So, a good friend of mine is pregnant with her first child right now. We met through CrossFit Rife in Virginia Beach during a paleo challenge. She was my partner at my first WOD outside of our box, she scared the hell out of me for being so strong in such a small package, but she's pushed me to work harder every day whether or not she knew it. Now that she's started the journey towards motherhood, I couldn't be more excited to give her all the information that I can. Now, I never finished up my doula cert (you know how life goes and gets in the way) but I did study all of the recommended reading, watched every documentary I could, bought more books, researched more information and I just want to explode with all of this knowledge. She's already sat through a number of my "oh my God, let me unload everything I can think of on this topic" conversations, but I thought that maybe I could start doing a "Dear Misty" series of posts, offering up info to be left alone or taken. The other day we got into a half hour long texting discussion on the topic of diapers and whether to go disposable or cloth, super fancy or cheap disposable, and the ups and downs of everything in between. So, let's start there!
We like to work out and eat healthy...we also like to eat donuts! This was the night our diet challenge ended, oh man, that donut tasted good!!
Dear Misty,
When I first found out that I was pregnant, there was no question of whether or not we were going to be using disposable diapers. I didn't know anything about cloth diapers except for the fact that you inevitably would have to come in contact with urine or baby poop and I had zero interest in even thinking about washing them in the same equipment I use for my precious, comfy sweatshirts. I saw blog posts on Pinterest that advertised the idea of stocking up on diapers as early as you could to try and save money. I started my registry and put boxes of diapers on there, going with Pamper's Swaddlers, they seemed pretty comfy and soft so I figured they must be the best choice. If you shop at Babies 'R Us on the regular, you get nifty coupons that you can use for discounts on all sorts of things, but you can almost always count on getting a $5 off coupon for a giant box of diapers. I can't even begin to tell you the way that I was hoarding giant value size boxes of diapers in Ryker's room. It drove Vic insane.
We stuck with Pampers Swaddlers for a good amount of time. If you check out Amazon.com you can great deals through Amazon Mom or Subscribe and Save. If you are going the disposable route, definitely look into using Subscribe and Save, because they show up once a month (or however often you set up the delivery) and you get a discount for doing such. It starts at 5%, but if you can think of at least five things that you need delivered on a regular basis you get 20% off, which makes your diapers crazy cheap.
Eventually, after scrolling through pages of diapers and seeing the price per diaper, we decided to switch to Luvs. We had received a box of Luvs as a gift and had given them a try, I mean, they were just chillin' there so why not? I fell in love... at first. During the day they were the shit; they held up, didn't leak, and they were cheap, which are really the only requirements I had for loving a diaper. Then Ryker started sleeping through the night on his belly and he wet through every single one. That's it, Luvs were out and we switched between the Pampers Cruisers and the Huggies equivalent.
Then, one day I decided we needed to go to Diaper Junction here in Virginia Beach to get some baby leg warmers to protect Ryker's knees while he was crawling on our unfinished concrete floors. I got sucked into all the cute fluff and had one of the employees give me a cloth diaper presentation. That was the beginning of the end of our disposable use and we made the switch a few weeks later. But, before we get into why I like cloth, let's talk business about disposables. Here are some main points that I would offer when considering disposables and what to look for.
1. The cheap and/or generic ones are going to skimp on the fluffiness and the gel-type stuff inside. This is what makes the more expensive ones cost more, but it's also what makes them work better. Disposable diapers can advertise 12+hours of protection because they are filled with chemicals that absorb liquid. Go get a diaper and dunk it in water, ever seen a baby in a diaper in a pool? It fills up instantly and looks crazy. Those chemicals are what make them work. If you don't want to pay as much, then you get less chemicals and you're going to need to change them more often. You don't want your baby to have chemicals on their butt, then you're going to change more diapers. It is those chemicals make disposable diapers work.
2. On the note of no or less chemicals in a diaper, thinking of brands like The Honest Company, the same thing I said a minute ago applies. Once I got pregnant, I started my slide into Hippie-ville and I try to make as many changes towards a more natural, sustainable life as I can. We ordered the trial pack of Honest Company products. Their diapers are SUPER adorable, and they are supposed to be easier on the Earth and easier on your baby's butt. Well, they suck. They are just as cute in person, but in my opinion they are unbelievably inferior in the absorbent factor. They are super thin and don't have the same chemicals, which goes back to what I said above. I've heard of good reviews and people that love them, but really, they are already expensive and I had to change him more often, which alone makes them more expensive since you end up running through them. On the better for the Earth side of the argument, in all reality once you stick that diaper in a plastic bag and tie it up and send it off to the landfill you are dooming it to hanging around for a LONG time. You could put an apple in a plastic bag and the lack of oxygen and being inside a plastic bag is going to keep it around for a bit, and either way that plastic bag isn't going anywhere either, so you see how the "we degrade faster" diapers are a little silly? Great idea, but just not effective enough for me to be sold on them.
Now, we've made the switch completely to cloth and I love it. Are there days that I just want to chuck the whole $25 diaper in the trash because it's gross? Definitely. But, 99% of the time it isn't so bad and I love seeing that cute little but with his colorful, fluffy diaper. I love that I am not literally throwing away a ton of money and giant bags of trash every month. The idea that all plastic that has ever been produced still exists got me thinking, and between the bags for our Diaper Dekor and the plastic tabs on diapers, we were tossing a lot of plastic trash. Cloth diapers make me feel better, so there you go!
We use GroVia All in Two's, so we snap an insert in place, which means we don't have to change the outer shell every single time, unless he leaks onto it or gets poop on it. We don't have to do that too often because of pee, but with him wriggling around everywhere, he usually will get poop on the shell. We have one of their package deals, so we got 12 shells and 24 inserts with 6 boosters. You can slide the boosters into the insert if they are a heavy wetter. They've gotten us through the night thus far without any issues. The best part about the GroVia diapers? They have snaps all over the place that allow you to use the same set of diapers as they grow.
We fell in love with Bac-Out, a pretreater, stain fighter and all around wonderful smelling cleaning product. It kept the diapers from staining or ever stinking, even while they were waiting around to get washed. It took me about three weeks to figure out why Ryker was getting horrible diaper rash from his cloth diapers, we were using a ton of Bac-Out and it wasn't all rinsing out in the wash. The live bacteria and lime extract was literally attacking Ryker's butt. As soon as we ran out we stopped using it. I would still highly recommend the product, but for the love of that cute little baby tush, use an extra rinse cycle and get it all out of the diaper! We do a rinse cycle, then a normal wash cycle set to Hot/Cold, with and extra rinse added to that one at the end. We've just made the switch to All Free and Clear with that and I also started adding Baking Soda to the rinse, our diapers are super clean and smell good and we've had no leaking issues!
There's my diaper discussion! I wish we had started with cloth sooner, they are definitely more cost effective if you start from the get go. At the rate we used to buy diapers, it will take about eight months for us to pay off the initial cloth investment. I hope this helps! Oh, and this is all my opinion, so I hope I didn't offend or bother anyone. Let me know if this brings up any questions! I'll look into anything you come up with.
Here are some links to get you to some of the products I mentioned:
On a little side note, my site is set up with affiliate links, so if anything is purchased from a link on my site I do get a small incentive, just thought I should let you know!
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