Working Moms
Do you have daycare and also use cloth diapers?
Hi. Lurker here.
I realize most day care providers won't do cloth diapers. I am newly pregnant with my first (and probably only) and have no idea what daycare I will be using yet, however I am trying to get an idea of what we will do regarding diapers.
Does anyone here do CD at home and disposables at daycare? If so, is this cost effective for you?
I am thinking about using a CD service, so I don't have to put out too much money into purchasing a bunch of CD's, and I won't have to worry about doing all the laundry. The price of the service is related to the # of diapers I would use, and I would use disposables just for daycare.
Any thoughts or advice on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
TTC Child #1 Sept '08, Dx: Unexplained, DOR
2 IUI's = BFN, m/c, IVF 1 = 0 embies to put back, IVF 2 = BFN, IVF 3 = cancelled, IVF 4 = BFP with 1 embie. Our son came into our life on 9/28/11. We are in love!
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Re: Do you have daycare and also use cloth diapers?
We CD and my DCP uses them too. I just brought them over one time, mainly AIOs nad a few prestuffed thirsties covers, and she was more than willing to do it. She just folds them, poopy or wet, and throws it in the wet bag I bring them in. Itake the dirty ones home each day when I pick up DD.
From what I've read, going with a laundry service doesn't save you much money compared to using disposables. I don't know what your incentive for CDing is, but mine was 98% financially grounded. I know it seems like a lot up front, but maybe just spend a little each month on what you'll need for the newborn-2 monts stage, and then each month buy a little more. You can stll easily CD a kid for less than 300$ total.
We did cloth diapers with DD and her daycare had no problem with it. We just brought in fresh diapers and diaper covers every day, and they'd wrap up the dirty ones in a bag for us to take home at the end of the day.
We're now at a different daycare and we didn't do cloth diapers with DS, but this daycare will do them too. In fact they have their own that you can use as long as you provide the covers (then they just wash the diapers themselves).
This exactly
Yes, I have talked 2 daycares into trying them. I only take AIOs or pocket diapers to school and mostly use prefolds and covers at home.
If you are planning on taking 3 month of maternity leave you can buy newborn/small diapers for those months and baby will most likely be outgrowing them when it's time for daycare. Then you can choose to continue or not.
We used cloth for mostly financial reasons so we didn't even buy AIOs or pockets. We got prefolds, fitteds and covers. And we only got the fitteds because someone gifted us their whole stash. We've used in home care providers and they can be convinced to use cloth. Our most recent provider got sick of the cloth and basically asked if it was ok if she used disposables during the day if she provided them. I told her it was fine so that was cost effective and saved me the labor of washing as many diapers. Our current provider is another mom who also uses cloth so she said she'd be happy to just wash them with her son's diapers so we brought her half our stash and don't worry about it.
So, yes, you can use cloth part time and have it still be cost effective. There are cloth diaper options that are much cheaper than other options. You can also convince many providers to use them if you show them how easy they are (in that case you probably want AIOs and not prefolds).
We CD and have done so at daycare as well. We are fortunate that the daycare we go to CDs all their kids and they supply them, launder them, etc. So at this point we only use 2 CDs of our own at home each weekday.
We have friends who tried a service and gave up because they couldn't get a good fit for their skinny child. I think that may be due more to the fact that services only provide one style of diapers around here and that may not be the best option for each child. DS was a premie and the highest he has been is 3% for weight--he's a peanut. There are trials you can do to try different styles and brands of diapers with very little commitment. I highly recommend, so you find out what fits your baby best! For example, we do pockets, but only one brand works well on him because the others we've tried have been too big around the legs. If we had been restricted on CD options through a diaper service, maybe it wouldn't have worked for us either.
If you decide to buy your own diapers, there are ways to minimize the costs. We did the trial, found out what worked and gradually built our stash. In the beginning, we were doing laundry every 1-2 days. But as holidays rolled around or grandparents asked what we needed, I'd always say diapers! So even though our key stash was probably $250-300, maybe half of it came out of our pockets. He's 21 months now and I think we've bought 2 packs of disposables during that time. We've probably spent less than $10/month on diapers.
GL deciding what works for you and your family.
My LO will start daycare in the fall. I just brought her a pocket CD and a wet bag so that she could see it. I also explained that she wouldn't have to deal with any of the pee/poop, that I would take care of all of that. She was totally fine with it and said that it wasn't any different than doing a disposable. ;-) It is a home daycare, so I am not sure if that makes a difference or not.
Our in-home DCP was fine with CDs. We have only have BG 3.0s and we provider her a wetbag. She just throws them in there and gives the bag to us at the end of the day.
We do use disposables at night since his diapers have not been working very well at night since he has gotten bigger.
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When DD was born, I really wanted to use CD's, but she was so small (4lbs) that I did not want to invest in preemie diapers and have them fit a short time.
As a gift, my neighbors gave us 4 weeks of a diaper service (60 diapers a week at $70). The best thing about it was the fact that they washed the diapers. I didn't really like the diapers too much (thin prefolds) and we often ran out of diapers before it was our day to get new ones. We couldn't start the service until DD was about 6 weeks old - the diapers were too big.
Our DCP is a center that would use CD's with a Dr.'s note. The diapers had to be AIO's or pockets and they don't rinse them. We got a Dr.'s note and we showed the staff how to use them and the wet bag to put them in. They still individually wrap the used diapers, but whatever. The staff don't seem to mind using them.
Honestly, it would be cheaper to just buy CD's. We use prefolds at home and AIO's/pockets at DC. I bought some used and some new. We have mainly the Thirsties Duo PocketDiapers and some BG xs AIO's. Once DD grows out of the BG's we will get either the BG pockets or more Thirsties. I did get them ones with velcro/Aplix instead of snaps.
We CD and my kid is also CDed at DC. We use a licensed in-home daycare. We had already been using her for around 9 months when we switched to cloth so we had built a rapport. She didn't even flinch when I asked if she would CD.
Personally I wouldn't want to CD at home and sposie at DC because I think it would just be too much of a pain for me. But it could work if you wanted it to.
You can get a stash going on ebay for under $100- check out the link: https://cgi.ebay.com/5-Organic-Minky-Bamboo-Cloth-Diaper-Nappy-10-Inserts-OS-/180657290643?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2a10037d93
I got mine there and they rock- except my provider wouldn't use them. I'm hopeful the new daycare we have picked out for DD1& 2 will.
We CD full time. All of the centers we considered were fine with it. We just bring home the dirty diapers and clean ones the following day.
We're about to switch daycare centers (for non-CD reasons), but both were willing to work with us about CDing.
At his current center he is the second baby in his room with CDs. We use FuzziBunz OS, so they're really not all that different from disposables. There was a bit of a learning curve for how to snap them up properly as well as how to know when to change them (they don't have the convenient bulging pee pocket that disposables do, so one day they changed him every 30 minutes!), but we worked through that.
His new daycare was a little less excited about CDing, but they're still willing work with us. Their big concern was how to dispose/store the dirties so that they will still be in compliance with state regulations - and all that will take is a closeable wet bag.
Once he starts solids it will be interesting to see how it develops. Neither center would be able to spray his diaps down (not that he needs it yet with just BFing), so we're thinking about trying some disposable liners when the time comes...
BFP #2 5/27/12. EDD 2/1/13. m/c and D&C 6/21/12.