Pregnancy & Parenting

I have been looking into the option of cloth diapers.  I didn't realize how many options there were outside of the regular old-fashioned cloth diapers!

Here are some that I found:

• Pocket Diapers - They are designed to look and feel like a disposable diaper.  This specific brand lines them with fleece so that is the only thing touching your baby's body.  You can use pre-fold diapers or inserts.
• All In One Diapers - These give you the convenience of disposable diapers with the quality and comfort of cloth.  The come with a water-proof outer cover.
• Contour Diapers - One-size cloth diapers that can be adjusted as your child grows and are fasted with pins, fastners or a diaper cover.
• Fitted Diapers - The elasticity and durability allows this type of cloth diaper to fit from infancy to toddler years.
• One Size Diapers - Convenient without being overly bulky.  You can add many layers of liners and the diaper still fits.
• Prefold Diapers - These can be pinned, folded, or used to line other diapers to add more protection.
• Infant Fitted Diapers - Perfect fit for the first 2-3 months of your baby's life.
• Flat Diapers - Versatile and cost saving.  Just fold the diaper to fit your baby, secure with a diaper fastner and finish with a diaper cover.

Along with so many diapering options, there are also many diaper cover options such as wool, plastic, and fleece.

So if anyone has any information or experiences with cloth diapers, I would love to hear it. 

Thanks in advance! 

Hi there.  I exclusively used cloth diapers with my DS even when I traveled away from home. 

I mostly Used Prefold diapers with Prorap covers.  I loved this combo it was by far the cheapest and easiest set up. 

A LOT and I mean a Lot of my friends use Bum Genius onesize pocked diapers.  Unlike other one size diapers these are very trim on a young infant but also fits a 30lbs toddler very well.  These are the only diapers you will need for 3 years of diapering.  I think about 3 dozen should be enough.

For night time I used a "fitted" diaper with extra doubler and Fleece Liner (the fleece wicks moisture from the skin leaving it dry.   Over that I used a wool cover.  I loved WOOL.  Most of my pocket dipaer loving firends think I am nuts, but most of my wool came from old wool sweaters I had found laying around the house. 

Washing cloth diapers are easy. I had enough to go 4 days without washing.  Some of my friends wash every day, but HATE doing laundery as much as I hate taking out the trash (one of the reasons sposies weren't used in my house) so I had a HUGE stash.  At one point I had about 50 diapers, from Prefolds, Fitteds, pockets, and AIO's.  They all had their purpose in my stash though.  There are some very good websites the describe hwo to wash diapers.  There's a bunch of diffent ways. But this is how I did it

Breastfed baby, poo and urine diapers went into a dry pail with air tight lid.  On wash day the pail was emptied into a cold water rinse.  The diapers were rinsed.  Next, the diapers were washed with regular detergent (this is a highly debatable topic,esspeically if you are using AIO's and Pockets that use PUL).  In a downey ball I put white vinegar and washed the diapers one full cycle.  They were then dried.  If they were AIO's or Pockets or Covers I would hang them to dry.

Wool needs a different care regime but its still isn't that hard to do. 

For outtings and travel I used AIO's with paper liners.  This way I didn't have to worry about stinky, I could just flush the liner and poo down the toilet.  AT NO Point did I result to washing a diaper in the toilet. If The poo didn't shake off in the toilet I let the washer handle it.  I used a 1984 Kenmore Heavy Duty washer for all of my diapers and they were fine. 

www.diaperpin.com

www.mothering.com/discussions (go to the diapering board)

Its been about 2 years since I last used cloth.  I only used disposable training pants for about 3 months because my DS WOULD not wear a cloth diaper after he had potty trained during the day. 

I was listening to the Pregtastic podcast yesterday during lunch and they were going over this topic! There were two women who were using cloth diapers and said that overnight they still used disposables. Both were doing their own washing (which I find kind of yuck?), one did it daily and the other about twice a week. Really depends on how many you have, etc... While I hate the thought off all the disposables piling up in landfills, etc... it's really practical. So that's what I'm sticking to!

