My Hippy is Showing: Cloth Diapers

Even though almost everyone around me thinks I'm crazy, I'm pretty resolved in my convictions to cloth diaper.

If I were to breakdown my decisions making process on this topic for you, I would say it is about 85% about cost and 15% about the environment.

It wasn't until I really started looking into cloth diapering vs. disposables that I also found out that cloth diapered babies have fewer diaper rashes and potty-train about 12 months sooner (Joanna actually pointed that one out to me).  I also learned that cloth diapers usually lead to fewer "blow-outs" and that while there seems to be this general idea that if you cloth diaper, you end up handling poop all the time.  Most of my research into cloth diapering has shown that you actually deal with less poop with clothe.

Honestly, the handling poop thing doesn't bother me too much.  Cotton has literally pooped IN MY HAND.  It was not solid.  Like 2 weeks ago I had to wash poop out of Cotton's butt hair.  And dog poop smells so much worse than baby poop in my experience.  That's enough about that.

I thought I would have a hard time convincing Phil that we should cloth diaper and was shocked that he really didn't think it was a crazy idea.  Maybe it's the toxicologist in him, but he was fine with contributing less waste to the local incinerator.  Then I thought FOR SURE we would have to use disposables on the babe at the daycare he will be going to.  Nope.  They will cloth diaper him if we want them to.

I was shocked.  And totally sold.  I think cloth diapering is coming back into fad.

I spent hours online doing research, traded research information with another mom-to-be in our Bradley Class, and was largely swayed by Ashley's experience with cloth diapering her twin girls.  After everything I have looked at, I decided we will go with Flip Diapers.

Ok... So I had my diaper choice figured out.  That was step 1.  Then I thought well what about wipes?  How did reusable wipes work?  If I used disposable wipes, would I have a diaper pale and a garbage can in the nursery?

Thanks to the previously mentioned mom-to-be in our Bradley Class, I had a general idea of what you needed to do reusable wipes.  I still figured I would do disposables.  Cue another few hours of research. I decided if I was going to do the cloth diaper thing, I might as well go all out and use reusable wipes as well.

{Reusable wipes from AsYouStitchBaby on Etsy}

So last night, I really dove into the whole cloth diapering thing and bought a couple of the essentials that we will need:  2 wet bags (one for the diaper bag and one for daycare) and the reusable wipes.  I'm hoping to get the clothe diapers at my baby shower this weekend.

A couple of built-in caveats here:
1.  I don't think we will be cloth diapering exclusively, 100% of the time.  When we travel, we will use disposables.  There's no way I am getting on a plane and staying at a hotel with a bag full of poopy diapers.  Or camping?  Yeah no.  And depending what size Baby Janney is at birth, we will most likely be using disposable until he exceeds 8 lbs (which I kind of think he might do on his own from the beginning).

2.  I reserve the right to change my mind completely at any given point.  However, the fact that I'm cheap plays a pretty big role here.  If I do decide to switch to disposables, it will be because we have suddenly come into some money and/or the convenience of disposables beats out my cheapness/environment conscious (which is entirely possible).

HOWEVER, I feel like I will stick with cloth diapering just because my family thinks I'm crazy for doing it.  I'm stubborn like that.  :)

If you have any questions about cloth diapering, shoot me an e-mail or comment.  Obviously I don't have the hands-on experience yet, but I can point you towards the information I have found.  I know I have lots of questions like How do you wash them?  Got that one figured out.