How did you convince DH to CD?

chillyupnorth

DH is NOT buying into cloth diapering. He is all about doing it the easy way and thinks that I am paranoid about the chemicals in diapers, that the washing machine will get ruined, that our house will smell horrible, blah blah blah... The only thing that got him thinking was hearing that my siblings and I all wore cloth diapers.

Did you have to convince your partner that cloth diapers aren't the devil?  How did you do it? Or did you just do it and let him deal? I am inclined to do it my way and have a stash of disposables on hand so that if hubs wants to change baby he can use one of those (since I have a feeling I will be doing a lot of the changing, not because hubs won't do it, but because I'm a certain amount of anal retentive...).

Magical95

Ultimately? The cost. We want me to SAH and are looking for ways to cost save. As soon as I said that he was on board. The other stuff is just bonuses.

MWoodside

It was the one thing I was really determined to do.  At first he thought I was nuts for sure.  He said he wouldn't change them- I said fine I'll change every diaper b/c it's THAT important to me (even though I knew he was being dramatic).

I printed out a bunch of research about all the awful chemicals in disposable diapers & the side effects.  I signed up for a free class about CDing at our local store & we went together.  After that he was mostly on board.  The timing of the Drymax chemical burns got him totally on board, although I feel horrible for those babies & it's a shame it took that incident to convince him fully.

Bottom line- he loves it now & wouldn't do it any other way.  We are just starting to deal with poop since I was EBF & we've recently introduced solids so that's been an adjustment for him, but he's still 100% on board.  Good luck!

AudreyHpbrn

DH was very opposed to cloth diaper.  We have a lady out in my area that has a little store in her house and does CD parties where she brings several sets and talks through the diapers, etc. 

I went to one of those and then called her to set an appointment up for DH and I to go to her house to meet her and her husband.

She went through all the different types of CDs and DH was allowed to see and touch the diapers and hear from another dad how easy it is.

Well this lady also has a rental program set up where you can rent 3 months of cloth diapers through her for the newborn stage and then 2 weeks of a variety of diapers so we can see which diapers we like best.  This was our compromise.

DH is afraid we will spend all this money on them and then I will decide just to go to disposables and then we are stuck with them.

I have started buying a few without DH's knowledge but what really put him over the "Yes, let's do this" is truly the cost savings.  Knowing we would spend about $600 upfront but save over $2500 over the course of baby's diaper years was convincing enough and the fact that the amount spent on diapers can be resold at approx. 50-60% resale value helped as well.

I would ask around your area to see if there is a cloth diapering store and ask him to be open about learning about it.  If he doesn't after then you will need to compromise or bend.

norman25

SO said no for all the stupid reasons (the ick factor, water costs, smell). I ordered some anyways and slowly made the way towards full time CDing. He went from flat out refusing to touch them to changing them when I'm not around to notice to stuffing pockets with me on the couch. I am a fan of the just doing it anyways approach.

MWoodside

Yes a trial like the pp mentioned is a great idea b/c you can always say "if we hate it we'll stop" even if you know you won't.  I wish I'd done the Jillian's Drawers trial in hindsight.

Nikki1007

I change 99.9% of the diapers, so he really didn't have a say in the matter!  He loves them though.

johnsoar

I didn't give him a choice.  I told him we were going to use cloth diapers and he said fine as long as you wash them.  I change most diapers anyways so I should get to choose what we use.

RayRay007

I let him help me pick out what kind we're going with - fitteds and then pockets. He wasn't concerned about ick, smell, laundry, cost of water or anything - he just wanted it to be easy to change, even though it's costing several times more than, let's say, prefolds.

ETA: DH works in sales for a waste management company and is quite knowledgeable about landfills and recycling. Maybe that's what helped - he's quite into recycling and reducing waste and I didn't have to sell him on those points.

sabrina_nb

I said "I'm tired of spending nearly $100 a month on diapers, let's switch to cloth."  He said, "ok." lol 

barnwife

We got pregnant. I said, "We are going to use cloth diapers." He said, "Okay."

FWIW, though, we both tend to be pretty into being environmentally friendly and the cost savings don't hurt. Plus, neither of us was crazy about wrapping our kid's butt in chemicals.

Finally, he/we knew I'd be changing most of the diapers since I am a SAHM. In our household, he who does something makes the decisions for it. (Another example, I cook dinner, so I get to decide what to eat. He's free to make requests, or even cook, but generally I decide what's on the menu.)

Your washing machine already has poop in it. (Since we all shed skin cells from our anus, we all have poop in our underwear. He does wash his boxers or briefs and you wash your underwear. So there is already some poop there.) And EBF poop is water soluble.

As for the smell, EBF poop doesn't smell. SIL once stood next to our diaper pail (which we don't even keep a cover on...we are that lazy) for about 10 minutes. A while later we were having a discussion about CDs and she mentioned concern over the smell. I asked "Did you smell ours?" She asked where it was. I told her that she stood next to it for about 10 minutes. That's right, she couldn't even tell.

The short answer is that I didn't have to convince DH.

monona9

I guess I'm in the minority here. My DH was the one who initially wanted to use cloth, and I was hesitant because I didn't know much about it. Then DD was born and she had a bad reaction to sposies as a newborn which pushed us to make our first cloth purchase. He doesn't get super excited over them (like I do now) but he likes them and shows them off to his family. Also, we are both environmentally friendly, so it fits in with our lifestyle. Nobody in our families were that surprised by it.

