Cloth

When we told people we planned to use cloth diapers for the twins, people said we were crazy. Frankly, when Rachel proposed it, I thought she was crazy, but she quickly brought me around. Here are the arguments in favor of using cloth diapers:

• Disposable diapers put all kinds of freaky-ass chemicals up against your baby’s, well, ass. Disposables are incredibly absorbent, but they achieve that absorbency using space-age gels and such. These things might not be bad for your baby, but not using them has got to be better.
• Disposable diapers put tons and tons of crap, literally, into landfills, taking up valuable landfill space and potentially contaminating groundwater, etc. Cloth diapers have to be laundered, which uses lots of water, it’s true, but I think cloths still come out ahead, environmentally speaking.
• Cloth diapers are more expensive per diaper, but in the long run are much cheaper than disposables.

Some commonly asked questions seem to be:

Are you using cloth diapers exclusively? Heavens, no. We’ve only been using cloth for a week or two. We still pack disposables in the diaper bags for the few times we’ve ventured out of the house, and at this point we’re putting them in disposables overnight. We’ll probably switch to cloth overnight when they get a bit bigger and can fit into some of the other diapers we have.

Do you use a diaper service? No. There are probably some places that still have services that take away your dirty diapers and bring you fresh clean ones, but Providence isn’t one of those places. With two babies, we’re basically doing laundry once a day anyway, so an additional load of diapers isn’t too arduous.

Wait, you wash the diapers in your washing machine? With, like, poop on them? Yes. We do the diapers in a separate load from our regular clothes, and I think we run them through an extra rinse cycle, but at this stage in the babies’ development, their poop is pretty liquid-y. Things seem to be pretty clean. Really, it’s fine. Nothing else we own seems to be covered in poop at this time.

How do they work? Cloth diapers seem to have come a long way since the old days of safety pins and rubber pants. What I figure I’ll do is over the next few days (oh, who am I kidding: weeks) is do a series of posts on the different kinds of cloth diapers we’ve tried, and our impressions of each. It will either be fascinating or incredibly boring, depending on your personal interest in diapering. Non-parents, feel free to skim.

OK, so, there seem to be four basic types of cloth diapers. We have examples of three of the types.

Prefolds are the most basic type of cloth diaper. These are basically rectangles of absorbent cotton. You fashion the cloth into a little baby loincloth, and then put a waterproof cover over it. We’ve had good success with these: they’re our default diapering solution at present.

Fitted diapers are absorbent fleecy things that work just like disposables: they’re shaped like diapers, basically, with leg holes and Velcro tabs and all. You Velcro on the diaper, and then put a waterproof cover on it, just like with prefolds. I think these are the most convenient, although Rachel insists they’re somewhat less absorbent than the prefolds. We have two different brands of fitted diapers: Thirsties and Kissaluvs. (So far, the Kissaluvs are a little big for our babies, but they’re more adjustable than the Thirsties, so we expect to get a lot of good use out of them.)

Pocket diapers have a waterproof shell, a fleece lining, and a pocket in which to stuff a piece of absorbent fabric. We haven’t used any of our pocket diapers yet (small babies) but we’ll eventually try out bumGenius and FuzziBunz.

All-in-one diapers are one piece: waterproof exterior and super absorbent interior. They’re as convenient as disposables, except you have to wash them. We don’t have any of these at this point.

Since both prefolds and fitteds require waterproof covers, we have quite a few of them. Our favorites so far are the Thirsties covers, but we also have some Bummis, ProRap, and ImseVimse. After a few weeks of use, we can enthusiastically recommend the Thirsties. They have double leg gussets, which help keep the diaper tucked inside and prevent wetness from leaking out, and they have double-sided Velcro tabs, which allow you to overlap them for small babies.

With prefolds, you generally want some kind of device to hold the diaper in place under the cover. Although it’s possible to just fold the diaper into shape and then wrap the cover around it, we find that the Snappi fastener is extremely convenient.

As long as we’re being environmental, we can’t go using disposable diaper wipes, can we? No, we cannot. Instead, we use cloth wipes that we spray with a little soapy water before using. We like the Thirsties wipes best; the Kissaluvs can be a little rough on sensitive baby parts.

OK, seriously, I’ve gone on about cloth diapers for rather a long while here, and I’ve threatened more posts to come, so I’ll wrap this up. We do think using cloth diapers is a great choice environmentally and financially. We (mostly Rachel) did a lot of research into the best options, so we hope the results of our experimentation can be of use to anyone else.

Oh, crap, gotta go change a diaper.

Filed under Baby Stuff, Parenting | Tags: cloth, diapers, environment, gear, tips | Comments (7)