Cloth Diapering: Looking Back

We’re almost done with toilet training. Hopefully I didn’t jinx it by saying that! Our youngest, at four,  is pretty much accident free in the daytime; she’s still wearing cotton training pants, but that’s it. And she’s wearing disposable training pants at night because I have yet to find cloth training pants that work for nighttime and that kids will actually wear without crying.

But all this time, almost ten years now, we’ve been using cloth diapers and training pants. We started with our eldest before it was even trendy among the green set. My mom had used cloth diapers, and I saw no reason why we couldn’t do it, too.  I didn’t have any other fancy reason for it; it just seemed instinctively the right thing to do.

There weren’t any fancy velcro-fastening diapers and diaper covers when I was a kid, so I didn’t realize they existed at first. I planned to get plain white Gerber diapers and plastic pants.  We looked into a diaper service too, and since we were living in an apartment that seemed like a good way to start. My parents gave us the first month of diaper service.

Suzy came early, so we didn’t have the diaper service delivery yet. We used up the pack of disposable diapers from the hospital, and started with the Gerber diapers. I was amazed when she wet right through them, constantly and completely. And when we got the diaper service diapers, they were thicker, but she still went through those quickly – and we had the added challenge of pinning through the thick diapers. Fortunately, the diaper service also offered diaper cover rental – the kind that fasten with velcro, and we soon switched to those.

As time went on, we learned about different kinds of diaper covers, Snappis, fitted diapers, and all-in-one diapers. For our second baby, we bought some of these, and they did make diapering easier and more fun, with pretty patterns and designs.  We restocked for our third too, as some of the older diapers began to move on to their second life as cleaning rags.

Now many people, including celebrities, use cloth diapers, and you can find hundreds, perhaps thousands, of fabrics and styles on the internet.  And we’re moving on from baby and toddlerhood, which is a little sad.

But we’ve gained a lot from our time with cloth diapers. We’ve saved money not buying disposables. We also became connected to a whole movement of people seeking greener lifestyles. Through the cloth diapering community, we learned about living a less disposable lifestyle in general. We now also use cloth napkins, cloth kitchen towels, and cloth cleaning rags. I use a wet washcloth on my Swiffer instead of a disposable wet wipe. We have reusable containers instead of plastic bags.

We’re not fanatical about it. And we haven’t gone as far as using cloth toilet wipes for the whole family, which some people do. But I think we’re living better now, all because of that choice we made ten years ago to use cloth diapers.

Cloth Diapering Resources

http://diaperpin.com

http://thediaperhyena.com

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/naturalmom/ / CC BY 2.0