About a month before my due date with my second daughter, my doula offered a little class about cloth diapers. I didn't think I was interested but after the presentation I was hooked. There are so many considerations other than the cost savings that I didn't even know about or consider.
All across the Internet you can find information about why to cloth diaper. I think some people (but not all) get turned off because they think only "tree huggers" cloth diaper or it doesn't make sense because they can afford disposable diapers so why buy reusable diapers. Both my husband and I are accountants, I drive an SUV (that even takes premium), we would both describe ourselves as conservative so I definitely don't think that we fall into any of the stereotypical cloth diapering categories. So...
I would say that the number one reason that I cloth diaper is because of all of the chemicals in disposable diapers. My daughters both have very sensitive skin and we constantly fought diaper rash when they were in disposables. My older daughter would get bright red, cracked and bleeding diaper rash constantly. We would have to keep her constantly slathered in diaper cream just to keep the rashes at bay. I went through numerous tubs and brands of creams while we used disposables. For my younger daughter, we used disposable for her first month of life (and I was OK with this). It wasn't until she had diaper rash so bad that we had to buy prescription (read $35!) rash cream to get it to clear up. After it was clear, I switched her to cloth and she hasn't had a single instance of diaper rash since then.
The second reason that I cloth diaper is because I hate waste. My doula told me that the average child will go through 7,500 disposable diapers before they potty train and this was such a shock to me. We have always recycled, but other than that we don't have a lot of green practices (did I mention the big SUV?) and I would not consider myself super conscientious about the environment. So if I don't consider myself very green, why is this a contributing factor for me? Well, because I HATE wasting. Wasting anything (money, food, gas, time) drives me crazy. The thought of 7,500 diapers (that is per child, if we have 3-4 children that is between 21,500 and 29,000 diapers) sitting in a landfill just makes me sick. Plus if you go back to the cost, it's also just a wast of money! I think that the picture below of the store front at The Giggling Green Bean says it all.
The last reason I cloth diaper is the cute factor. I put this as #3 on my list because it isn't the main driver for why I cloth diaper but it is the main driver for my cloth diaper buying obsession. For my girls I have always had little diaper covers for when they wear dresses because disposable diapers are ugly. Now I don't have to worry about any covers, because half of the time the diapers are cuter than they covers. Plus I have one in each color any possible pattern to match any possible outfit. I am a sucker for when new prints or colors come out, but thankfully I have gotten my spending under control (my very generous husband did give me a monthly diaper budget though). My next project just might have to be starting a local chapter of Diaper Buying Anonymous (DBA).
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