If you don't use cloth, why not? - Page 3

[ann_of_loxley]

There were times I didn't use cloth.

1. At night. Despite doing EC, DS was practically sleeping through the night from birth, I value my sleep, and he just WET so much at night that it was very uncomfortable for him. (perhaps part of his sensory issues as well).

2). Sometimes when we were out for a very long day. Or like when we went camping. Pretty self explanatory there.

3). I am very glad we did EC - my DS cloth nappies stopped fitting him around 17 months of age. He is huge - he was huge born and still is big for his age. Hes not fat - hes well porportioned. Hes just big. At two, most people thought he was a five year old! (which comes with its own annoying issues lol)

I think cloth is fab. Its pretty addicting too! We just use them as a back up though because we mostly EC. When we have used disposables (for reasons listed above) its been eco friendly ones (which we could afford as we would get them on ebay! - yay ebay! lol). So we are not that horrible hehe

[Phoenix~Mama]

Time and energy...

I WOH full time and I have fibromyalgia... I have to do about a load of laundry a night as is to keep up with it and not be overwhelmed to knock it all out over the weekend.

Time is very precious to me, and so is finding the balance in my life to not be overwhelemed with my illness. I knew there was no way I'd be able to keep up with cloth.

[cedoreilly]

With twins and then two singletons close together, I just did not have the time to spend washing anymore than I already was. There are no diaper services in my area.

[russsk]

I cd'd DS full time until he was about 6 months (except for long trips). Since then he wears cds at home and sposies when we are out and at night, so I'm not sure if I count or not. But I stopped using CDs out because they are a pain in the neck! I don't like carrying a huge bag and rarely have a stroller with me, so it was very inconvenient. We stopped using cloth at night when DS started sleeping (slightly) longer and having larger pees. I was never able to find a nighttime system that worked for us. DS would always leak, or wake up unhappy. Being wet really bothered him; he sleeps much better in disposables.

Another, minor reason, we chose to use sposies outside the house: clothes. Its was a pain trying to find pants that fit over a big old diaper butt. It wasn't that hard when he was little, but as he grew it seemed to get harder. This wouldn't have been a huge issue on its own, but we were given a lot of clothes that we would have been unable to use with cloth, so it was nice to get some use out of them. He does have wool pants and such, but I don't want him wearing those out in the dirt, you know?

[4evermom]

I never used cloth. I did consider it. But I didn't have a lump sum of money to invest. Dh was unemployed at the time. Then ds turned out to be the kind of baby that could. not. be. put. down. at. all. I could hardly prepare food for myself, let alone manage extra laundry.

My sister did cloth for a while. Getting clothes that fit over cloth was difficult. That is probably more of an issue with girls because their clothes tend to be cut slimmer.

[mama2mygirl]

Money is so unbelievably tight.
I used cloth with first baby and loved it. Thhat baby is 6 so only two of hers were still around.
I use the cloth that was given to me but no way is it a real stash. I use the sposies mamas have given me. For whatever reason, I know a lot of people who have given me bags of diapers. A very few were newly purchased for me but most were from things like an adoption fell through and lots more from people who bought a bag and their baby grew out of them before they could use it. I was actually going to buy more a few weeks back but was again given three bags. I can't justify spending the money when we absolutely need it for other equally important things.

[MaterPrimaePuellae]

I have toyed with the idea a few times, but keep coming back to these objections:

1. I am NOT a good housekeeper. Keeping up with laundry is hard for me, and I'm afraid I would ruin the diapers by letting them sit too long/mildew between washings. It wouldn't be the first time (but it probably WOULD be the most expensive time!) such a thing happened to me.

2. Expense. I'm a big coupon shopper and never bought diapers (even 7th Generation, which we used exclusively after i found them) unless they were on sale-- so diapers did not put too much of a dent in our budget. (Maybe $30 a month?) I calculated the cost of CDs and figured I might save a couple hundred dollars over the course of DD's diapered life, but that didn't seem like much of a savings when I considered the convenience.

3. I'm not convinced that the environmental impacts are very different (it seems hard to find unbiased studies), especially in areas with more limited water supplies.

Objection #2 doesn't really stand if one considers reusing the diapers on future children.... but then I can't really count of being able to do that, because of the incompetence described in Objection #1.

I do flush all solids from the disposable diapers, so the ick factor isn't much of one for me (already lots of poop-handling around here), and I am considering Cd with this baby.... but I'm still unsure. I may get one of the trial packs and give it a go, or at least use CD around the house. Some of those diaper covers are so darn cute!

