Cloth Diapers

So I thought I would write about cloth diapers. Almost everyone I spoke to during my pregnancy thought I was nuts to want to cloth diaper. But it seemed like such a money save and ... being the hippie that I am, it seemed like a good choice for the environment to. It has been even easier and better than I thought it would be. I did some, though not much, research before hand and settled on a system called gdiapers. It is considered a hybrid diaper because it has a shell that can either contain a cloth or disposable insert. The first few weeks I used the disposable inserts because I thought it would be easier and I didn't want to do all the wash with my c-section. In retrospect I don't think it would have been that bad to use cloth inserts from the beginning. I have a diaper pail next to the changing table that has a wet bag in it and I just toss the soiled diaper into it. Since he is still exclusively breast fed (EBF) i don't even bother rinsing the poopy diapers. I wash the diapers every 3 days or so. No worry about running out to the store if i'm getting low, i just toss a load of laundry in. I do have a second wet bag that i swap during wash time. For cloth inserts I use regular gerber prefolds and have a few gflappers that i got from the nappyshoppe. One big bonus to all of this is the cuteness of the diapers - it does become and addiction - i just want to by more and different ones! Bonus - you can get used diapers and save even more. Plus they have great resale value when you are done.

• More than 3 million tons of diapers go into US landfills each year
• Disposable diapers take 1 cup of crude oil each to make and will sit in our landfills for 500+ years.
• Families using disposable diapers will spend $2500-3000 diapering one child, compared to $500-600 using cloth diapers. ) Multiply that by THREE for us, or even FIVE. Yikes!
• The average cloth diaper stash cost around $350. Total.
• You can expect to change your babys' diaper up to 4700 times from birth to potty learning.