Cloth Diapering

This might come as a bit of a surprise to some, and maybe not to others, but we are planning on cloth diapering.   I am excited that I've finally found a website that will actually let us have a registry for the Bumgenius Freetime diapers that are apparently so new and hot that you can't get them at BRU or Amazon.  So, because I've gotten strange looks when I've mentioned it to some people, a little about our decision to cloth diaper:

When I first heard that people did this still, I thought, oh puh-lease!  Get with the times!  Why would you deal with all that mess and leakage and stink and laundry and bleh, when you could just throw it all away and take out the trash?!  I thought it was a pretty hippie/granola kinda thing to do, and I'm not hippie/granola at all.  But, after reading more about it, and remembering that poop-splosions happen even in disposable diapers, I think we're making the right choice.

Environmentally, it's much more responsible than using disposable diapers.  Consider that a disposable diaper is estimated to take between 250-500 years to decompose.  That's gross.  Also, disposable diapers account for about 50% of household waste in households with diapered children, and that diapers make up 1/3 of all household items that are in landfills.  In fact, one baby in disposable diapers generates about 1 ton of waste before he/she gets out of diapers.  And, disposable diapers consume more energy and raw materials on a per-diaper-change basis.  Yes, we'll have more laundry (like we wouldn't anyway), but we have an energy efficient washer, we'll be line drying the diapers for the most part, and we won't be just tossing them away to rot in a landfill for the 250 years.

Financially, it makes more sense too.  The kind of diapers we've picked fit newborns to 35 pounders because they have a snap system that lets you adjust the size of the diaper.  So they'll be around for a while, and we can use them on kid #2.  If we buy as many as they say we need to start out with a newborn, washing them every other day, we'd spend about $450 for our total diaper expenditure, assuming they hold up over time, which they seem to according to most of the reviews I've seen on this brand.  That's $450 total for this kid and the next, versus about $2500 per kid from now until potty training.  We might even go so far as to buy 4 or 5 inserts at about $100 total.  We're still saving about $2000 on this kid alone.

I also think cloth diapers are probably going to help with diaper rash, since cloth diapers are breathable.  So baby gets a benefit too.  There's also research that says that kids in cloth diapers potty train 6 months earlier because they can more easily feel the sensation of wetness.

So, these are a few of the reasons we're planning on cloth diapering.  I'm certainly not saying that no plastic diaper will ever touch my child's behind.  I'm sure that for travel, or in a pinch, we'll use some disposable diapers.  I'm not being a snob about it.  I just think that in general, it's the economical and environmentally friendly thing to do.

Plus, some of the designs on the brand we've picked are super cute, and take away the need for diaper covers.  Like this one, which is a little girly, but not too girly for me:


And this one, which is adorably nerdy:


So, anyway, point is that I'm excited that we now have a registry for our diapers.  Even if no one buys them for us, I'm glad I could find one site that at least had all the ones I liked in stock.  Anyone who knows me well knows that I don't do diaper changes (I've only changed 2 in my lifetime) and it's so out of character for me to get excited about anything to do with diapering.  Might I be turning into a parent?