I have an ongoing debate in my head about diapers. What is truly better: cloth or disposable?When I was pregnant, I was hell-bent going with cloth. I bought 20 diapers: a few bumGenius with the balance Happy Heinys. I'm a semi-tree hugger so the thought of all those diapers going into the landfill makes my heart wrench. Ya sure disposables can go into the green bin here in Toronto, but I'm not convinced that is the best argument. Diapers are made of plastic and bleached cotton -- is that really good for our green bins? How does it break down? Not to mention the amount of water goes into processing the diapers.
On the other hand, are cloth diapers that much better? I did some research and found that when it comes to cost, cloth is better. I think you end up saving something like $1,200 or something for one child. Plus, you can use them for other kiddies down the road. The debate comes in with the water it takes to wash them and depending on what type of cloth you get, there is still the issue of bleached cotton. BLAH.
When Leo was born, I used disposables for the first week or so because I didn't want the trouble of washing the meconium off the cloth diapers. Then I moved the cloth. I was so excited to be using them until they started to leak. Leo basically leaked through every diaper which means not only were we cleaning more diapers, we were doing mega loads of clothes. After 2 weeks, we decided to go back to disposables. I thought maybe it had something to do with Leo's skinny legs so I thought I would give him a bit of time to chunk up.
I opted for the Huggies Pure & Natural diapers (they're made with organic, unbleached cotton - but check out this review of them here) and PC Green Diapers. I was happy with both and we weren't doing as much laundry, but the diapers were piling up in the trash which made us sick. So today I decided to try the cloth again. It's been probably 3 weeks since we used them so I thought they might work this time. NOPE. Still leaking. Ugh. I'm trying one more thing -- doubling up the inserts and then I'll likely give up. I hate the thought of spending all that money on diapers only to have them not work for us but I'm not sure what else to do.
What do you use on your little one? Have you had any success with cloth diapering?
Posts
Hiya, we use cloth diapers almost exclusively. We always had leaks with our pocket diapers, so I put them in storage. During the day we use prefolds with covers - rarely any leaks. They are cheap and easy to clean, and not hard to get the hang of. At night we use Sandy's bamboo fitteds with covers - never any leaks (they hold so much pee - Hudson sleeps for up to 10 hours in them, never a problem). On outings we sometimes use our BumGenius Organic all-in-ones, but you have to make sure the legs are turned in. I'd recommend maybe investing in a whack of prefolds and a couple of covers. They'll last a long time and then can be reused as rags when baby outgrows them! Also, when we do use disposables, we really like the SeventhGeneration diapers (available at Loblaws in the organic section). Hope that helps!
ReplyDeleteErin