Hellobee

Thank you for such an honest post!

I had intentions of trying it out but LO was such a fussy baby that my start to motherhood was too much for me to maintain cloth-diapering. We use disposables, have from day 1, and I’m happy – no diaper rash, easy, all good.

thanks for your honest feedback! i’ve started a stash as i want to give it a try, but won’t be heartbroken if we don’t end up succeeding. i will give it my hardest try and hope that it works out, if not, we’ll go to disposables!

I think that’s the pitfall of cloth diapering…until you settle into the system that works, you can spend a lot of money. At the end of the day, the child is the consumer, not the parent, so even if you want to do something *really* badly, it might not work out!

We cloth diaper using gDiapers and have stuck to it (except on vacation etc). We didn’t make such a huge investment though — I think if anyone’s interested in CDing it might help to know that all those accessories are not really obligatory. We don’t have a sprayer, special pail liner, etc — and we just use Woolite to wash. And we never hang in the sun (we live in an apt), we just dry them! We hand wash a lot, too.

I agree, it’s not for everyone. But we have made it work and without too much hassle. Our babe is the opposite of yours — the few times when he was smaller and he had to use disposables, his skin just got irritated!

thank you for this honest post. i worry about the extra work/time that it will take since i will be working FT out of the home. sounds like you made the best decision for you and baby hh!

I love cloth diapers, love how cute they are and love how eco-friendly they are but I don’t have laundry facilities in my townhouse or in our building and after washing a blowout out of a pair of pants in the tub (bleaching it twice after to clean it completely, gross!), I can’t imagine trying to CD with our living situation.

I was exactly like you. I did my research and bought my diapers…and yet it was not meant to be. My baby boy has some super chunky legs and the cloth diapers cut into him. I tried all kinds of things to keep this from happening but in the end I his comfort is the most important thing and the cloth diapers just didn’t seem to fit his body correctly.

Thank you for this post. I just find that being a non-cloth diapering mama, I’m not cool, or get looked down on because I’m not opting for the eco-friendly option. I know cloth diapering isn’t for me, and having a post about someone who tried it but preferred disposables makes me happy.

Thanks for this perspective and the cost breakdown. I’m sure I would have spent similarly and this confirms that disposables, even the “premium” one, are not $$$ comparatively.

At least you made it 9 months! You just have to do whatever works for you.

We use flips with flip inserts and then pre folds when we run out and I’ve found so far it’s not too much work, but LO is only 11 weeks old. I also don’t worry about stains on my dipes since he’s just going to poop on them again, so that makes it a little less work. I did have to try a few different detergents though and ended up with Rockin’ Green for hard water.

We decided against cloth diapering.. for numerous reasons. No regrets and I LOOOOOVE disposables

@sloaneandpuffy – we often dried our diapers in the dryer too, but the sun has magic bleaching powers – it made our diapers super white so whenever it came out i tried to take advantage. do you not have staining problems by never hanging them out in the sun?

@duckduckkristen – i guess i worried about poop stains because i knew i wanted to resell the diapers. i thought they’d sell easier if i made sure to keep my diapers stain-free. but good for you that it doesn’t bother you! i hear so many great things about rockin’ green, but i started with charlie’s soap and it’s always worked for us so i never made the switch.

@Mrs. High Heels: Well, in our apartment we have nowhere to hang in the sun! But we don’t have problems with staining usually. The gDiaper inserts have stayed pretty white, and just some off-brand white ones we use overnight have gotten stained. I’m with the other commenter who said it doesn’t matter much anyway. We’re having another kid (at least 1!) so we’ll reuse the diapers and probably they won’t be too resellable after that!

All our diapers have cotton insides which means that we can use “regular” diaper cream. In my experience they are also super low maintenance compared to those with synthetic inners.

we love cloth diapering, but she wears disposables at day care. we use Earth mama angel baby bottom balm which is fine for cloth diapers. Our LO wears Freetime diapers by bum genius they are all in one diapers so its really easy and they dry very fast. the only addition accessories we needed were planet wise wetbags as pail liners, a step trash can that we use as a diaper pail and a diaper sprayer. poop stains arent really an issue for me anymore because one a month we add a bit of bleach to the cycle plus we hang them to dry in the bathroom after each wash and let the sun bleach them too. It was daunting in the beginning but now I hate dealing with disposable diapers.

I’d love to cloth diaper but with both of us working FT out of the house, I just don’t think we’ll have the time. Luckily, NYC is great and there are cloth diaper services that drop off/pick up, clean, etc.! Sure you pay for it but it doesn’t end up costing any more than disposables and is still environmentally friendly!

