Cloth Diapers or Disposables?

There are lots of different styles, sizes, brands, cute patterns and accessories to explore. Some families are totally dedicated to cloth diapering and others do a combination of both cloth and disposables. There are special wet bags to put your wet cloth diapers in when you are out and about and diaper bins made just for cloth diapers too.

If you are planning to use cloth, you may wish to try different styles and types to find what works best for you. Be sure to have some tiny newborn cloth diapers if you want to start right away. If you are feeling overwhelmed by it all, consider going to a cloth diapering 101 class. There are also diapering services or rentals you can look into to try diapers out before buying a large quantity of any one style. Babies also respond differently to different things. So be patient while exploring what works best for your baby too.

On a personal note, I used both cloth and disposables at various stages of our diapering days.

My baby didn’t have rashes or reactions to either cloth or disposables. I tried a lot of different brands. In the end our favorite cloth diapers were the Bum Genius all-in-one style. They fit my baby well and they were convenient for our lifestyle. I could easily toss them in the washer and dryer. There were no inserts or additional pieces needed and they kept all the pee and poo contained nicely. I liked the simplicity of these. Ask any cloth diapering mother and she’ll probably have her favorite… which might be totally different than mine.

We eventually discovered that we needed to use disposables at night, especially once baby began sleeping for longer stretches. Some families are able to double up with extra cloth inserts and make it through the night with no problem. For us, there were lots of annoying leaks and we accepted the fact that using disposables at night worked.

Eventually the days of inoffensive breastmilk poop came to an end.

Once my son was eating lots of solid foods and making super stinky, yucky, giant poops, we did not last much longer in the cloth diapering camp. Scraping, rinsing and spraying poop off diapers into the toilet before tossing them into the diaper bin was a job that quickly lost its appeal. We began to use our cloth diapers less and less and eventually we were only using disposables. But not without putting in a very valiant effort! I truly commend the parents that cloth diaper for their entire diapering journey. Many of them really do have an easy time and it’s no big deal! There are some great diapering groups and resources available to those who choose to do so.

As far as disposables go, with baby #1 we were all about Pampers. They were just our favorite brand for keeping baby dry and we never felt satisfied with any other brand. When baby #2 came around (five years later) and now as Costco shoppers, we tried using the Kirkland brand of diapers. I was happily surprised to find that they measured up to Pampers in my experience.