Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Why we decided to cloth diaper!!

Well when I first got pregnant we started buying disposables. Not but like 1 box a month because the cost adds up quick. Please keep in mind we only did this two months then forgot. (It happens!) Well it wasn't until we moved into our current place and got internet that I by some miracle found myself looking cloth diapers. (please don't ask me how because I really don't know nor do I remember) At first I was like "No, not for me." but as the night (I remember coming across them at night and I don't sleep well at night) went by I started getting more and more curious. It had to have been like 2:30 am when I decided to call it a day. The next day I started looking more and more into it. YouTube and Google and blogs and cloth groups on Facebook. I tried to find out everything I could before I brought it up to my husband. He worked in a nursing home so I wasn't sure if it would intrigue him or disgust him, but I figured that I better know as much as possible before asking him about it. When he got home from work I felt I had a pretty good understanding about them. So I casually asked him what his thoughts on cloth diapers were. He said he wasn't too sure about them, he only knew about the pin kind. So I told him that I was looking into them and told him all the reasons why I felt it was a good thing to do. He used disposables on his son and saw the cost and decided he wouldn't mind giving it a shot. But a bigger question arrived. Buy them or make them. Here are the reason that we will cloth diaper.


Number 1: Cheaper!!!!!
I say they are cheaper because every site I went to had a break down on the prices. I'm going to be making my own diapers and my own detergent (I make my own laundry detergent for our clothes but it has sent crystals in it which isn't good for cloth diapers.) I worked it out and for one load of diapers the soap cost would be $0.04 a load. Which is great!

To calculate everything I went to this site http://www.groceryalerts.ca/cloth-vs-disposable-diaper-calculator/ I put in that we would use Huggies or Pampers at $0.25 a diaper and would buy a $30 Diaper Genie. I put in that she wouldn't potty train until 36 months (you never know with kids) which did make my cloth diaper price go up a little. Now I know that this is just an estimate because I could find coupons for the disposables and I will be hang drying the diapers. For cloth diapers it would cost me $703.00 and for disposables it would cost $1982.00. For the total cost of buying the cloth diapers I included what it would cost for the wipes too since I am doing cloth wipes but for disposables it didn't so I estimated that we would spend about $15 dollars a month so that brought the disposables cost up to about $2522.00. That gives us a saving (again roughly) $1819.00. MAN THAT SOUNDS GREAT!!!! That right there sealed the deal. HEHE!

Number 2: Chemicals!! YUCK!
Many of you know that disposables have little crystals/beads that soak up the pee. That's why when they go on the baby they are trim and when the baby pees they puff up. All the chemical in it can cause a CHEMICAL BURN! No thank you. I'm not sure if it would happen to my baby but if there is a chance I'd like to avoid it.

Number 3: Cloth is CUTE!
My personal opinion is a fluffy butt is very cute. I prefer it over a trim diaper tush. Especially when the baby is starting to walk and crawl. So ADORABLE!

Number 4: It is supposed to help with not getting diaper rash
Now I've never had a kid so I'm not sure how often they get a diaper rash. I'm not sure if they get them more with cloth or disposables. I've heard that many parents that switch from disposables to cloth have less rashes. This could be from many different reasons. In a disposable people tend to leave the child in it for too long in my opinion (if you leave your kid in a diaper for more than two hours I'm not telling you that I feel your a bad mom. I know we ALL parent different, what I feel may not be the same for you and what I do may not be right for you. And again I've never had a kid so I may decide to leave her in a diaper for 3 to 4 hours depending on the diaper and I may be a diaper changing freak I'm not sure yet and still have time to figure out what works best for MY child and our lifestyle.) and that can cause a rash. They may be allergic to something in the disposables. Their sensitive skin may not like the fabric of the disposables. It all depends on your child.

Number 5: I know what chemicals are going on my kids bum.
With cloth diapers you know that there isn't any chemicals in the diaper. And I'm making my own detergent so I know what is going to be washing the chemical free diapers that I'm putting on my kids butt. I've also made my own cloth diaper safe rash cream (because I know rash can happen) It just makes me and my husband feel better knowing what will be going on our daughters bum.

Thank you for reading and I hope this helped if you want to make the switch the cloth or just want to know a little bit more about it. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask me. I've done lots of research and still am, and I'd like to try to answer any questions you may have!

Mikaela