How to diaper your baby for free*

This week, Evelyn will hit the 6-week mark. I've been told that 6 weeks is when the mom starts to feel like maybe she will, in fact, be able to survive this parenthood thing. And so this week the cloth diapering will commence. Probably either today or tomorrow, actually, judging by our shrinking stack of disposables.

We will be using cloth diapers. But there are many different types of cloth diapers (something I didn't really know or think about until my sister-in-law had our nephew and put him in cloth). The type we decided to go with is the "All-in-One." It's pretty much what the name implies. The whole diaper is one piece. This type of cloth diaper is different than the "Prefolds" type that many (most?) people use, where you have a super-absorbent diaper core on the baby and then a water-resistant cover of some sort over the diaper. The difference is that in All-in-One (AIO) diapers, the absorbent core and the water-resistant outside are sewn together into one piece. It's basically like a disposable. But cloth.

There are advantages and disadvantages to our choice to stick with AIOs. Advantages: super easy to put on and take off, no parts or clips or anything to keep track of, and did I mention easy for everyone from grandparents to babysitters? Disadvantages: because we don't have that core separate from the outer shell, there might be more washing (if the baby is just wet and you use prefolds and covers, you can just wash the prefold core and reuse the cover a few times before you have to wash it), and drying takes longer with AIOs because you've got all the thickness and everything sewn together.

So how many do we have? Right now we have around 30 AIO diapers. That's about a three-day supply, so I'll need to stay on top of diaper washing every 48 hours or so. Half are FuzziBunz and the other half are BumGenius. All of our diapers have snap closures instead of velcro, which also has its advantages (doesn't wear out, doesn't snag on stuff in the wash) and disadvantages (not as easy to get on and off). The BumGenius diapers are made in the U.S. and FuzziBunz are made in the U.S. and China - I would hope they're made with fair labor but I can't be sure. We have a rainbow of colors, all solids.

And how much does all this cost, you ask? Well, the diapers run in the $20-25 range, depending on how many you buy and where you buy them and all that. So if we say the average is about $23, and we have about 30 diapers, that's nearly $700 for a stock of AIOs. Whew! Why, then, did I say that we diaper our kid for free? Because we are part of an amazing, generous, loving, supportive network of friends and family. Many of these people chipped in and bought us a diaper or two as baby shower gifts, and our stock grew and grew. We are truly blessed and thankful for this gift, because we plan for the diapers to last us a few years with Evelyn and a few years with the next Baby B.

Oh, and just for comparison, the interwebs tell me that disposable diapers can run in the neighborhood of $2300 from birth through potty-training for one kid. So at $700 and with two kids, we'll save $3900 by the time they're both out of diapers. And the cloth ones will still be around... though they might be dust rags by then.

Apart from the idea to ask friends and family for their support through helping us build a stock of cloth diapers and thereby save a couple thousand dollars in the long run, cloth appealed to us from an environmental standpoint. There's definitely some controversy surrounding how "green" cloth diapering really is once you factor in the water, energy for running the washer and dryer, detergent, etc. You can read a condensed version of the debate here. We hope to follow some of the recommendations from the environmental report mentioned there to make how we use cloth diapers "green." We'll line-dry whenever possible, we're buying an energy-efficient washer and dryer (since we have to buy one anyway now that we're leaving apartment life - if we already had a set we would not do this), we'll wash fuller loads, and we plan to reuse the diapers on other children.

So that's the plan. We'll keep you updated.

**UPDATE**

I was wrong about the FuzziBunz being AIO diapers! They are technically pocket diapers - they have a pocket where you put an absorbent thick cloth pad and then you take it out to wash and dry. This way they dry faster. AND you can get BumGenius pocket diapers as well - that's what they are if you don't get the organics. The only reason I went with the organics is because they have snaps and I like snaps. But if you're crafty in ways that I'm not, you can transform your velcro BumGenius diaper into one with snaps.