Cloth Diapering: Overwhelmed with Choices

This is the first installment in a series of post about my experiences as mother who uses cloth diapers. I hope this series helps you to decide if cloth is right for your family or not and help you choose which kind would work best for you.  If you don't want to miss the next installment you can subscribe to this blog with the buttons to the right. 


Almost as soon as I became pregnant with my second child I knew I wanted to try cloth diapers. I always despised having to pay so much for a pack of disposable diapers. Even when I was able to get them for $4-$5 a pack. What I didn't realize was how cool cloth had become.

When I did a web search I found all kinds of nifty poop catchers! I was fully prepared to deal with prefolds and plastic pants. It was a bit of a relief to find such easy to use solutions for diapering your baby in cloth.

On the down side, so many cute options and styles became overwhelming. There were prefolds, flats, Contoursand fittedswhich would all need a cover to go over them to prevent leaks. Then there were all-in-ones, pockets, etc, etc. As if that were not enough to choose from, I then discovered there were sized and OS(one size) choices as well. And then came fabric and closure options! Fleece, micro suede, hemp, velcro or snap and on and on.

I thought to myself "your in over your head! Just start stocking up on disposable deals now and step away from the cloth." But I had already told my mom that this new kid was going to wear cloth. She laughed and said sure. I couldn't back down from a challenge like that. I love proving my mom wrong. I don't know why, I just do.

So I forged on with the cloth diaper hunt. I narrowed down my purchase to whatever amazon.com was selling. Why? I had some gift certificates from doing surveys, clicking through emails from mypoints.com, and my amazon visa. I also wanted to use a familiar source, since the whole cloth diaper experience was so unfamiliar to me. I wasn't sure if the other online retailers were legitimate or not. We did not have a store that sold cloth around me(except the gerber pins, prefolds and plastic pants).

I decided I would need a diaper that didn't have too many steps. After all, I didn't want to be stuck with diaper duty every time the kid soiled  himself. Grandma and daddy would need to be able to use these too. So that ruled out the prefolds and covers(and pins or a Snappi). So that left me with pockets or all in ones.

I read review after review on pockets and all in ones. I decided to go with pockets after reading more about them taking a long time to dry. The reviews said it would take 2 dry cycles, which wouldn't be very good for the electric bill. My main reason for choosing cloth was to cut down on the expenses of the new kid as much as possible.

Once I had the type of diaper narrowed down to a pocket diaper I had two more decisions to make: one sized diapers or sized and which brand? If I went with sized diapers I would need to buy a set of diapers every time the baby grew. That seemed too pricey to me, so I went with one size(I did not realized the market for used diapers was so large at the time).

Once I had it narrowed down to a one sized pocket choosing the brand was very easy. amazon only had 3-4 brands at the time I was looking. I read the reviews for each brand, visited the individual brands websites to see what the reviews were there. I ended up going with bumgenius os diapers. I ordered one (in blue) to get a feel for them before purchasing more.

When that first diaper arrived, I fell in love! It was so soft and easy to work, not to mention cute. It didn't make a crunchy sound when I touched it. I could not wait to put my little baby in such a cozy diaper! A  month before the baby was born I purchased 11 more diapers in blue, green, yellow and white. The cost of cloth diapering at this point was $233. I bought 9 of the diapers when they were on sale $3 cheaper($14.95) than normal($17.95).  I did not subtract the amazon gift certificates I used.

In the next  post I will share my experiences using cloth for the first time on my newborn.


This post is linked to lifeasmom's frugal Friday