My husband and I were both raised in cloth diapers, so I had always assumed that if possible, I too, would have a cloth diapered baby.
I started looking into them as soon as we got pregnant.
I wasn't finding what I was looking for.
So, I quit looking and just assumed I would do like all my friends and family in recent years, and using disposable diapers.
But my mother-in-law reminded me of the idea a few days ago, and I looked into a cloth diaper service.
I found one service that delivers to my home, and I was so excited and put in a request for a quote. This is the service my mom used when I was young too. Unfortunately, my quote came in on Monday and it is $23 a week.
Over the last week I had asked everyone I knew who had babies in diapers how much they estimated they paid for diapers in a week, and most frequently I heard $8-10. How could the diaper service be $23 a week then? I was so disappointed. I really wanted to use the service, but I couldn't justify spending at least twice as much as my disposable alternatives.
I had a few suggestions to try cloth diapering and washing them at home, which I wasn't opposed to, but the diaper service and the diapers my husband and I were raised in weren't coming up on any of my online searches. I read other mommy bloggers talking about how little money they saved and how much time they lost doing the laundry themselves, so I just didn't think it was an option for us anymore.
My mother-in-law came over yesterday and still strongly recommended the cloth diapers since we get to choose what goes on our baby's skin.
She told me, she had the diapers from when my husband was a baby still and we could start with those, and that reinvigorated my search, someone still had to make these cloth diapers, affordably. I was getting recommendations from other cloth diapering mama's sending links to their favorite brands, and the cost I was seeing was $7 to even $25 for a single diaper.
Of course you are getting to reuse them many, many times, but that is still a lot of money.
So when my mother-in-law left, I searched "Gerber Foldable Cloth Diapers" SURE ENOUGH. There were the diapers I had been looking for on and off for 4 months already.
I could get a package of 20 from Amazon for $25.
Now I just need to collect them and the needed accessories, because with these diapers you need the safety pins and the leak-proof covers. I was so excited! I was getting to fulfill this dream again.
I made a post on Facebook explaining my thoughts, and a friend reached out and offered to share some of her cloth diapers that are "Alva Baby" and I fell in love with their website and product.
The diapers are so simple and cute! They can be worn while my baby girl continues to grow and they are such a fashion statement! They are easy to fasten, no pins or additional accessories needed.
I now plan to keep both Alva Baby brand and the old, classic Gerber foldable diapers on hand and hope to get a collection of 100 of each, which is more than I will need but if we run into any issues, such as our washer giving out, or me missing a day of washing, we will be covered for a bit. Am I correct in my assumption that I would only need 100 of each type that we can switch out?
I will add the Alva baby diapers and the Gerber foldable cloth diapers and accessories to our registry, and that is what we will ask for from friends and family. I will continue looking for secondhand sales on many cloth diapers and likely get a rather large selection to choose from, and hopefully that will save us some money.
I will give updates frequently on the status of cloth diapering.
This should work well for us, as I will probably get to stay home with our baby girl, at least for her first year. We also have the benefit of having a laundry machine in our home, that I love and well water so we won't have a higher water bill, unless we end up running out of water in our well, which is a fear I have.
I should have the time, patience and financial stability to sustain cloth diapering.
There are many things I want to learn more about before Baby T gets here, and we put it into practice. I thankfully have baby dolls I plan to practice folding and pinning diapers on so Baby T won't have to learn so much patience with mommy.
Hopefully, we have more babies and can continue to reuse the same diapers and it will save us money in the long run, or whenever we are done, having babies we can give them to another mom who is interested in cloth diapering. I think this is an alternative that should be more available and affordable. I felt like I had to do be incredibly specific to find the affordable cloth diapers I was looking for.
Comments