The Great Cloth Diaper Experiement

Cloth diapering brings to mind scary thoughts.  Big diaper pails full of water with soaking dirty diapers, big huge diaper pins, and loads of work for Mom.  Well honey, times are a changing and so is the world of cloth diapering.  When I was pregnant with my first child, I NEVER gave cloth diapering a thought.  As if, disgusting!  I'm only a little crunchy (breastfeeding and organic foods) but only a little bit.  Cloth diapering was for the green environmentalists not for SUV loving me.  In fact, I never discovered how cool cloth diapering had gotten (yes you read that correctly, I wrote the word cool) until my third child was about 18 months old. 

Today's cloth diapers are so different.  One of the most popular type of diapers are Pocket Diapers and All in One Diapers...they are so similar to disposable diapers its insane.  No folding diapers and pinning them on.  No having to change them constantly, these pocket diapers wick away the mositure the same as a disposable does.  As I read more about the "new" cloth diapers and studied what is actually in disposable diapers, the more I was beginning to feel that not trying cloth diapers was going to be my only regret from my children's baby years.

The more I thought about it, the more I really wanted to try it out.  But Annabelle is my last child and investing in cloth diapers at this late in the game (she only has 6 more months in diapers, I potty train at 2 and a half) seemed like such a waste of money.  Although the new cloth diapers will save you a ton of money in the long run, the initial investment is about $300 to $400.  Now when you think about diapering 3 children for $400, the number isn't really bad at all.  But only 1 for 6 months? 

So I did more research, and I decided I had to give it a try!  If I bought a bare minimum of diapers, washing everyday, and stayed with "sposies" (as the Cloth Diapering community calls disposables) at night, in the church nursery, and on vacation, I could do it and still save $100 to $150 dollars just in the 6 months!  So I decided to take the plunge!  I order 5 different major brand diapers (Bumgenius, Happy Heiny, Rumparooz, Fuzzi Bunz, and GroVia), 1 used diaper off of ebay (Happy Heiny), and 1 really cheap diaper from China that was only $5 (and that is with shipping)!  I also ordered a wet bag to keep my dirty diapers in and some cloth diaper safe diaper cream.  After lots of research, I found out that one of the best detergents for cloth diapers was orignal Tide (that is what I already used, yay) so I could skip the expensive cloth diaper detergents.

After 1 week of cloth diapering, I can say that I LOVE it!  It's not even a big deal to wash them each night, I just throw them in right after Annabelle goes to bed.  If I was cloth diapering for her whole babyhood, I would definitly have bought the recommened 24 to 30 diapers, but for our 6 month experiment our 7 will do us just fine:)  I plan on doing a diaper review when we start potty training outlining my complete experience as well as which diaper brand and type I prefered!  Once you start looking a how adorable these cloth diapers are, you will start to see how some Moms get addicted to buying them.  They are SO stinking cute!  In fact, I've had to talk myself out of buying more already (just to try out different brands is my excuse) since I already have bought the most popular brands to try out.  I'm  looking on Etsy as I consider buying some cloth diaper wipes.  Might as well jump into this cloth diaper experience even more...I'm hooked:D