We have been clothing diapering since our LO was 6 weeks old. She’s currently 18 weeks and we’re fans of the cloth diapers. Our initial outlay was only about $150. This included 2 thirsties covers, 2 flip covers, 12 flip inserts, 12 prefolds, 2 snappis, 1 wet/dry bag and rockin green detergent. We do laundry every other day, so having only four covers is totally workable. We will need to buy 2 more thirsties covers after Bebe reaches 18 lbs. and another 12 prefolds as she gets bigger. We live in an apartment in NYC, but we bought a little washer (1 ft. cubed drum–about 7 gallons) for our bathroom. It is on wheels simply gets attached to bathroom sink, and drains into the tub. We use it only for Bebe’s clothes and diapers. We have a funky old school toilet (and we rent) so a diaper sprayer wasn’t an option for us. To avoid staining, we use diaper liners (they look like dryer sheets) and they lift most of the poop off. We haven’t had staining issues (particularly with the Flip inserts). But, as someone said, we plan to have a second kid and I doubt anything would be sellable after 2 kids. We use a normal garbage can with a lid and so far haven’t had any odor issues. We are pretty flexible, which makes this more manageable. For example, we went on a road trip for two weeks and used disposables. I always keep some disposables in our diaper bag since it’s faster to use them and if she’s screaming, faster is better. I definitely appreciate the honesty of this post and I think everyone needs to do what works best for their situation and their LO. I hate the idea of anything feeling like a failure because they didn’t try or stick with cloth diapering. We’re all doing the best we can, we should show ourselves a bit of kindness. I only wanted to chime in because if someone is thinking of doing this for financial reasons, I think it is important to note that cloth diapering can be done for less than the budget above indicates.

We use cloth diapers and have no problems but I fear solid poos in the future! Thanks for your post!

We do cloth diaper but it is extra work. I appreciate your honesty and think that, just like so many things in parenting, you have to figure out what works for you!

I did want to comment on how we have made cloth work with two FT work outside the home parents., and it feels cost effective. We are also planning to use the diapers on LO #2 eventually so that is where a lot of the savings come in I think.

We use BG 4.0s and have 27 diapers. We only bought diapers when it was the buy 5 get 1 sales, and just got the last 7 a few months ago, so I think we have spent about $300 on diapers. We wash twice a week and hang everything to dry. We use the BG detergent and it has been great. We do use disposable wipes and do disposables at night sometimes and on trips.

I work a shorter day on the diaper washing day so i can do it in the morning. We have 4 wetbags, someone gifted us a diaper sprayer, and DH built a version of a potty pail for about $20 from the hardware store. We use coconut oil from the grocery store as a cream and it has been great!

@merriment – i totally agree that cloth diapering can be done for cheaper than what i spent. the budget above is by no means an indication of an “average” budget and i should probably clarify that. it’s just a list of everything i personally ended up spending while cloth diapering.

That really stinks it didn’t work out. We had issues with diaper rash when DS was in a very messy poop phase. If he sat in a poopy diaper for more than 2 minutes, his bum would be red, rashy and sometimes even blistered. Something about his poop was just so acidic, and like you wrote, the diaper creams he needed (the white ones with Zinc Oxide) couldn’t be used with our cloth diapers. So we went through a disposable phase for a while.

I think it really comes down to your motivation. I only have to do a cold pre-wash followed by one hot cycle with an extra rinse, which doesn’t take much effort. Disposables definitely are a little easier, if you are the one cleaning the diapers once they are dirty, but I hate how ugly disposables are and I don’t like throwing them out. Plus they are expensive. With the cloth diapers we cut corners where we could, bought used or seconds, and went without some of the convenient extras.

I hope you were able to sell your stash and recoup some of your costs.

@LindsayInNYC: DH and I both work FT out of the house and we cloth diaper full time as well. I do diaper laundry 2 times a week and we hang to dry. I don’t do anything to the diapers before dropping them in the pail to be washed, except knock of the poop into the toilet. But a diaper service is great too! You only have to buy covers with the service, right?

@Mrs. High Heels: You don’t necessarily have to keep the diapers stain free to get the stains out later. I don’t sun my diapers at all, and they have some stains. But when I’ve wanted to sell diapers, I just put them out in the sun for a few hours and the clean right up and I’ve been able to list them as not having stains.

Also I hear bac-out works to keep stains at bay.

