My husband and I were having dinner with a couple that had a baby almost a year before us. When they mentioned cloth diapering to us I thought there was no way we would do that. I thought that was something they did in the Victorian period, not in this 21st century world. When our turn came to welcome our little bundle of joy into the world my husband brought it up to me. I dutifully rolled my eyes and said “if you do the research then I will think about it.” I never dreamed he would actually do it and give me facts to convince me that this is for us. You see the hubby knows how to convince me of an idea by appealing to my frugality. The cost to outfit a kid in disposable diapers is roughly around $3,000! What the what?! That might be fine if I only wanted one child but I want between four and six. That means it would cost our family between $12,000 to $18,000 to put our kids in diapers. With cloth diapers there is a larger upfront investment, but then you reuse them for many children. $400 was the number it would roughly cost to buy most of the supplies. We started out slow to test if this was really something we could commit to, as cloth diapering is definitely more work.
After months of researching cloth diapers we came to the conclusion of using prefolds inside of a Flip One Size cover. Our friends recommended the Thirsties brand. Those are not one size but are a better fit for the newborn age. Also, we have one Blueberry. All in all we have 9 covers, 50 infant (aka regular) prefolds, and 50 toddler (aka premium) size prefolds. In the end we were so glad we did it! The Thirsties, at least for a boy, didn’t work as well for us. We found that with newborn liquid poop we were having leaking issues. Also, our son was a chunky little guy and he grew out of them so fast! On the “flip” side, we are so happy with the Flip OS. They contain poop quite well, not 100% but what diaper does? Also, because our children gain weight so quickly they were able to use the the Flip OS almost from the beginning.
That’s not to say we never use disposable diapers. We do go on vacation and we use the disposables but we are always happy to come home to our cloth diapers because no matter what brand he is wearing he always seemed to explosively poop out of them! When we went on vacation this last time we put our Flip diaper covers over disposables and it contained the poop quite well. It was one of our genius moments. In the next post I will cover how often we do wash, nighttime diapers, and the transition from newborn to infant. Until then take a look how cute my little man looks in his cloth diaper. Somehow I don’t think the effect would be as precious with disposables. The orange gave Wellington a nice pop of color! Here he is at four months. We called him our little Buddha.
Since our daughter, Isla, was not quite as chunky, she used the Thirsties for a couple weeks as an infant. Here she is at one-day old while she cuddles with her auntie.
