Cloth Diapering Orientation

Before I begin, let me just say this: never take your body for granted. After becoming so unaccustomed to caffeine, that half-caff latte from 4 pm is still keeping me up. Hence why I'm blogging at 11:45 at night. At this point last night I was a walking zombie. Sigh...

On a more exciting front, today Jake and I went to a cloth diapering (CD) orientation at a local CD store, Happy Baby Company. They specialize in CD, but also other "natural" baby products and styles, such as baby carriers/wearers, wooden toys, natural fiber clothing, etc.  I had been looking at this store's website for a long time as I've become more interested in possibly cloth diapering, and I was thrilled when my friend, Courtney, asked us to join her for the free orientation they had.

If you are as fortunate as us to have such a store nearby and you can take an orientation at, DO IT! Modern cloth diapers are nothing like the large white panels and pins of by gone days. You have prefolds, pockets, all-in-ones, all-in-twos, inserts, doublers, covers, fitted--and that doesn't even get to what materials each of these is made of: organic or conventional, hemp, cotton, wool, PUL, microfleece, etc. As you can imagine, the vocabulary associated with the CD world overwhelmed me beyond belief. That's why this orientation was so helpful as we got to see up close and personal the different kinds and brands of CD that are out there. Jake even tried putting a prefold on the baby doll they had there to demonstrate with, and I must say--he did a pretty great job! (if only I had had my camera!!)

We really want to use CD for many reasons. First and foremost is environmental. While we are increasing our water usage by using CD, we're not contributing the estimated 1 TON of waste that EACH CHILD contributes to landfills through disposables. Nor are we contributing material to landfills that takes 500 years to break down! There are also many unregulated chemicals that disposables use in them to increase absorbancy, some which are known carcinogens. Second is economical. For each child, you can spend upward of $2,000 on disposables before potty training. For CD, you can make an initial investment of around $700 for the first child--and then continue to reuse them on future children, sell them to other CD mamas, or give them away to friends. Third, they're adorable. There is a cuteness factor to them that is priceless!

Undeniably, our ability to exclusively use cloth diapers is largely contingent upon where we end up finding childcare. Many daycares have a "no cloth" policy, although we've heard that many folks are successful by bringing in the modern cloth diapers when they ask to show them how simple they really are! The pocket diapers, like this Fuzzibunz One Size,

and all-in-ones are put on and taken off exactly the same way as a disposable is, no extra care needed. They are then tossed into their own "wet bag" for the parent to grab at the end of the day. Why say no to something so simple? Here's to my optimistic side hoping I score on this one!

If, however, the daycare we decide on still says "no cloth," we've decided to do cloth at home anyway. We figure every little bit counts! And I'm not naive enough to say that we'll never use disposables. For long trips and such they're going to be the most convenient. 

CD is certainly not for everyone for a variety of reasons--convenience, lack of laundry facilities, the upfront out-of-pocket expenses, the fear of poop, etc. But we really feel that for our family and our values, and with what we're able to do, this is going to be our best option. I can't wait to increase our stash!!