To Cloth or Not To Cloth

When my husband and I found out we were pregnant with our first my husband immediately jumped on the cloth diaper wagon for environmental reasons. I, on the other hand was so opposed it began our first "parenting war". My one and only experience with cloth diapers was when I lived overseas and worked in a baby hospital. The babies were clothed in muslin material from armpit to tip toe and the smell was enough to knock you on your backside. From that experience on I was determined to diaper the twenty first century way – disposables only (or so I thought).

Nine months after our second child made his great appearance I began questioning my strong beliefs. I sat down and being the Excel spreadsheet woman that I am I calculated the cost that we spent on our first son to get him from newborn to toilet trained and our second son from newborn to the nine month mark and I was shocked! For three plus years of diapers, wipes, and diaper genie refills I was pushing the $3,500 mark (that would be an awesome family vacation had I spent it for that).

I began researching and discovered many benefits to cloth diapering. I discovered that cloth diapering is much more than the first known of muslin material; there were even cute covers to make diapering a fashion statement not just a functional tool. To top it off the cost of cloth diapering from newborn to toilet trained was dramatically less! I presented all my findings to my husband and he gave me the stamp of approval to begin the purchasing of cloth diapers for our second son. Little did we know at that point that the diapers that I was purchasing for number two would soon be able to be passed down to number three!

For economical reasons my diapering stash began small. I had the mindset that I would begin cloth diapering my number two baby and see if I would handle it and then if it was "a go" then I would add to my stash to fit not only number two but number three as well!

My beginner stash consisted of:

• One Planet Wise Large Wet Bag
• One Planet Wise Diaper Pail Liner
• Planet Wise Wipe Pouch with 15 wipes
• Chinese Premium Unbleached Prefolds (Six per pack)
  
• Purchased twelve prefolds
• Tweedle Bugs Diaper Covers (Can purchase seconds which are "cosmetically blemished" for half price off their website)
  
• Purchased four covers
• Rubbermaid trashcan for a wet pail
• BacOut cleaning solution (For eliminating the smellies between washes in the pail)
  
• Dr. Bonner's Pure Castile Soap (Used with distilled water for my wipe solution)
  
• Two spray bottles (one bottle for BacOut and one bottle for wipe solution)
  
• Country Save laundry detergent (Approximately $200 was spent to get me started, if I used my supply for four months I broke even when comparing cloth to disposables.)
  

Thus began my cloth-diapering obsession!

By Andrea Kulow