Cloth vs. Disposable Diapers

This is an exciting day! I ordered cloth diapers for our little Bean! Not everyone is as excited about this as I am, including my husband. Personally, I can't wait until my diapers arrive and we can get started. I couldn't fall asleep last night thinking about diapers...

I decided to go with GroVia diapers (formerly Grobaby). I ordered the all in two (AI2). What is an AI2? It is a waterproof shell that one snaps a cotton "soaker" inside. In order to change the diaper, just snap out the soaker and snap in a new one. I found a good deal on bumritediapers. I ordered 12 shells, 24 soakers, 8 boosters, 2 large wet bags, 1 medium wet bag, GroVia diaper balm, a few backs of bio soakers, a pack of bio liners, and a toilet sprayer. This cost us close to $500, but this should last through potty training. By my calculations if the Beanster is potty trained at two years, we will at least break even. If he is potty trained at three years, we will save a considerable amount of money! It may be possible some of these supplies could be used for a second baby. I was impressed that the owner of Bumrite called me to discuss diapers! This company is a home business run by a cloth diapering mom in Napa, CA.

Why switch from disposables to cloth, you ask? Well, I debated about this before Bean was born and did research on both. I found there may be some links to chemicals in disposable diapers and infertility (although this hasn't been proven that I know of). I was also concerned about Maika's scrotum temperature being too high in disposables that don't breathe (graphic, but this was/is a concern for me). Another reason is that it seems every time I turn around I hear of someone who has cancer. Could it be due to all the chemicals in our health/beauty products? We decided to go with disposables because we travel a lot and thought with the plastic cover cloth might not be that breathable after all.

Disposable diapering has been going OK, but I still have concerns about chemicals in the diapers. Mr. Bean often pees through his diaper and I wipe a lot of diaper gel beads off of him. I have also looked at some cloth diapers and feel they are more breathable than disposables.

I was actually trying to decide if Costco diapers or diapers from Amazon were more cost effective, when I found GroVia diapers on Costco's web site. When comparing the cost, it seemed like maybe the cloth diapers would save us some money and give me a little more peace of mind. I also like the idea of not filling up landfills with lots of diapers. To sum up, we are going with cloth for three reasons 1). health of our baby 2). cost and 3). environmental concerns. I understand not everyone wants to cloth diaper and most babies will probably be completely healthy in disposables. This just seems like the right choice for us and is something I feel good about doing. I will let you know how it goes!