Thanks for sharing your experience weddingmama.

We used disposables with our daughter who is now almost 4. Pregnant and due in October, my husband and I have become more "green" over the last few years and can't bring ourselves to use disposables again. We also don't want the hassel of using cloth diapers. After doing some research, we have decided to go with gDiapers. I think they're worth checking out if you haven't already:

http://www.gdiapers.com/

*edited to correct link

We are going to be using cloth diapers for our little one due in December.  I hate hate hate laundry though so I just contracted with a diaper service.  They come to my house one a week and pick up the old and drop off news.  The service I am using is eco friendly and it cost the same as buying disposable diapers.

Google up cloth diaper services in your area.

My little boy is three months old, and aside from the first "meconium" days, we've been cloth diapering 100%.  At first we used the prefold cottons with diaper covers.  We used super whisper wraps, I think.  These are good for when you're staying home and can change clothes and diapers very frequently, because frankly, those type of diapers seem to have a big leakage problem.  (Our boy is long and thin, though, so maybe more pudgy babes wouldn't have the leakage problem).  About a month ago, we switched to bum genius 3.0 one size pocket diapers.  I can't say enough about these fantastic diapers!!  They fit perfectly, they almost never leak (except after a 12 hour overnight stretch, on occasion), and the boy stays "dry", because the lining is a flannel-type material that wicks the moisture from his skin.  They are so easy to use--they work just like disposables. Even my mom and nanny don't complain when using these diapers.  They are so very NOT complicated.  Washing is a cinch, like other posters have said.  I just throw the whole load into our high efficiency washing machine with a half scoop of unscented tide (or other natural detergent--seventh generation, etc.).  Double rinse, dry hot and you're ready for another few days.  We have 15 diapers, plus back up cotton prefolds when we run out, and we do laundry about every 2-3 days. 

A note about gDipers.  My sweetie really wanted to use these, and we gave them a good try for a week.  They leaked like the dickens, they didn't contain poo, and you could rarely reuse the cotton cover before washing, because the liner usually leaked urine or poo all over the cover.  Great concept, but I think they need further engineering before they'll be as good as the bum genius.  My favorite diaper website (complete with testimonials) is www.cottonbabies.com

Good luck, ladies!

undertherainbow - Here's the link to the Pregtastic website: http://www.pregtastic.com/ I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

A note about gDiapers. While I love the concept they aren't great for the enviroment as the company would have you believe.  If they are flushable you run the risk of clogging your toilet.  Then whatever doesn't get disolved by the toilet and sewer lines is pressed out into a garbage collection system at the Waste Water treatment plant, thus ending up in the land Fill.

The other part is that the size and bulk of the diaper will increase the waste water treatment plants need for oxygen.  So even if it doesn't clog your toilet and end up the land fill it can cause the efficiancy of the waste water treatment plant to be reduced and thus the effluent stream want be as clean as could be. 

A BIG NO NO!!! Never flush anything but toilet paper and poo into an on site waste water system (septic tank) your system will fail and you may end up with raw sewage bubbling in your yard.

e

Original Post by undertherainbow:

Thanks for sharing your experience weddingmama.

I have been looking into the wool covers, they sound like the best option. I hadn't heard about using white vinegar when washing the diapers, I'll have to look into that. Thanks.

As for the liners, I know they have paper and cloth liners but do they really work in preventing the rest of the diaper from getting wet or messy?

