LGBT Parenting
leapgirl8
member
Options
I'm stuck re: cloth diapering
leapgirl8
member
We can't make this decision. If we do cloth, we'd keep disposables on hand for travel (trips and if we were going to be out all day, not just running errands or having dinner with my parents). But I can't decide if we should try at all. I was gung-ho to do it before we found out it was twins. Jen thinks I'm nuts, but she's willing to try if I want to. I've heard that the environmental impact is "a wash" thanks to the water and energy usage, but I don't know if that's true. I know this is discussed at length on other boards and other websites, but I know & trust you guys, so if you wouldn't mind sharing your decision & experience?
This discussion has been closed.
Re: I'm stuck re: cloth diapering
We were going to try cloth, too, until we found out we were having twins. Then we realized that we'd be doing laundry all the time. DW is SAHM and I don't think there's any way she would have time/patience for cloth diapers. She doesn't even have time to shower most days. I estimate we go through at least 20 diapers a day. We also go through several outfits a day (they seem to have explosive poop!) so we already do a lot of laundry. When we figured out what it would cost for water and electricity, plus a lot of people we talked to buy a dedicated washer, the cost wasn't worth it, either. The diaper services we found were also more per month than disposables.
We use cloth. It is FINE. I Love them actually. The smell is much less, the cost is less (I have a GIANT stash and have spent less than I estimate I would on one kid's worth of disposables), and I really don't think the impact is a wash. Our water bill is up $5/quarter. We only put out one can of trash every other week for the four of us. The two weeks we used disposables after they were born we had a can full of diapers alone each week (granted newborns use a lot of diapers).
I've written about it some and am working on an update - https://dilbatotini.blogspot.com/search?q=diapers
Honestly its not a big deal at all - I throw in a load most nights (not because I need to but for volume/load size control - when we're home I do every other night at most because we use more prefolds/hybrids at home and there's less to wash) and put in the dryer in the morning ( I hang shells and dry inserts). I have enough for 3 days, so I usually fold two loads together.
We use cloth 100% of the time except when we're traveling overnight. Its not a big deal to throw a couple in the diaper bag and pack a wetbag. We travel kind of heavy with twins anyway.
ETA: In almost 8 months, we've only had 2 poop blow outs in cloth, one of which was user error and one was antibiotics poop....
And I can talk diapers forevverrrr so if you want to chat....
We're still in the pre-parenting phase, but we've talked a lot about cloth diapering. I've also read a lot of CD blogs and talked with IRL friends who have used them.
The one thing that stops me in my tracks is the description of how to wash them. People consistently tell me they have a complicated system of soaking, washing, rinsing, etc that involves not just throwing them in the washer and hitting "go" but in returning to the washing machine several times to send it on a new mission.
We have a front-loader that is not programmable. Our only option is to select an extra rinse.
I'm really, really not keen on running up and down the stairs to keep re-washing the same load of laundry.
But, and this is a big but, if somehow I could magically wash diapers with one cycle, I'd totally be in. What say you?
I have an older top loader that came with our house, so while not HE (so I don't have the water issues some complain of) it is CERTAINLY not programmable I have to use pliers to turn the dial because the knob broke off.
When I wash daily, (~15-18 diapers) I just do a hot wash with an extra rinse on extra large. If I am putting in a two day load or an exceptionally poopy load, I do a cold wash then a hot wash with an extra rinse. I usually put the laundry in right after the babies go to bed, so I just turn on the second wash before I go to bed in those cases.
We were at my parents for ~3 mo and had no issues with their HE front loader. They have a setting that says Heavy Soil or something like that, and I used that plus an extra rinse. I think the key is washing often enough, not overstuffing your loads and using enough detergent (I use Tide, not the greenest option but inexpensive, effective, and I use it for all of our laundry) - all that info about not using too much can be detrimental I think.
We don't have twins but we do have two in diapers so maybe I can contribute. I have a good stash for diapering one baby but have made it work for two, like cookiemonster I also have lots of hybrid and prefolds which means less laundry. The added costs to our water and electricity bills has been barely noticeable and as long as I wash every day or every other day, the laundry doesn't get overwhelming, it's not bad at all.
We bought a pack of disposables a couple weeks ago to use at the zoo for the day, J has been grabbing the disposables first lately but we have a blowout or leak in almost every one of them. There are occasionally blowouts and leaks with cloth too, but for us, it hasn't been nearly as much as with the disposables.
We love cloth so much that we've decided to continue using cloth if we have 3 or 4 in diapers.
Two Mommies Healing Hearts
We're not having twins, so I can't speak to that...and in the end it's a personal decision, but simply from a financial standpoint, you'll save a ton of money doing cloth, especially with twins! We registered for our cloth diapers and got about 1/2 of them that way, so we only spent about $250 on diapers. Even if you bought all of them x2, it'd be $1000 or less. Since disposables supposedly add up to $2000-$3000 (or $4000-$6000 for you)...it's a huge financial advantage.
About 90% of our friends use cloth diapers, so it was an easy decision to us since all of them swear by it. I think it's a harder decision to make when you're the first in a friend group to do it...but they all say it's uber easy, cheaper, better for baby (less diaper rashes), and depending on your washing mashine, is still better for the environment (after all, using water once is still better than having a diaper sit in a landfill for decades).
