In Defense of Reusables

There are a lot of decision you have to make as new parents.  Breast feeding vs. formula, how to deal with colic, how to stimulate her development... Will your newborn sleep in a bassinet (and drive you crazy all night with the cooing), sleep in the crib (and her cooing just now comes through the baby monitor), or risk the co-sleeping option.  The funny part is that all of those assume that your baby will sleep.  Ha! I kid of course, I adore her little coos and grunts as she sleeps, and she is a great little sleeper.  It's actually pretty hilarious how much noise she makes when she is sound asleep (no pun intended).

But in truth there is a plethora of decisions you have to think about, research and agree upon as parents.  When we made a couple of those decisions that went against the norm, our friends and family were supportive. Although, I think some folks were either hesitant to see the overall value or reasoning in the decision or just thought we may not follow it through in the end. The biggest of these decisions I think was reusable (cloth) diapers and wipes.  People called us crazy or just laughed it off and said "we'll see how long that lasts."  Well we are three weeks into it and I am proud to say that we are still cloth diapering and loving it more everyday.  Pictured is an example of the diapers we are using.  No pins, no giant linen cloth, just a giant adsorbent pad and velcro fasteners. Diapers have come a long way in the last few years.

Now you just like many others may ask, "why would you put yourself through that?"  A very reasonable question considering nearly everyone uses disposable diapers.  The main factor involved in this decision was environmental.  Around 27 billion diapers are purchased each year in the United States alone; more than 90% of those diapers end up in landfills.  Thats a whole lot of waste! Another thing that we learned and only made sense in retrospect was that you are actually supposed to dispose of any fecal matter in the diapers (any diaper: cloth or disposable) via the sewage system.  So instead of wadding a disposable diaper up and tossing into the regular garbage, the city would prefer you spray off the poop in the toilet and then throw it out.  How many of us really do that?  It makes sense though, as if landfills aren't smelly and toxic enough, why let babies add to the stench?  Adults aren't allowed to dispose of our fecal matter that way either!  There are hundreds of other good environmental reasons not to use them but I won't get into it here.  Let google quench your curiosity if need be.

Asleep on Dad

The second deciding factor was overall health of our little Annabelle.  The only reason this is not first is that she would grow up just fine with disposable diapers, but there are additional newborn health benefits that warrant cloth diapering.  Many folks have seen less diaper rash and general irritation of the skin by using disposable diapers.  Personally, we actually haven't seen any rash or irritation at all and we are not even using any of the ointments or creams yet.  I think this is a two fold explanation.  The first being that the reusable diapers are just less irritating to a newborn because is soft cloth without chemicals.  The second being that we are going to great lengths to wash them in the best way possible.  Babies skin is extremely sensitive to all kinds of stuff; this is why people have special soaps and detergents used especially for babies.  The thing that perplexed me though was if all these soaps are "simpler" and "contains less chemicals," why the heck does it cost more than?  After a little research, I found an old recipe for laundry detergent.  It turns out people washed their clothes before Tide was invented, who knew?  The homemade detergent is easy and ridiculously cheap to make; best of all, it works great! The ingredients are borax, washing soda (NOT baking soda), and feels naptha soap. (Recipe for it is here.)  So yes, I will openly admit, we now make all our own laundry soap.  A little hippy-ish I know, but it saves us a bunch of money and it does our little one wonders.

The last reason was just a bonus, because at this point we were committed to the idea.  As it turns out, the overall cost of cloth diapering is a fraction of what it would cost to diaper a kid over the two or so years they are in them.  Average cost of diapering a kiddo is in the range of $1000 per year per kid. So call it 2k for 2 years.  Cloth diapers have a start up cost, but then that's it, you're done.  There are many types and brand of cloth diapers to go with and after a couple months of research we decided on the All in One systems from bumGenius. The XS size will get her to around 14 pounds and then we can switch over to the convertible ones that will take her all the way through potty training.  Right now we have 12, but can run low.  18 is a more reasonable number for emergencies or if you forget to include the wet ones in the last load.  You can get starter kits of 12 for about $200, but once again, thats the only cost of diapering.  So after two years you are at 10% of the total cost.  That was a nice little bonus when decision time came.  The other great part is that if and when the next kiddo comes around you already have all the diapers, so each additional kid diapers for free (assuming they are far enough apart in age).


The Logistics.

Changing:  If you followed the diaper link or studied the first picture above, you can see that cloth diapers are not what they were 30 years ago, or even 5 years ago.  Again, if you are picturing a giant white linen sheet with comically large safety pins in them, then you couldn't be further from the truth. They are amazing little pieces of engineering.  They hold more moisture than a disposable diaper while not letting your kiddo feel as much of the wetness and if they leak it's mostly because we didn't put them on well enough.  In the hospital we used the regular disposable ones, and after three weeks of changes under my belt I can report that cloth diapers are just as easy if not easier to change.  The only caveat is that when she poops then you have to take it to the toilet and spray it off using something like this sprayer that we installed, but technically you are supposed to do that with any diaper.  It really isn't a big deal with the sprayer.  Just 5-10 seconds of spraying and it's ready to be washed.

Wiping:  If you are going to go (especially green), go all out.  So we decided to do reusable wipes too.  We bought 18 of these wipes, this wipe warmer to keep those wipes nice and toasty and have been making our own wipe solution from water, baby soap and olive oil.  The wipe warmer isn't really necessary, but when we went from regular, cold diaper wipes to warm cloth ones the difference to Annabelle was night and day.  Annabelle almost doesn't cry at all when wiping her because the warmer keeps the wipes at the same temperature of her skin, so it just feels like a regular warm cloth.

Washing:  Once the diapers are sprayed off we keep them in a wet bag and then just toss them in with a regular load of baby laundry and they come out clean on the other side.  Sometimes they can stain a little, but if you hang them on a clothes line for 30-60 minutes between the sun and the composition of the cloth, it bleaches out naturally.

Okay, so this post is like a short novel and you may be thinking, "that seems like an awful lot of work."  But after three weeks I would have to disagree with that statement.  You have to do laundry for the kiddo anyway, and since everything she/he owns will never fill up even then smallest laundry machine, washing diapers isn't any more work than washing clothes.  Making the wipe solution, soaking the wipes and stocking the warmer takes less than a minute total.  Think of all the planning that goes into grocery store trips or special trips just for disposable diapers. What if you run out in the middle of the night? What if the store is out of your brand or size? I should mention that we weren't completely sure of how this was all going to pan out in the beginning either.  So being planners and nearly always over-preparing we bought one package of diapers and one box of regular disposable wipes.  I am proud to report that both are happily unopened.

So if you have a kiddo in diapers and are looking for a greener solution, having trouble with diaper rash, or just want to save some cash consider cloth diapering!  It's easy and as Laura always exclaims, "she looks so cute in her diaper!"

If you have any questions about cloth diapering or just want to learn more about it, there are tons of resources on the internet.  If you just want to chat about it give us a call or shoot an email our way, we would love to answer any questions about it. We love to advocate for the things we believe in.

As always, thanks for reading!

Be well,
Nathan (and Laura)