I'd say do what you think is best for your LO and let your DH come around. If you're looking for more info to convince him you can have him watch "the dirties on diapering" on youtube. Good luck!

pixy_stix

I explained to him that we were going to cloth diaper, the cost benefits, showed him a few, and he was on board.  Now he tells everyone about cloth diapering.  He's even taken to carrying one in his car to show off (he's a salesman and talks to a lot of people during the day).  :oD

Allie30

I don't get the smell argument. We clean our cloth diapers more often than we emptied the diaper pail with disposables. Are there TRULY people out there who tromp through the house and outside to throw each and every diaper away in an outside garbage bag? At four a.m. in the depths of winter? God bless them, I guess.

He was really intrigued by the "potty train earlier" possibility. He's not as green as I am so the chemical/landfill thing doesn't interest him as much, and our well-meaning friends who tried to talk us out of it gave us hundreds and hundreds of disposables, so we haven't actually spent any money on those (plus he was really discouraged by a friend who told him that the amount our water bill would go up would cancel out any cost savings). But the potty training thing helped him want to give it a whirl, and once he tried it, he realized it wasn't actually any less convenient than disposables at all (I stuff all the pockets/do all the laundry). 

Basically I ordered a diaper service then gave him the choice of which ones to use. Once you start using CD, you notice how TERRIBLE disposables smell as soon as pee touches them.  You also notice how rough and papery they feel. Once he spent a month with the diaper service, I started investing in pockets/AIOs. There's no law that says you have to buy all your diapers at once.

Baby steps were a really easy way for BOTH of us to handle it. We didn't even start with cloth until her cord stump fell off. Then I would do it just while we were home during the day. Then at night. Then for short trips. Then we added in cloth wipes. I'm starting to brave the whole wet bag CD while out thing.

I've found that there's a learning curve for having a baby around, period. I wasn't afraid of the smell of CDs. I was afraid of baby bodily fluids. As I got used to spit up/leaks/baby drool, I got used to cleaning it out of everything -- heck, she spit up on my FACE today. My husband did too. CDs don't seem any worse than that. 

MermaidNM

We started with 6 BGs to see if we liked it.  Everything went swimmingly.  We both like saving money, plus I do all the washing, so really it is no different for him.  I am slowly building a good stash so it is not a big cash expense all at once.  I have enough to CD full time, but still need  a few more to round us out and because I need some cute ones.

flyer23

It took a LONG time.

I talked it up for months. I really wanted to do the Jillian's Drawers trial, because I thought that would be a good way to ease him into it. Like a pp suggested, I pointed out that if we hated it, I could always send back the diapers (even though I knew I wouldn't hate it).

He was concerned that I wouldn't be good about doing/putting away the diaper laundry, since I'm in charge of regular laundry and do sometimes let it pile up. He finally said that if I was good about doing regular laundry for 2 months, I could do the trial.

I was good about laundry for 2 months. I ordered the trial. He got pissed that I ordered the trial He's just not the kind of person who is fine if I "just do it" -- on the contrary, that makes him really mad.

Anyway, at that point, the diapers were there, so no turning back. I did leave out disposables for him. He used those at first. Gradually, I noticed he was using fewer and fewer disposables. A few months into it, he was using cloth pretty much exclusively.

He still wasn't thrilled about it... until he read the book No Impact Man, which apparently talks about the environmental impact of disposable diapering. I'd talked to him about that topic, too, but he's always more convinced when he hears things from people other than me

Anyway, we've now been CD'ing for 2 years and he's totally and completely onboard.

I did greatly simplify our stash for DS. When DD was in diapers, I had a zillion different types, and it was confusing to DH as to what he should use when. He hated feeling stupid when doing something as simple as a diaper change, and I can't say that I blame him. Now, we have just BG's and prefolds/covers, Easy.

He's also complained in the past when we've had stink issues, so I make sure to be on top of things whenever stink starts to develop, so I can resolve it before he has the chance to complain.

cajungirl0717

I told him about it being cheaper, I explained that it was just as easy, and finally I hid the disposables once we had the CDs so he didn't have a choice. I keep a stash of disposables for the "in case" and daycare has a few.

AJBMD915

I tried the environmental route, DH thought it was pointless for that reason because we're only one family, blah blah blah.  Then I tried the chemicals.  It bothered him a little, but in the end he said that we wore them so they can't be that bad.  In the end it was the cost savings.  When he saw that we were going to spend only $400 to diaper DD from newborn to PT, he was sold.  You spend thousands on disposables.  He even defends our cloth now to his family that makes comments.

Dr.Loretta

To answer your first paragraph:

The washer won't get ruined (um, there will be clothes the kid pees, poops, and pukes on and they're going in the wash; and your underwear has a little poop on it too)

My house has never smelled

To answer your second:

I had to convince him that it was a good idea, but I knew I was doing 95-99% of the diapering, so it wasn't like I had to force him.

When DH changes DD, he almost always uses a disposable diaper. Fine, it's so rare I don't worry about it.

RobinSparkles214

I said "I think that I want to cloth diaper". I had researched a little before bringing it up, and I told him all about it. He didn't need convincing. He thought it was a great idea. He tells people all the time how easy it is and how much better they work

I am so happy that he is supportive of it because that was not the case with a lot of people that we had mentioned it to. He helped me to feel confidant in the decision. Now everyone who thought we were crazy and said we wouldn't last 2 weeks have shut their yaps