@Mrs. Sunglasses: Ultimately diapers are diapers. They catch poop. Cloth diapers really aren’t for everyone. I love them because they are cute and cost less and I’m not throwing them away, but ultimately all they do is catch poop. And for me I have an extra 30 minutes of time a couple nights a weeks to wash them, where as others have an extra few bucks to save time and use disposables. You shouldn’t feel bad or uncool for using disposables.

My son had the same problem with diaper rashes when we first started trying to cloth diaper him. He had very sensitive skin. I was using fuzzibunz at the time, I switched to the Organic inserts and use grovia and his skin didn’t have a reaction, so that was good. But I was upset I spent all that money on a fuzzibunz system. We tried it a few weeks later and no rash, so that was great. But we kept having problems with the fuzzibunz.
We finally had to switch brands completely and we’re now pretty happy with cloth diapering. Although, since I’m a SAHM I do have more time for it.
I love disposables too – I’ll be the first to admit it! We buy them for traveling and it makes me second-guess myself. But I am at the point where I spent so much $$ on cloth diapers to try to find some that work, that it would seem defeatist to switch to sposies now. AND the sposies I like are quite a bit of $$. Anyhow, we make it work.

Maddox has incredibly sensitive skin and the two rashes he’s had (from thrush) would only clear up with cloth.

I have a system to only do wash once a week, there’s no way I’d be into doing laundry every other day like some of my friends!

@mrstilly and @lindsayinnyc – so impressed by you two FT cloth-diapering moms!

@Mrstilly – From what I’ve researched, I think some services give you the option of using your own covers or renting them? It varies. Just something I’ve filed away for when we have a future LO

@Mrshighheels – Not a mom yet, just planning my life away, LOL!

@mrstilly – i haven’t had the heart to sell my cloth diaper stash yet! i’ve been putting it off, or i keep thinking maybe i’ll try again for #2. lots of good tips in these comments!

i never tried to keep the diapers completely stain free because the sun is like magic and always made them disappear! but i did always try to keep the diapers in good condition.

Bummer it didn’t work out for you! I think the key to success for us is having a system in place that makes CDing easy. I work 3 days a week, but my LO is home with a nanny on those days so we don’t have to deal with a day care system for diapers, just a home system… that makes things much easier too. I’m with @Mrsbells: I hate dealing with disposables now! So I think it’s that the system you get used to seems the easiest and best for you, as it should!

As far as cost goes, although it’s not our primary reason to CD, I just can’t see how disposables could possibly be cheaper in the long run, even for just one child. Mrs. Bee once posted that she spent over $600 on diapers and wipes for Charlie in his first year. Someone commented on the post that they spent $1600 on diapers and wipes in their first year! And that doesn’t include the rest of the “system”: diaper pail, trash bags, possibly diaper genie refills, etc. I think it’s easy to get scared by the initial cost of CDing, and also easy to overlook how much disposable diapers can cost when you’re just throwing out $20-$30 here and there on diapers and wipes. But even if you somehow manage to spend only $30 a month on diapers and wipes and potty train your child by age 2, that’s $720! You can get all kinds of fancy CDs and accessories for less than that, and if you go with more basic stuff you can save a ton.

Sorry for the book, I am clearly a passionate CDing momma

Thank you for being honest!! I feel like so many pro-CD moms look down upon those that don’t. Good to hear that you’re okay with it not working out. I know my future LOs will have sensitive skin-I couldn’t be CD’d as an infant because I kept getting rashes, too! Again, thx for your honesty!

Not every cloth diaper (brand or style) is the same, which is where you have to be flexible and try a variety to find what suits you AND your baby if you choose to cloth diaper. We’ve been cloth diapering since my son was 3 days old and definitely prefer cloth over disposables. Our daycare even comments on how great my son’s bottom looks compared to some of the other kids that are in disposables. However, it definitely isn’t for everyone. I have a very supportive husband that is a very frequent participant in changing, spraying, washing, and/or stuffing our cloth diapers. If I didn’t have him participating it would be more of a challenge since we have mostly pockets, which can be a little more time consuming. If we had it to do over again I’d change some things but overall, we’ve figured out our system. In the beginning we struggled to find the right laundry soap, which was close to making me want to throw in the towel, but we did get it fixed and have never looked back. We even prefer to travel with cloth instead of disposables.

Thanks for sharing. I can see myself writing this same post in the future. I’m obsessed with cloth diapers now. I’m going to be a full time mom, so we’ll see.