Did you use cloth diaper wipes as well or did you purchase the wet ones?

paper liners are for after your baby has started solids and they do work for keeping solid poop off the diaper and make cleaning the diaper much easier. I also kept AIO's in my DIaper bag, with a paper liner. Additionally I had a PUL wet bag. Instead of trashing the diaper while out in public i flushed the liner and put the diaper in the bag. I made my own wipes. I also made fitted diapers with my sewing machine. I used a wipes container and a simple solution of water, olive oil, essential oil and baby wash. I can argue that Sposies aren't practical for my life style at all. Sposies are a running expense. We had a sporadic income, so if we didn't buy diapers a head of time and ran out of money my son would have been wearing something really cheap and icky on his skin. Sposies are usually bought on a near weekly basis and I don't care who you are, you will run out at least once or twice in the middle of the night. That never happens with cloth. I didn't care if I didn't have clean clothes the diapers were always washed (its funny how most of my CD mama friends are the same way) Sposies have a HUGE enviromental impact. Not just the landfill but before they make it to your door. The gas, packaging, water and chemicals that go into using them. Lets not forget the Disposable wipes. Perhaps my favorite testimony is NO BLOW OUTS!! Gees if i had a dime for every time i heard about exploding diapers I'd be rich. I experienced it once and it was because I had put a cloth diaper on wrong. So I would say the amount of surprise blow out laundry is about the same, as weekly laundry. Denise

gDiapers are not just for flushing and is not what we were considering. They are biodegradable and do so in 90 days. Wet diapers are compostable. While some have had trouble with them, we had trouble with disposable diapers in the beginning months. They leaked ALL THE TIME. I have heard loads of praise for gDiapers as well so we'll have to decide on our own. We will give gDiapers a shot and if it doesn't work out, we will find other options. I just don't think we can handle going 100% cloth.

Thanks for the link to cottonbabies.com, I'll be checking it out when I get home!

We use prefolds and have done since DS was <2 weeks old. At first we used 'sposies at night, but once he stopped pooing in the night (and therefore could stay in the same nappy all night) we switched to cloth at night too. I love my cloth and can't recommend it enough to anyone I know that's expecting! Sposies leak like nobody's business and I'd much rather be washing cloth nappies twice a week than pooey clothes every day! The only time we went back to sposies was when we were going on holiday for a week and the cottage had no washing machine - we had two buy my son two new pairs of jeans 'cos the sposies leaked when we were out and we had no spare clothes for him (I'm not used to carrying spares 'cos my cloth nappies don't leak!) We do a cold rinse, then a full 60 degree wash with a half-dose of detergent, then an extra rinse or two 'til all the bubbles have gone.

I made my own cloth wipes out of fleece fabric (no sewing needed, it doesn't fray so just cut into squares). I have to admit that I use disposable wipes when we're out and about tho, it's just easier than cloth wipes and a spray bottle...

We love gdiapers during  the day. Going on 5 mths . Instead of the refills we use cloth prefolds. At night we go to nature boy & girl biodegradable diaps because the cloth inside gdips wads up after awhile & leaks & wakes him up.

Original Post by jenniee:

We use prefolds and have done since DS was <2 weeks old. At first we used 'sposies at night, but once he stopped pooing in the night (and therefore could stay in the same nappy all night) we switched to cloth at night too. I love my cloth and can't recommend it enough to anyone I know that's expecting! Sposies leak like nobody's business and I'd much rather be washing cloth nappies twice a week than pooey clothes every day! The only time we went back to sposies was when we were going on holiday for a week and the cottage had no washing machine - we had two buy my son two new pairs of jeans 'cos the sposies leaked when we were out and we had no spare clothes for him (I'm not used to carrying spares 'cos my cloth nappies don't leak!) We do a cold rinse, then a full 60 degree wash with a half-dose of detergent, then an extra rinse or two 'til all the bubbles have gone.

I made my own cloth wipes out of fleece fabric (no sewing needed, it doesn't fray so just cut into squares). I have to admit that I use disposable wipes when we're out and about tho, it's just easier than cloth wipes and a spray bottle...

 I used to make my own cloth wipes for on the go. I used a travel case for wipes and mixed a Solution of Water, Baby Soap, and Tea Tree OIl. The Tea Tree Oil kept them from mildewing. The other benefit to TTO wipes is they can also be used to clean cuts and scraps.  TTO has anti microbial properties.