I don't know how many people who read my blog know, but we've done our research (well mostly me, but I presented it all to Nick too and he is on board 110%) on diapers and have been planning on using cloth ones since before I got pregnant. I had a friend who used gDiapers with the cloth inserts and loved them and so I looked into it and got hooked on the idea. Come to find out another one of my friends who had a baby this past summer also chose to go with cloth diapers, but a different system and she had the same sort of experience I had while researching the idea. I've sort of been catapulted to the point that I have no good reason to use disposables as our main diaper and every reason to use cloth.
I figure I will be at home anyway with our kids so cloth will not be a problem as far as the upkeep of an extra load of laundry every other day or every two days. It is a great money saver, and on top of that it's environmentally friendly (which I'm not one to be super duper concerned about, but that's sort of a bonus on top of all the other benefits). And for those of you who may not be familiar with disposable diapers, don't let the idea fool you, I've used them long enough through my year at the daycare in the baby room that disposables do not equal never touching poo. No matter what diapers are used, moms (and probably dads) will come in contact with poo at some point.
Now for those of you thinking this sounds totally weird or you're thinking I'm going to change my mind, it's important to keep in mind that cloth diapers have come a long long LONG way, even in the past 5 to 10 years. There are all sorts of options and I have done a lot of researching on all of the different types and brands of cloth diapers. I've been looking at product designs, styles, prices, written reviews and customer reviews and demonstrations on youtube. What you need to know for the rest of this post is that the basic type of modern cloth diapers are All-In-One's, often shortened to AIO's, which are a design that you do not insert any cloth because it's all sewed up inside the diaper, and then there are Pocket Diapers which have an open pocket for you to stuff inserts in yourself and then pull them out (the advantage to these ones is that they dry faster than AIO's since they are taken apart), and then those are either sized in XS, S, M, L, or they can be a one size fits all that uses adjustable snaps & elastic pieces to size it and usually those fit babies/toddlers from 7 to 35lbs. This chart here has pretty good information on the different types if you want to know more about them.
At first, I was leaning towards the gDiaper system because that was the first modern cloth diaper system I looked at and it looked like it fit exactly what I wanted. This system is a little different than most because it's not an All-in-One or a Pocket Diaper technically. It would probably be categorized as a pocket because you have to put inserts in yourself, but not in a pocket. These have an outer shell, and an elastic liner that snaps inside that. You put either a flushable insert or a cloth insert in the elastic liner. I was interested in these because there is less laundry involved (ideally). You could use just two shells and liners during the day and only change out the inserts. You'd only have to wash those instead of the entire shell/pocket part like you do in other cloth diapers. However, I've been looking around for a few months and these ones just seem to have a mixed bag of reviews that have made me uneasy about getting them. It seems like these ones are harder for people to get used to fitting correctly on their babies to keep out leaks. Commenters seem to either really love or really hate the product. Basically, the system looks great and I'm sure I'd be able to get the hang of it, but when you get down to it it seems like the least liked out of all the ones I looked at and I don't want to take a 50/50 chance on a $500 of loving or hating it. I also wanted to keep in mind though that realistically we won't be the only ones that have to get used to the system. If we ever have family or friends watch our kids, we'll want them to be able to use whatever system we choose just as easily. So, I started looking at some of the other options available and looking at ones that have better reviews.
After today, I am pretty certain we'll end up going with the FuzziBunz diapers - specifically I am going to go with the one size fits all. Oh, and FuzziBunz is a pocket diaper. This brand seem very user friendly, the reviews seem to be unanimous that they are an awesome diaper. I really like the adjustable elastic option this one has for the one size fits all diaper. It even comes with replacement elastic that is easily replaced without any sewing. That was a huge selling point for me because we want to be able to use these for several of our kids so knowing replacing the elastic is as simple as sliding it out and putting a new one in is great news. We could make our roughly $600 purchase of diapers last for 4+ kids, whereas typical costs for diapers runs about $1200 for 2 years of disposables.
Overall, I'm super excited to start using these in, believe it or not, 5-1/2 months! I know cloth diapers used to be the plain white pre-folds that needed pins and often leaked, but these new ones are all so really well designed and just as easy or easier to use as disposables (no stinky trash to take out is a nice thought). The only difference is I'll do an extra load of laundry every other day and stuff diapers once they're dry (but like I said, I'll be at home anyway so I can do that while the baby is sitting next to me). It'll save us a ton of money on diapers over the years and if you think about it, diaper cream too will be pretty much unnecessary so we won't be spending money on that either or replacing onesies that get explosion stains on them (explosions and leaks in most cloth diapers are fairly uncommon).
We'll probably use some disposables for the first week or so to ease into the cloth diapering habit since we'll have to learn how to use them (and they might not fit at first either), and then we'll likely end up using disposables on our trip to England next year too, but other than that, we're planning on just using the cloth ones. I can't wait to get far enough along in this pregnancy to where we'll be able to order the diapers! It is one of the highlights I'm looking forward to.
