My Cloth Diaper Facts

Okay, a long time ago (well, I guess not really that long ago), my son turned 18 months old. From watching other moms in my hometown, I knew this was a good age to start potty training. I bought the pull-ups, several books for my son and myself, the potty chair that sang different songs, the whole-shebang. I had used disposable diapers with my son and I preferred Huggies since they fit him better and had fewer rashes than Pampers did (everyone has a different favorite).
If you had asked me about cloth diapers the first time I was pregnant, I would have thought you were nuts since I'd never even heard of them. If you had asked me by the time my son was 18 months old, I would have been able to tell you that I saw advertisements for cute looking ones in Europe. By the time I was done reading the potty training books for adults, it was clear to me that a lot of people seem to be confused when it comes the whole potty area of children.
One book talked about how you can start "potty learning" or "early communication" at 4 months old. It's a different style than the potty training that most of us are used to, but very similar to watching for signs of a baby being hungry before they start crying. Doesn't seem that hard, but it doesn't sound like something for me.
What is confusing is the whole "wait to start potty training until your child can remove his/her pants by themselves." My son will be 5 in about 3 months and he still can't unbutton or button any of his jeans. Albeit, he can slide out of most of them in a hurry, but he'll still come out of the bathroom stall in public places holding his pants with one hand and asking for your help no matter how many strangers are there.
Then there's the whole issue about how back in the day, if your child had a diaper rash, you were called unfit and your child was taken away. I'm not entirely sure how true this statement was or if it was a state by state thing... I had read it in one of my books. My son had diaper rashes. Not all the time, but once he started to get one, it would get ugly quick and turn into a yeast infection and he spent the next 24 hours bare bottomed with anti-fungal stuff on his butt to get rid of it. While a diaper rash happens any time a wet diaper is left on a baby for too long, it's become too common meaning that parents don't know that the diaper is wet and are leaving those wet chemicals on their babies butts and helping diaper rashes turn into worse problems like chemical burns. Do cloth diapered babies get rashes? Yes, but it's supposed to be less common. In fact, if you have tons of issues with rashes, doctors will often recommend cloth diapering.
Okay, here's the reason that hubby and I decided to cloth diaper. Money. We aren't rich and we are learning to cut corners in certain areas. I have heard tons of people claim how much diapers can save you. I have heard just as many people tell me that it really won't save me money. Here's the fact FOR ME. You'll have to do research in your own area to find out if that's right for you.
I bought so far for a newborn (7-12 pounds) 24 prefolds at $1.50 a piece, 1 used diaper and 4 used covers for $28, and 1 new cover for $13, and two snappies at $3.95 a piece. That brings my total to $84.90 for the bare minimum that we could need for up to 12 pounds. Factor in the two dollars I spent on wash clothes to use as wipes and that's $86.90. After that, we can use One-Size (I already bought a few of those, but that's a whole nother math) and those will last us until we potty train.
A box of 192 Huggies diapers will cost $32.80 (including tax) from Walmart (the cheapest place to buy diapers in my town). Huggies wipes will cost $13.34 for one of those big boxes that last us about a month. Let's say I use 12 diapers a day... For 3 months (about the time an average baby weighs 12 pounds), Huggies will cost roughly $196.80 though there will be a few leftover (you can't buy half a box of diapers). The total cost will be $236.82 for disposables.
The total cost for cloth? If you want to factor in water (our bill is about $90 a month for water, waste, and drainage) you can. I won't seeing as how I can toss the dirty diapers in with our normal wash which I do two out of three days a week anyway. I will factor in soap since I'll have to buy a special kind... All free and clear costs about $11.74 with taxes. That's for 96 loads of normal laundry. For cloth you only use 1/4-1/2 so say I went overboard, that's 192 cloth diaper loads which is more than I need for 3 months of just cloth. That brings my total to $98.64.
That's a difference of $138.18. I can pay two water bills with that and still have change. I can go grocery shopping for a week and buy fresh fruits and veggies with that. I can get my son all the pants he'll need this winter. The list goes on with what I can do with that money. More than likely, it'll be used to fill up my husband's car as he goes back and forth to work or it'll be used at a drive-thru on one of the days we shop each month.

Cloth Diapering

Okay, the facts are out there for everyone to find. Disposable diapers are almost equal to fast food containers in dumpsters everywhere. Disposables have those tiny beads that can't be healthy. They use bleach (I don't use chlorine bleach unless I have to) and that's making fish in the Great Lakes infertile. There's all sorts of reasons for not wanting to use disposables.
There's also plenty of reasons not to cloth. Having to wash poop out of clothes (though I believe every parent does at least once in their life) is gross. What are you supposed to do with the poop? Does it actually save money? What about when you are out in public? What about the convenience of disposables? Both parents might work...
Here is my decision and my answers to these questions (again, you can find them anywhere online). I'm going to try really hard to attempt to cloth diaper. I didn't even consider it when I was pregnant with my first. When I heard about it, I thought: "Gross. Really? Are people so against convenience?" Then I started doing research on potty training for a class I was taking online. It was about whether to potty train when the child is ready or to start when you think it's proper (I won't get into it). What was interesting to me and my husband was the amount of things that go into a disposable diaper (known as a sposie in the cloth diapering world) and it grossed us out. We were grateful we were potty training.
Now, to get to the whole poop issue... You are actually not supposed to toss feces in the trash ever, even if it's wrapped in a disposable. I know... I've totally done it hundreds of times. But, when using a cloth diaper, you can buy flushable liners made to catch poop. You can also buy a little hose (like the one on your kitchen sink) made to attach to the toilet to rinse off diapers for about $15. I think I'll go with the flushable liners, but I like convenience.
We have friends who told us they were buying us disposables no matter what (and one husband who said we can't come over if our child is in rags), so we probably will use the "sposies" when we leave the house until we feel comfortable and find a system that works great for us.
Does it actually save money? It can. If you are military and you live on base, then yes, it does. You don't pay utilities, therefore the only cost is the upfront cost of diapers and soaps and a few accessories. You can also buy used to save money if you are fine with that (I'm still deciding). In our house, saving money is only a plus. We are doing it for health reasons.
Now, I have been introduced to females in this world who think you are evil if you disagree with them on anything from breastfeeding vs formula, binky vs thumb, circumcising vs intact... This is one of the same topics to me. If you feel like using disposables will make your life easier therefore make you a better mother, than who am I to judge you? I'm just pointing out answers to questions I've gotten recently and reasons why our family will from here on out be trying to CD...
More on this topic once I start buying and using fluffies (cute nickname, right?).