Contemplations over Coffee.: Cloth Diapers.....some thoughts..

So, some of you may instantly wrinkle your nose up at the thought of cloth diapers, or shudder at the thought of safety pins near our little girl, or just think I've gone and turned into a granola eating hippie. However, cloth diapers have come along way since some of you diapered your children, and frankly they've come along way in the past few years even.

I never gave the idea much consideration with Norah, I didn't know anyone personally that used them, and was so overwhelmed with simply having a child, I didn't really even think about it. However, since then, I've learned a lot, and my two dear girlfriends that have babies are cloth diapering, and it seems like everyone I talk to is doing it. (Not that I'm a jump off a cliff if someone else does kind of girl, however, this at least gave me the courage to consider it) Interestingly, I decided to put a facebook status up about it. Mainly because I wanted to prove Ryan wrong (this is a reason for many things I do in our competitiveness ;) Ryan said that he guessed if I asked people if I should use cloth or disposable I would get a 50/50 response. I said, no way, it will be overwhelmingly for cloth. I won. I did however expect at least one, "honey, don't worry about saving the earth and saving moolah, just go the easy route and use disposables!" response, but nope, not one. I had over 30 comments on my wall, and numerous messages all saying in one way or another, to use cloth. People I had no idea and would have never guessed used cloth do.

So, here is a look at some more of my thoughts on CD'ing. (this is apparently the cool term for all people who cloth diaper ;) and I'm obviously cool, so I might start using it.

First of all, these are not your grandma's cloth diapers. These days, cd's look like this:

so there are no safety pins, no complicated folding, etc.

There is also this great little invention:

It hooks right up to your toilet, so you can spray the diapers off right into the toilet, and there's no need for "dipping" in the toilet or any other yucky interventions.

And, when the babies start pooping more solids, you can use these:

These are liners that look like a dryer sheet, but are super soft, and you set them right inside the cloth diaper, they are flushable, so if baby poops, you simply toss this whole thing into the toilet and flush so that there is no removing poop directly from the diaper. These are actually pretty affordable too, they are $10 for 200.

And secondly, there are a few other reasons cloth diapering just makes sense to me.

1. Show me the Money. It's no secret amongst our family and friends that Ryan and I tend to be frugal when it comes to a lot of things, ha ha! And, diapers, as we've learned with Norah, are just expensive. No matter how you look at it. I've heard a lot of different numbers, and have done some quick figures myself, and I think with putting one child in cloth diapers we will save between $1500-$2500 during the span of 2.5 years. Had we done this with Norah too, that figure would have increased, because the initial expense wouldn't have even figured in for baby 2 because the cloth diapers we purchase will easily last through multiple kiddos. Cloth diapers are expensive (about $20/diaper, and most people that do it have between 12 and 18 diapers) However, disposable diapers are sooooooooo expensive. Huggies, the most popular brand, for size 5 diapers, are $32 for 88 diapers. And Luvs (which we've used for most of Norah's life) are $18 for 80 diapers. We would go through this box in around 2-2.5 weeks right now. So in a couple of weeks of Norah's life, we would have paid for one of the 12-18 diapers we will have to have. Also, if we do have more kids, we can use the cd's we've already purchased. And the local diaper store in town buys back used diapers for around 50% of the initial cost, so we will definitely look at selling them when we are done as well!

2. It's better for the baby. I've done a ton of research about this, because the one thing I was concerned about was diaper rash. After much research and talking to friends, I've found, when you change your baby often, which you should being doing anyways, you simply don't get more diaper rash with cloth than you do with disposables. The type of material that the diapers I'm planning on using are made from, are extremely soft, and do wick away moisture into the deeper layer.

And when I've looked into the amount of chemicals that are found in our amazing absorbent disposables...it's a little crazy. Granted, anything we do can be looked at as crazy these days, from worrying about the laptop that is sitting on my legs right now, to the ingredients in every single product I use. But when I considered cloth diapers, it just seemed like keeping these chemicals away from baby's heiny was an added bonus. For instance, one of the crazy things I found out is about the gel that is found in the middle of diapers, that you rarely see (unless your hubby decides to let your child run through the sprinklers in one of these diapers and they absorb so much liquid that they literally explode) This gel contains sodium polyacrylate, a type of super absorbent polymer chemical, this same chemical was found in tampons until the 1980's when it was revealed that the risk of Toxic shock syndrome and bacteria growth went up dramatically when used. So, it is now banned from our tampons.....but we put it in our baby's diapers..... And like I said, I know I just have to rely on God's grace when it comes to a lot of these things or I will worry myself senseless, but some things just make sense to me (for me).

3.. It's better for the environment. I'm not going all crazy green on you here, but I figure, why add to the mess, with something that takes scientists estimate around 500 years to decompose. And it adds an immense amount of trash to our lives, and not to mention makes our trash can nearly impossible to open without gagging. I'll admit this isn't our main reason for doing so, but if something I am going to do can help out, then great!

I know there are certainly going to be some cons too. For example, I'm not looking forward to increasing my laundry load by choice! And, I'm sure we'll still occasionally use disposables like when we travel, or at the very beginning, and maybe even at night if we find she's leaking. And who knows, maybe I'll come back in 4 months and say we just sold all our cloth diapers on craigslist and we are going back red. (instead of green, wink wink). But for now, it's official, we are jumping in to the cloth diapering world!

Here is a new pic of the bump a couple of weeks ago....it's of me and my pregnant sis in law! So fun that we are pregnant at the same time, she is due in November (just 6 weeks behind me!) It's the only pic I have....what is my problem. I will take a pic today and hopefully a few more before the bump is gone!