Great post! Cloth diapering IS a whole lot of work and is a big commitment. I think you definitely are right that you have to look at whether or not it’s right for you and your family…and very hard to pick doing laundry over spending time with your LO!

Thanks for the honest post I cloth diapered my middle child for nine months in an apartment with not washing facility connections and poor coin operated machines that were… Abused, by other tenants. I had to give up. One summer day we went to the coin operated laundry (not the one in the apartment complex) for our weekly rounds of washing to find my entire stash completely destroyed by mold. So for the lack of another close to $700 to spend on replacing his stash we went to disposables until potty training time when I bought cloth trainers…. Though we did start over again with our youngest who is going strong despite her sensitive skin at 8 months. I too love flips covers and prefolds as does my husband!

I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you! My LO gets rashes in cloth too, but only if I use something that has no barrier between him and the moisture. I use strips of anti-pill fleece as liners and he doesn’t get the rashes. I also work full-time, but manage to get by on diapers since I bought about 50 for one child. It gives me a chance to wash some, stuff them the next day, and still not run out!

So sorry it didn’t work out for you. This was a great honest post and I know that cloth diapering isn’t for everyone. Both DH and I work fulltime outside of the home and once we figured out a system, cloth diapering got easier. It was really overwhelming in the beginning to learn all the ins/outs of it.
We’ve been cd’ing successfully for 7 months now, started LO in cloth as soon as his circ healed. I’ve built up my stash to 40 diapers and we wash every 2 days. Luckily my husband is super supportive and willingly changes diapers and even does diaper laundry. We hang dry all the diapers by the window and have no stain issues.

I was actually afraid to commit to cloth diapering for this reason! I was lucky I won my initial stash, and then sold it (sized dipes) to buy more covers in the bigger sizes… that kind of helped.
So far the cloth diapering is actually helping my daughter’s sensitive bum, so my husband and I are super hopeful we can make this work! We were going to use disposables at night, but my husband now refuses to after seeing the results. That’s too bad it couldn’t work then for your little one! Boo!

Thanks for your honest post!

Oh interesting! I just was reading Mrs. Superhero’s post about CD and thinking I may want a few as a back-up in case LO gets rashes and skin issues from regular diapers. All the info out there seems to make CD sound better on their skin. So your reason #1 is opposite of what I thought. I’m on the disposables train for now, but wouldn’t mind giving CD a shot part time to try it out. But ouch – the costs seems monumental!

@shopaholic: I am going to try cloth diapering AGAIN with my second one! I think it’s worth the cost savings. Some kids do do better with cloth on their sensitive skin, but I don’t know why it ended up being worse for her. I think the wetness of the cloth sitting on her skin is worse for her than the absorbency provided by disposables.

She hasn’t gotten diaper rash ever since we went back to disposables, but like everything else in parenthood… every baby is SO different. Cloth diapering isn’t nearly as intimidating as it seems. I wrote this post simply to put a different perspective on it since what I mostly read about are success stories.

Poor baby booty! It stinks when they’re super sensitive! My LO was in sposies for a couple of weeks due to washing machine issues, and she had welts on her legs from them. Funny how different babies react to different things!

I did want to mention — though I’m sure you already know! — that your LO might’ve been sensitive to PUL. Some babies just can’t tolerate synthetics. This is why we use fitteds or flats (all from ODC) with wool.

One of *THE* reasons we’re using cloth is to avoid all of the junk in disposables. It never made sense to me to put a plastic wrap over a cloth diaper. I mean, it is chemical-free next to their skin, which I suppose it better, but Baby’s booty can’t breathe, so it stands to reason that there will be problems, right??

I don’t fault you for changing your system. We all take care of our babes the best we can! Good luck in the future!

p.s. If you go cloth with your next LO, you can use coconut oil instead of a fancy, $$, “CD-safe” cream. You can use it on its own or mix it with zinc oxide, shea butter, TTO, etc, or any combination! It might cost you a little more than Triple Paste up front, but it’ll last you a lot longer and it’ll definitely be healthier for your tiny’s tush!

@Lara Jane – Thanks for weighing in! I never even considered PUL to be the cause! We are definitely going to try CD again with our 2nd, I am hoping we get a different experience this time around… I still think the money savings are worth it, not to mention I think cloth diapered bootys are ADORABLE!!

What type of diapers did you switch to? I can’t seem to find anything about what type of disposable diapers are the best.

@kmze10: we are using 7th generation for Noelle, and pampers swaddlers for my son (he doesn’t have skin issues so any diapers work with him).