Our Decision to Cloth Diaper.

Warning: If you are not interested in baby related products, you may want to skip this post. :)

I mentioned in my last post that I have been researching away. I love to research, and would research all day if I could. Finding a new product that has rave reviews is like music to my ears. So, when I stumbled across "modern" cloth diapers I was instantly intrigued and set about to do hours of research.

Many of you are probably imagining the "old" days, when moms (and dads) used something similar to this with some sort of plastic pant as a cover.


(Photo taken from Green Mountain Diapers.)

No worries. I imagined the exact same thing, and thought to myself, "Who in the world still does THAT?"

That being said though, I was interested to see what was on the market today. Since I had read that disposable diapers take anywhere from 100-500 years to decompase and was also aware of the loads of chemicals that go into most major brand disposables, I was already planning on doing something more eco-friendly. (Seventh Generation disposables, etc.) Since we live overseas most of the year, I knew this would mean having to find an eco-friendly store wherever we may be headed and could also translate into one possibly time consuming and expensive endeavor.

Enter the world of modern cloth diapers. I was overwhelmed at first. All the chat boards had new lingo that I had never heard of in my life. Flats, pre-folds, fitteds, pockets, aios, one-size, PUL covers, wool soakers... it was enough to make my head start spinning.

Eventually I figured out this new vocabulary. There are countless options out there and the prices range from one or two dollars for a pre-fold to over thirty dollars for a top of the line all in one diaper.

I decided on something mid-range as pre-folds just don't sound too appealing. Maybe I would get the hang of it, but if we are going to spend the money on this new adventure, I want to make sure we go with something that will work for us.

This is one of the diapers I decided on. A Bumgenius all-in-one. The closest type of diaper to a disposable you can get. And, sooo much cuter than disposable diapers with silly cartoons plastered on them!



Check out the inside.


(Both of the above photos taken from Cottonbabies.)

The bonus to cloth diapering, from what I have read at least, is they really do a much better job at containing blowouts and most babies don't get diaper rash either. I was sold... and surprisingly it didn't take too much to sell John on the idea either. He even agreed to help with the laundry. ;)