That's how we made our decision--good luck with yours:) In the end, you'll know what's right for you!
I think that having twins is a reason TO cloth diaper - at least for the newborn stage.
You will save So Much Money. I bought lots of different dipes for the newborn stage, and really, prefolds and covers will get you through, and they are so cheap. We never used pins or snappis - just tri-fold them into a rectangle, lay in cover, velcro on - done. Not really any harder than a sposie. For baby #2, I'm going almost exclusively prefold, that's how happy I've been with them (and we continue to use them now - even for night time, I just put two on him).
I would recommend a large stash - like no less than 30 prefolds and 10 covers, so you only have to wash every other day. Newborn dipes are no big deal. They are small enough that they'll only equal one load, so it won't really be like doing cloth laundry for 2, kwim? I found that doing diaper laundry was wayyyy less of a big deal than I feared it might be, especially because I was home (if I worked outside the home - I can def see how it could get annoying).
I say "at least for the newborn stage" because it does get harder as they get older - dealing with the poop when it gets solid (or worse - semi-solid...yuck) can be a pain, and once they are eating a lot of food, and their waste gets stinkier it can be harder to get the dipes clean (which is when the wash routine starts to get long). But those newborn diapers really aren't that dirty, and I was always able to get them clean with just a cold rinse and a hot wash.
As for the enviromental impact, there are lots of factors. Yes, you do use more water, but the manufacturing process of cloth diapers is better environmentally than of sposies. Also, there is the landfill factor.
I definitely say go for it. If we were to have twins, I would for sure go cloth again. If you turn out not to like it, you can re-sell.
sahm ~ toddler breastfeeder ~ cloth diaperer ~ baby wearer
Oh, and to reply to the twin mom above about the poop blowouts - cloth contains runny poop better, escecially if you use diapers that have elastic waist all the way around (like Thirsties covers, and many others). When I was a nanny, the LO in sposies had poop blowouts constantly, with cloth on my own LO, they were rarre.
Not saying this alone means you should do cloth, of course - just addressing that issue
sahm ~ toddler breastfeeder ~ cloth diaperer ~ baby wearer
We don't have twins, but we did have 2 in diapers and cloth was great. It was not really any more work when we added in the second baby (the diapers that is--the rest of having 2 babies is a lot of work
). We do diapers every night or every other and it is just not a big deal. We throw them in for a pre-rinse; get the kids food ready for the next day; start the actual wash and then go to bed. It is maybe an extra 5 minutes a day. We do use disposables for traveling or when the kids have bad diaper rash so that we can use a zinc ointment.
No personal experience (I kick myself now for not cloth diapering), but this girl was a nestie and she's doing cloth with triplets: https://jennandtonica.com/
She has some great diaper posts on her blog.
Maybe I don't have a heightened sense of smell, but I've never smelled any vagina on my pants. -- TSD
Bloggity Blog - You know you want to...
I love her blog. She inspired me to use prefolds more at home actually! The ease of trifolding never occurred to me before she wrote about it.
First let me say I have no experience with cloth diapers. With that said we talked and debated in detail using them. We, like others, were all in until finding out we were having twins, and then it was like "Huh, what to do?"
We weighed the costs, talked about the work, and then decided that two babies was already a large task and didn't want to add another time consuming thing that is far less convenient than disposables. It's funny cuz just last night Mel said to me "WOW, aren't you glad we didn't go cloth?" To which I said YES!!
I feel like, as a twin mom you THINK you know what you're getting into, and you can plan, plan, plan, but until you're in it waist deep you don't realize HOW much work it is. Anyone who complains about the work of A baby, is out of their damn mind--for real. Cuz twins is SO much more and we're now so glad we didn't do cloth.
The only way I for see it working is if you're a SAHM AND you get the diapers for real cheap or free. Otherwise, a NICE stash of cloth diapers isn't much less than disposables (I've purchased mine online and CHEAP), especially when you factor in the work and the utilities.
I spent some time on the blog of the CDing mother of twins (thanks for the link!)
And I keep coming back to our front-loading washing machine, which is designed to do the laundry with the smallest amount possible. You can't manually manipulate the load size in order to increase the amount of water used. That damned machine seemed like such a smart purchase at the time!
Random: We've joked about making a chute out the second-floor nursery window out to the garbage cans in the alley for diapers.
I've read of people throwing a water soaked towel into FL loads. I guess some adjust the water based on load size which is determined by weight?
Now there's an idea. We have a utility sink right next to the washer, so that would be relatively simple to pull off.
For those who would like to figure out the cost savings for cloth diapering vs. using disposables, check out this site (there's a worksheet to enter in your personal choices for diapers): https://empoweringellie.com/cloth-diaper-savings-calculator/
As for environmental impact...the amount you'd be putting in a landfill that won't degrade for who knows how many decades/centuries far outweighs the extra bit of water you use in laundry.
I will be a FTM using cloth starting this summer, and another big reason I wanted to go this route was because I didn't want the nasty chemicals touching my son's private parts. I've read about little blue crystals appearing on baby's skin (part of the absorbent chemical in the diaper) and that gives me the wiggins. As for convenience, many types of diapers (AIOs, hybrids, pockets with inserts) are really not that difficult to manage...AIOs are just like sposies that you wash. If you get a large enough stash to work with, you'll only be doing CD laundry every other day or less.