[LionTigerBear]

Postpartum depression. I tried using cloth diapers for a while or both of my boys, but gave up after a few months because it was so much work and just miserable. I hated the feel of the diapers when baby had a really big pee and they got a bit soaked, I didn't want that feeling against my baby's skin. The poopy diapers were difficult to clean and also, I didn't like the idea of any trace of poop in my washing machine. The diapers never fit very well, on either my skinny-butt baby or my chunky-butt baby, so with each boy there were always leaks. On the whole, for a depressed mom, switching to disposables was such a breath of fresh air. I love sposies.

[Youngfrankenstein]

I used CD for my first two kids. With the third, I just used sposies. It was so much easier and not so many changes.

With this forth I plan to CD but it will probably be a balance of sposies the first few weeks then switching to a 70%/30% of cloth and disposables.

[radishes]

I didn't use cloth at all on my 1st because I had to change so many cloth diapers (the old fashioned kind) on my younger siblings that I was completely against having to go through that again. Five years later sees me pregnant with my 2nd. I wanted to do part time EC, cloth, and very few disposables. I was totally overwhelmed by the cloth choices, and ended up with prefolds and plastic pants, cheaper and hey, they actually work! Anyhow, baby is born. She is tiny, as in nothing fits her. By 4 months she was under 10 pounds. We also had severe sleeping and breastfeeding issues and sometimes she'd poop up to 15 times a day. So, the combination of getting less than 2 hours of broken up sleep a day, an extremely high needs baby, her incessant pooping AND crying, and cloth not fitting her, left me too overwhelmed to even think about cloth unless she had a diaper rash. Now, at 11 months, things are better, but I'm still overwhelmed and have just lost my enthusiasm for cloth. Sad, and I'm a little ashamed, but true.

[janerose]

Well, we're a little different that we actually were huge CD advocates with DD1. She was exclusively CD until around 28 months. I mean, a sposie never touched her bottom. I was very....um...judgmental about people who used sposies too.

So what happened? Well, for DD1 she developed sores on the inside of her thighs that just would not heal. The only thing that healed them was sposies. Also, she was a super, duper heavy wetter. As she got older it was IMPOSSIBLE to find a CD that wouldn't leak. Especially at night. It didn't matter how much I stuffed them with or what kind of covers I used. We tried everything.

Once DD2 came along she was CD for about a month, then I switched to sposies. I was totally overwhelmed with the extra laundry. Also, DD2 is very sensitive to wetness. Any time I've ever had her in CD for more than a day or so she gets a raging rash.

Finally, I have honestly not found CD to be a huge money saver for us. Washing & drying them drives up our electricity & water bills so much it actually is MORE than what we spent each month now on sposies. We spend about $30 on sposies a month, but our electric alone easily goes up by $30-$50 a month when we're washing diapers full-time.

I love cloth & still advocate for it, but it's just not a good choice for us at this point. Maybe if we ever have another babe we'll try them again. For now I'm contenting myself with lending all my CD stuff to a good friend who just got a 7 mo foster son.

Hope this helps!

[azedazobollis]

I love cloth. I am a die hard cloth diaperer. But the last month, Ive had DD in seventh generation sposies. She has some neurological and orthopedic issues. I cant get her to lay on her back at all. She is so wiggly and strong, I cant get the snaps done on her diapers. She is also very small- 8 months old and 14 lbs. I have a nice selection of diapers. All the velcro closing diapers leak at the top because of the way she moves, she works them down in the front. It's so hard during diaper changes. I hate that Im using sposies..... I just cant keep her still enough to get the diapers on her. I put sposies on backwards. I would like to get a bunch of bumgenius'. Those would work. But I cant spend that$ right now.

[sunnmama]

My toddler prefers disposables. We used cloth until he was 20 mo, and started using a disposable at night (he was waking from the wet, bulky night diaper). He started refusing the the cloth diapers, so I figured the disposables must be more comfortable for him. They certainly are a lot less bulky, which didn't matter much when he was a baby/young toddler...but maybe makes more of a difference for an older, active toddler.

[riverscout]

Originally Posted by MaterPrimaePuellae

3. I'm not convinced that the environmental impacts are very different (it seems hard to find unbiased studies), especially in areas with more limited water supplies.

