Benefits of CDing? Where to begin? How to do this?

[mom to little e]

As you can see from my subject line, I have LOTS of questions! This is an area I haven't tackled yet, but I am interested. Can someone give me a brief lowdown of the benefits and how to begin? (DS is 5 mos. old)

Thanks!

...Casey

Mommy to
Ean Bennett 11/06/03

[sweetbasil]

Hi, Casey (and Ean!)~

Here is an older thread that might be helpful:
http://tinyurl.com/2q5hv

And some links that I found useful:
http://www.diaperpin.com/calculator/calculator.asp
http://www.cutofcloth.com/cloth_diapering.asp

Enjoy, and feel free to ask as many questions as you need! All the mamas here have made me feel completely comfortable asking questions and always have extremely helpful responses :)

Edited to add a link to another interesting article--- http://www.mothering.com/9-0-0/html/9-3-0/9-3-diapers88.shtml (sorry, but tinyurl.com kept trunkating the link, for some reason)

[stillplayswithbarbies]

I can tell you why I CD. Because it's fun to shop for cute diapers and to figure out what works well on our baby. It's even fun to wash them.

And because they look really cute on her tushie.

I'm not out to save the earth, and I don't do this to save money. I only do it because it is fun. Call me shallow. :)

...Karen
Jacob Nathaniel Feb 91
Logan Elizabeth Mar 03

[sweetbasil]

LOL, Karen! How great...okay- well if we're being totally honest, I really like doing things that nobody else is doing. When I started CDing Charlie, I knew absolutely nobody who CDs IRL. I love the looks we get, the "you're still doing this" and other comments of shock, and all the interest we get from CDing.

I'm trying to stop buying dipes now (though I'm not asking for accountability on this one, mamas! ;)) and stick with the system we've found that is working for us. But truly, this is on the list of the top ten things we've done that are really good for our kids.

And maybe one day, we'll have a little girl, and I can really indulge on all the cute little girly diapers!

[papal]

Hi Casey!
Welcome! And i hope you venture into the CD world.. it is a fun place to be! :)

Like Karen, i also love to CD because it is fun and different. But my main reason was that I could not imagine putting my little baby in plasticy dipes all day long.. i just felt it would be uncomfortable and scratchy. Also, being from India, where CDing is the norm, dispies were something that were new to me, not cloth! :)
Having said that, it was extremely overwhelming at first because i did not understand all the terminology and was too overwhelmed with choices to order anything! What i did was go through every single post in this forum, familiarizing myself with all the diff options out there.

Benefits:
1. Cotton underpants not plastic... enuff said!
2. You never run out.... just do a load of laundry and voila! you have dipes again!
3. Economical - Remember, you can use the same cloth dipes for several children but even for just one child... 2.5 years in dispies is a lot of money
4. Environmentaly friendlier than dispies. No landfills are getting filled up by cloth dipes.

Many mamas here use a combination of both cloth and dispies. If you are going out, you can use dispies.. it is not an all or nothing kind of deal.

Disadvantages of CDs:
1. You have to do CD laundry. Not everyone is like Karen and loves to do laundry! :) I don't mind folding, but sometimes get icked out by poopy dipes. :P
2. Cloth diapered butt is not as trim as a disposable butt.
3. Not as convenient. If you are going out and you have a CD on your baby, you have to worry about bringing back dirty dipes. This leads to a somewhat larger diaper bag than if you did dispies only.

You can look up the Pros and Cons on the web.. it is a hotly debated issue for some reason! I think sometimes CD mamas come across as 'we are better than you' to the Dispie mamas. I can assure you this is not true (except for a few fruitcakes maybe!), Mostly we are so excited with all our beautiful CDs, that we just talk about them a whole lot more than mamas who choose to use dispies. You can say we are sometimes fanatic about the beauty of cloth dipes! :)

I would say, first read up about CDs. See if you want to join, and if you do, let us know and we can share what a good starter stash for a 5 month old would be!

[lizajane]

i think it is important to know why YOU are interested in using CDs so that we can best answer your questions. because we are all (obviously) willing to be very honest with you. if we know whose motivation matches your motivation, we can set you up with your most compatible "cloth diaper advisor!" of course, you can read our replies and email us for more info, too.

so my honest answer:
i can't ever decide which is my number one motivation, but it is either 1) economy or 2) environment.

my third motivation is that sposies are made of weird and unnatural stuff and i don't want that weird stuff on my baby. especially not those gel beads that come out when the diaper is too wet. ewwwwww. that stuff is the same stuff that was ban from tampons for causing toxic shock syndrome.

i have spent about $300 on diapers. that is for 2 children, as i plan to have another and use the same stuff. disposables can cost as much as $1500 maybe even $2000 per child, depending on when you potty train. imagine that you had your own personal diaper vending machine at home and you had to pay for each diaper as you went. imagine putting 20 cents into that machine over and over again every day.

disposable diapers are the number one contributor to landfills. i just don't see why i would throw away something when there is, in my opinion, a better alternative. i hate waste. i am kinda weird about wasting anything.

so if you want to do this cheap, i am your gal. if you wanna do this for cuteness, i am definitely NOT your gal. :)

[kitmama]

>disposable diapers are the number one contributor to
>landfills. i just don't see why i would throw away something
>when there is, in my opinion, a better alternative. i hate
>waste. i am kinda weird about wasting anything.


So are we. This is actually our number one reason for CDing, too. Besides the sheer volume of disposables, there is a problem in that people don't dump out the poop before throwing away their diapers- so human waste sometimes leaches into the groundwater. I'm not trying to look down on anyone who uses disposables- I COMPLETELY understand that CDing works well for some of us and not well for others. But these are just reasons why my husband and I wanted to go with CD.

We use a diaper service, and even though I'm still spending less than I would using disposables, economy is not a major factor in our choice.

Honestly though, the environmental reasons might not have been enough to keep me using the cloth as exclusively as we have. Disposables are mighty convienient! But I have to agree with the other posts here- CDing turned out to be fun. I do actually like it. And I feel good about what I'm doing for my baby and for the environment.

[squimp]

The reason I started CD'ing, from day 1, is because I could not bear to picture that pile of disposables we'd be generating over time. Yes, there's a trade-off in terms of water and energy use, but this is the choice I preferred.

The reason I stuck with it is because it's really not that hard - and its kind of fun in a strange way! Now that I've tried disposables a few times when we're traveling, I HATE the way they smell and they don't work as well as cloth.

We were given a cloth diaper service as a present from folks at work (I work for an environmental agency, duh). This gave us one less thing to worry about when we had a newborn. Then we tried a few different covers until we got ones that worked. Now it's all second nature for us.

So, good luck, and have fun!