So I finally did it! I made up my mind to cloth diaper my son! Cloth diapering was just about the only class that I didn't attend while I was still pregnant and it completely escaped my attention with all the healing, adjustments, lack of sleep, and overwhelming chaos post-partum. For a hot second I figured that I should just let it go and try it with the next baby, since Caleb is already more than four months old, but then I decided that was a ridiculous thought process since he will be in diapers for another year and a half or more!
What made me decide to cloth diaper? Honestly, the pure expense of disposables, as well as the inconvenience! My fiance works a lot and it always seemed that I ran low when he was at work, and I would have to lug Caleb to the car, to the store, and around the store as I attempted to carry a big box of diapers, wipes too of course, and him up to the register. It was a pain in the butt and an expensive one at that! I decided to look up cloth diapering stuff on Pinterest about a month ago and was shocked to read an article that broke down the expense of disposable diapers compared to cloth! Parents will spend roughly $2,400 to diaper a baby until he or she is potty-trained if they go with disposables or less than $1,000 with cloth. After researching this more, it seems as though cloth diapering costs even less, depending on how many you buy and how frequently you wash them, your choice of detergent, whether you use disposable or reusable wipes, etc. And if you take care of your cloth diapers and reuse them on the next baby, you are saving close to $4,000! Come on now, who wouldn't want to do that?! Aside from just the economic aspect, cloth diapering is also way better for baby's bum, you avoid putting unnecessary and harmful chemicals on your baby's skin, you'll have less blow-outs to deal with, and you can sleep better knowing you're doing your part to reduce waste and go green!
All that sounds great, right? But now what?! That's exactly how I felt and precisely why I decided to start this blog. Cloth diapering is very overwhelming at the beginning, especially if you're like me and never had any sisters of friends to watch do it! Cloth diapering has a language of its own (AIO's, hybrids, pockets, shells, soakers, AI2's), there are sooo many brands and styles of diapers to chose from that just browsing the web or walking into a store is completely overwhelming, and disposables are much more popular at this time, not to mention super easy to use, so it can be tempting to just stay with disposables. I hope that this blog will help you learn with me as I go so you can stick with it!
"So, where do I start?," you might be wondering. I thought that best thing to do was to take a class, but unfortunately I had just missed the August class and I couldn't find anything local online until September 9. I signed myself up for that class but I really didn't want to wait that long to get started, so I read a few articles on Pinterest, found a local cloth diapering group on Facebook, and decided to purchase a few second-hand off of a woman who was looking to condense her stash. She came over to my house, showed her selection to me, explained how they worked and what inserts (cloth pads that you stuff into pocket diapers that create extra absorbency, especially at night) went with which diapers, told me which ones she liked best and how, and even explained how to wash them and get them ready to use! When it comes to cloth diapering, mommy's who are doing it are your best resource! When she left I was so excited to use them, but I wanted to wait until I had a bigger stash and did a bit more research on how to actually use cloth diapers. Stay tuned for my next steps!
