A Long Road to Cloth

I vividly remember telling my husband within days of getting pregnant that I had made our first parenting decision, we would NOT be using cloth diapers. I had seen some others using the prefold diapers with plastic pins & pants, I had never heard of the modern day cloth diaper. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to have to do any more with dirty diapers beside throw them away. And that is exactly what I did when the baby was born, throw diapers away. Then more diapers and more diapers…

A friend who’s baby was about the same age as ours told me they had made the switch to cloth. She showed me some of her pocket diapers and while I wasn’t grossed about them, I did think they looked way too complicated. With my curiosity sparked, I did a Google search, was completely overwhelmed, put it at the back of my mind & continued throwing away diapers (and money). Fast forward a few more months and I began to think about cloth again. This time, I asked daycare if she had ever used them. She said no, but that she would be willing to use them as long as they were easy. I was interested by this time, but my husband was not even slightly interested in trying cloth.
A few more months passed and our little guy started wetting so heavily through the night he would wake up soaked. We even invested in the overnight diapers with no success. The baby had been sleeping through the night since he was three months old & all of a sudden he was waking up every night needing his diaper, jammies & sheets changed. Out of desperation, I begged my husband to try cloth, even if it was just for nights. I talked to the only 2 people I knew that used cloth and got advice. I told hubby about how you could customize the absorbency to help keep baby dry. I decided to try the Kawaii Overnight diapers & figured for the price, I would only be out the cost of a box of the disposable overnight diapers. Of course I am never satisfied with just going half in, so I also ordered a dozen BumGenius 4.0 pocket diapers to try out as well.

Once the diapers came in and were prepped, I spent a few days getting used to them & making sure they actually worked. When I was ready, I took a diaper & a wetbag I had made to show my daycare lady. This was probably 6 months after our original conversation. I showed her they would be very easy to use, would come all ready & all she had to do was throw the dirty diaper in the bag instead of the trash. She agreed and so far has had no issues.

I am happy to report that in the 8 months since we have started using cloth, we have not had a wet night yet. We stuff the over night diapers with a microfiber insert & a Joeybunz hemp insert.

In the end, convincing my husband took the most work, but I promised him everything would remain the same for him. I still expected him to change diapers, but I would take care of washing & stuffing the diapers. He has been very helpful and since he works from home will start the extra rinse on the washer or hang diapers on the line on a nice day and even installed a DIY diaper sprayer & will spray off the dirty diapers. I knew I had him hooked when he asked me one day if we would be taking “real diapers” or “fake diapers” on a weekend trip. At a wedding recently I had a friend ask me about cloth as she was trying to convince her husband to use cloth for their 2nd baby. My hubby jumped right in singing the praises of cloth & saying it’s not nearly as awful as he thought it would be. I couldn’t have been more proud.

Even though it took us a long time to take the dive into the world of cloth diapering, we are very happy with our decision & look forward to using cloth (and saving money!) right away with our next baby.

Megan N. is a full-time working mama of a handsome & busy 19 month old boy. She looks forward to using cloth diapers from the start with their next baby, due the end of February & not wasting any more money on disposable diapers!