Oh yeah, and this too. Water is quite expensive here and we often have water restrictions. In an effort to curb usage, they started doing this tiered billing thing where the more water you use, the more you pay per unit. I'd be willing to bet I spend less or the same on sposies than I would on washing diapers not to mention the fact that water here is in shorter supply than landfill space.

[Quinalla]

I'm planning to do cloth part time. DH thinks it will be too much of a hassle and when we looked at the cost of disposables, it really isn't that expensive for us. I also think it will be too much of a pain to deal with it at daycare, though they will use them if we want. So I will have some cloth on hand to use sometimes, but disposables as well, and we'll see how it goes. I don't mind laundry (I actually kind of like it ), so that's not a concern for me. I do use cloth pads for myself as they are much more comfortable and much cheaper.

And I agree that all the options are a bit overwhelming. And there is a small group of the cloth diapering community that are a bit over obsessed with their cloth and that honestly can be a turn off if you encounter a lot of those folks. Bottom line, I need a system that works for my family, so if cloth diapers end up working, great, if not, disposable is fine too.

[The4OfUs]

Because we were barely able to stay on top of our regular laundry while both working full time when the kids were babies (I can count numerous times we've run out of socks/other clothes)...and because frankly, I have to really concentrate on not wretching when being anywhere near poop, I can't imagine having to rinse/soak/wash/etc. poopy cloth.

I did, *very* briefly, use regular old flat gerber birdseyes i had already and was using as burp cloths, with a borrowed cover when DD was pooping on a schedule and I knew she would only be peeing for a day (she pooped every other day in the mornings for a couple months)...but after throwing out two poopy cloths when her "schedule" changed I realized it just wouldn't work for me/us. I just can't deal with poopy cloth. Period. This may be juvenile, I'll freely admit it - but it's also not a character flaw I feel the need to spend any time working through at this point.

And really, I can agree with the snob factor re: cloth - like many things that start out with admirable intentions, it has in some places/instances morphed into something it wasn't originally intended to be...kind of like natural toys, organic food, babywearing, etc. etc. - when it becomes super trendy and obsessive and a status symbol, it turns me right off immediately. Part of NFL, in my understanding, is embracing a level of simplicity and rejecting consumerism...and getting caught up in the hype of any of it because it's "cool" totally misses the point IMO.

[CrunchyMamaToBe]

With my first child, we used cloth all the time, except when 1) the washing machine was broken or 2) we were away from home for more than two nights and didn't have access to a washing machine.

The laundry gets overwhelming at times and we did consider quitting. Our machine (a european front-loader) could only take tiny loads. Like, literally half of what I can fit in my parent's conventional american top-loader. It takes 2-2.5 hours to complete a wash cycle. With a baby in diapers, we had to do a load of laundry every day, every single day, or we would fall into a bottomless laundry pit.

With #2 on the way, we will start with cloth, and hope to continue. Washing machine #1 broke down and machine #2 takes slightly bigger loads. But, we may end up moving into an apartment with shared/pay laundry facilities. In that case, we will do the math and figure out if it makes financial sense to keep using the cloth. If it costs as much or more to wash diapers as it would to have a service or buy disposies, I will lean towards not using/washing our own diapers.

[Alyantavid]

I have a few:

the initial expense
dh and I both work(ed) full time and both boys were in daycare, which would not use cloth
time and energy put into washing them
my youngest son is horribly allergic almost everything that touches his butt, we went through every different disposable before we found one that would work.

[aran]

Two reasons:

I read and read and read about all the cloth options, and was like a deer in headlights. I didn't want to spend the $$$ just to find out it wasn't a good fit, leaky, etc. The whole thing seemed confusing...

Plus, DH is the main laundry do-er and he didn't want to deal with the extra laundry. He has supported *every single* other hippie crunchy decision about parenting I have made (and there are many, and he is very conservative so they are all weird decisions to him) so I compromised on this one.

[Teenytoona]

I used cloth on DD up until a few months ago (she's 18 months). I really like it as far as diapering her goes, but as DH has some deficiency in understanding how to not fill the washer to capacity, laundry has always been my task. It was ok, but I WOHM, and counting commute an dlunch I'm gone 11 hours of the day, so I'd be a little harried trying to get diaper laundry done in the few hours I was home.

Then DH got a job. Then we got custody of the youngest two DSC which means my laundry load way increased, plus after work time really is taken up by homework and dishes. Then the washer broke. We haven't fixed it yet, so doing regular laundry has been a pain.

BUT,

DH says I'm way less stressed out now that there's no diaper laundry.

So that tears it.

I miss her little diaper booty though.