We use cloth diapers too, and love them. We use pocket diapers, and for overnight, I just stuff an extra insert in them (I made the diapers out of old t-shirts and fleece sweatshirts, and I use prefold diapers as inserts). When he’s in his pj’s, our little guy has an enormous bubble butt from the huge diaper, but it holds up to the overnight task.

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I decided to make the switch with my second. I bought a few different kind of diapers to try out, and then I signed up for a diaper service. A lot of my friends use the service with a newborn, when they don’t feel like doing the laundry.
Honestly? I was not a fan of the service. It was WAY expensive, the diapers weren’t that great, and they only picked them up once a week so I always had a pretty full pail going. Within a few weeks I bought a bunch more diapers (mostly fitted and pocket diapers, which have worked for us), and I haven’t looked back.
(I will admit, the introduction of solids did make the whole thing a little less fun, but in for a penny in for a pound, right?)

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Have you heard about diaper swappers? It is a site for people to buy sell or trade used diapers. You can get great bargains on more absorbent cloth diapers than prefolds. Also, there are a lot of moms out there with great advice on how to handle cloth obstacles like overnights and stinky diapers and detergent build up. Check it out at http://www.diaperswappers.com/

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We cloth diaper our newborn daughter using a service. Not having insuite laundry it was a compromise between cloth and disposables that we could live with. Also, she was just a little over 5lb at birth so we didn’t want to buy cloth to fit such a tiny baby and then buy em again when she got bigger. Like you, though, sometimes we are tempted to use a disposable at night (shhh…don’t tell).

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Thanks Accidental Pharmacist. One of the reasons I included the bit about using disposables at night is that I wanted people to see that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing if you don’t want it to be. Every diaper change using a cloth saves one diaper from ending up in a landfill. There are certainly ways to do it 100% of the time, but if a parent can’t or doesn’t want to, then they should know it’s okay to use cloth at least part of the time. Better part time than no time!

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Like you did–I keep thinking about switching (we are still 100% disposable over here), but I just never seem to go through with it.
Have you ever sat down and figured out how much you are saving? Do you end up using the washing machine a lot more?

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If by some miracle i decide to have another kid i’d cloth diaper during the day at least.
I’m convinced that if i’d done that with Ewan it would have saved a lot of the toilet training nightmare. He didn’t get dry until 4 years and 3 months (that age will forever be etched in my mind), and no way, no how, would i want go through that again.

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We started with cloth. There was no service available in our area, so we decided to do it ourselves, and realized how much more choice is available when you go that way. For some reason prefolds intimidated me, and we ended up with bumgenius (and kissaluvs) which we loved. DS is now 18 mo old and still in the same one size diapers. We bought a hose attachment for the toilet to spray the poops off, and find the whole thing painless. We also starting using disposables for night time, and now that he is in child care a few days a week, he’s back to disposables for that (and disposables for traveling also – partially about convenience/ access to washer and dryer, and partially about how much darn space they take up in the luggage). We love it. DS has never had any trouble with diaper rash.
@Michele, I don’t know about cent per cent savings (though some diaper sites do the math for you), but as for the washer, we discovered that with 18 cloth diapers, we were doing the laundry the same amount as we would without the diapers. That is, that by the time we needed to do the diapers, we were ready for a load with baby clothes and our clothes. We put everything in together, though we often do a prewash with just the diapers and a generous helping of vinegar (a natural antimicrobial).

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This post is very timely for me — I just decided to try to make the switch and ordered a sampler pack of one-size pocket diapers to try out and see which ones we like best. My husband is skeptical that we can handle the additional laundry volume, esp. once I go back to work, but now that DS#2 is 4 months old and DS#1 is almost 2.5 and not yet showing signs of readiness for potty learning, seeing all the diapers we use is getting to me. So many of my friends/acquaintances are using cloth I decided I was way behind the times and needed to just do it already!

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The trick to keeping the stinky ammonia smell out of cloth diapers is a vinegar soak. Yup.

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@Betsy – we do vinegar, and baking soda, and rinse/rinse/rinse. Somehow just can’t get them to handle a full 12 hours. Makes sense. With disposables they have all those chemicals in there to keep the smell in – which cloth doesn’t. I did strip ours a few months ago when they started to smell after every single pee, and that fixed them right up. Still can’t go 12 hours though.

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I didn’t really make a switch in that direction. I started out with cloth diapers with our first son and continued using them with our second. I too, was shocked by the sticker price so I started making my own prefolds. Then I got a bunch of fitteds from a friend. Then I discovered flannel receiving blankets make great flat folds. I just had to sew a strip of terry on them so the snappis would work. I DID use disposables when we went out for the day and when my son started preschool (they wouldn’t allow the cloth). My older son in now out of diapers and my second is on his way. I used to ‘wet pail’ in water/apple cider vinegar. Now, I put the peed ones in the regular wash and do a quick rinse of the poopy ones after shaking said poop off into the toilet and keep those in a bucket under the bathroom sink w/ baking soda until wash time, usually about 3 times a week. I’m actually getting rid of most of my diapers. If oyu know a mom in need, i’ll give them to her for free if she can pay shipping.

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I started using cloth two months ago and haven’t regretted it. I was also overwhelmed by all the options, and then discovered there is a mom who sells cloth out of her home here in town. She sells pre-folds and covers, so I went with those because they were the least expensive start-up, my money stayed local, AND I supported a small business run by a mom. Like you, we use disposables at night.

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