaper pail and all is good. Just don’t wait until you can’t carry the diaper pail to your washing machine. That pail can get really heavy.
Why waste money on diapers at all? House the tyke in the bathtub and hose him off daily. 
You think it’s all just a big joke, don’t you? 
I don’t know about this. I have a 3-year-old and a 6-month old, and I work full-time. The baby is really pretty good, not what you’d call difficult at all, but he is still not sleeping through the night, and sometimes even wakes up twice. My husband & I trade off on the feedings, but when it’s his turn, I still tend to wake up (he doesn’t seem to have that problem 
). Because of this, I am really, really amazingly tired. Funny that Dangerosa mentioned the home remodel, because we live in an old house that always needs work, and so my husband spends his time doing odd jobs around the place just about every weekend. My 3-year-old is being a stubborn little pain in the ass with the potty training. Because babies are messy and the older one is always having “accidents” (which aren’t as accidental as you might think), we already do tons of laundry every weekend, and it would be really, really tough to add in a bunch of cloth diapers as well.
I’m not trying to scare people off of cloth, and if I was a stay-at-home mom, I might try it, but as it is, there’s just no way.
Yeah, that’ cool, and that’s your situation. I didn’t mean to sound like using cloth would fit for everyone. I was just a bit put off by the scare tactics a couple posters have put forth. I mean, jeez, I hope no one who is trying to conceive is reading this thread because not only does it make cloth diapering sound unbelievably daunting, it makes having a baby at all sound like reason to go ahead and slit your wrists.
Yeah, well, some days if feels that way!
Wow. If it isn’t overly personal. . .how do you know about elimination communication? Wow.