Goodbye disposable, hello cloth!

Matt and I knew we wanted to cloth diaper before we even started trying to get pregnant.  We know many families who cloth diaper so we've been able to watch them over the last few years to see how it went.  I'll be honest, when my best friend first told me she was going to cloth diaper her kids I thought it was gross and there was no way I would ever do that.  But after watching her with her two kiddos, along with the other families we know who use cloth, I realized that it's really not that different than disposables.  And in the long run, using cloth is cheaper than using disposables because you can reuse diapers for more than one child.  Then when you're finished with diapers, you can sell your cloth ones.  I won't buy used, as it kinda weirds me out, but a lot of people will.  And usually you can get fairly close to what you paid for a diaper when you sell it.  We're mainly cloth diapering for economical reasons, but the environmental impact of using cloth is pretty great, too.  Do you know how long it takes for one disposable diaper to decompose in a landfill?  500 years.  That's a LONG time. 

We started cloth diapering on Monday of this week.  We had planned on starting sooner, once we ran out of the few small packages of disposables we had and Eleanor's umbilical cord stump fell off, but with all the issues with feeding we bought one more giant pack of disposables to use until feeding got figured out so that was one less thing on my plate with Matt going back to work.  So we are on day 3 of cloth and doing great!  Right now we are using mostly prefolds, which is what most people think of when they think cloth diapers.  It's the cheapest way to cloth diaper a newborn.  We are just using the fabric with a plastic snap and a cover over it.  Like this:

(courtesy of Goo.gle Ima.ges)

We also have a few Lil Joe.y diapers, which are much more like a disposable.  These are more expensive, so I only have 4.  They look like this:

(courtesy of Goo.gle Ima.ges)

Eventually we will move to one-size diapers.  These diapers will grow with Eleanor and we will be able to use them until she is potty-trained.  However, it will be a while before she's ready to fit into these.  Even the prefolds and Lil Joe.ys look huge on her tiny body right now!  OS (one-size) diapers have snaps that allow you to make them shorter/taller.  Most of our diapers have velcro closures like disposables, though a few have snap closures (like the Lil Jo.eys above).  Here's a picture of our current "stash" of mostly one-size diapers.  Most of our diapers are Bum.Gen.ius, with a few other brands thrown in that I've found on sale (Swa.ddlbe.es, Bum.Cheeks, and Hap.pyHeinys).  The polka dotted fabric on the left is one of our wet bags, and the white things on the far left are extra inserts for added absorbancy.

Today I ordered a few different brands in size smalls, since miss Eleanor is so small and the OS diapers will swallow her.  I'm pretty sure even when she's big enough weight-wise (which she almost is) the diapers would come below her knees!  As it is, the prefolds and covers come almost to her knees and are making the newborn size clothes a little small because they make her little bottom fluffy :)  I'm excited to try out some different brands and figure out what really works for us.  I'd mostly bought Bum.Genius because I found the best deals on them and they're what most of our friends use.  The ones I ordered today are a few different brands that I'm excited to try out.  They should all be here by this weekend, so we'll see how those work.  They're supposed to be good up to 15 pounds, and by then hopefully Eleanor has filled out enough that the OS diapers start to fit her. 

Plus, as an added bonus, cloth diapers are so cute! I mean, look at that owl print!