Cloth Diaper Intro and...Exit

Jamie and I had lunch on Friday and made our way to Cotton Babies in St. Louis to get an introduction to cloth diapering.  I have always felt that I should be open to all options until I have enough information to make a decision and since I knew nothing about cloth diapering I needed a lesson before making a decision on what we would use to cover our kids tush.   A very nice lady helped us at Cotton Babies and gave us a run through of the all-in-one cloth diapers.  It was interesting to say the least.  I had no idea there were so many ways to deal with pee and poo.  Dealing with pee and poo doesn't really bother me, I nannied for 9 years for various families.  I have changed newbie dipes all the way up to 12 year old dipes and I have cleaned more "explosions" than I care to remember (you know...the poo up the back and out the leg holes?  The type of explosion where you look at the wipes and think "I better go straight for the bath tub").  None of the families I nannied for ever used cloth diapers so I didn't know much about CD's but I was open to learning and open to introducing it into our lives.  I wanted to learn not so much to save money or because it was "what's best for the baby" but because I know traditional diapers have a huge impact on our environment.  One baby in traditional diapers will make a ton of waste and that ton of waste will take 500 years to decompose in a landfill.  When you multiply this amount of waste times all the babies using traditional diapers in the world you really get a sense of how much it affects landfills.

I have to say this store was awesome and I would totally visit again as they had more than just CD's.   The lady started by showing me the two most popular all-in-ones and then showed us how they work.  Jamie was on a work call for the first part but we went back over the two kinds and filled him in.  The lady told us all about the flip diaper and the 4.0.  She showed us the spray attachment for the toilet to clean off poo, talked to us about the different stages of poo and how to react to those different types of poo, showed us the dryer sheet looking things that can go between poo and the diaper if we choose to use those.  She showed us what type of bag to put in our diaper bag to hold diapers full of poo.  She told us about the detergents we can use to wash the CD's, how to hang dry them, how to color code them so we would know which CD's would have two absorbent pads for overnights and which would have only one.  The special method to use if rash creams were used, how to separate the dipes from the pads and what type of bin to use to store them to conceal the smell. 

At one point I remember looking at J and thinking I wonder if he is still paying attention because I checked out a few minutes ago.  One glance and I knew he was out too.  He was looking around the store, checking his phone and had a glazed over look on his face. 

We left shortly after, both in cloth diaper shock. 

After discussing it more that night we agreed that we were glad we went but we knew cloth diapering wasn't for us.  I know that if we used CD's we would come up with a system that would work and it wouldn't be that overwhelming after a while but it seemed like a lot of hassle to me just for the sake of poo.  We agreed to exit the world of cloth diapering and enter traditional diapering. 

I feel that raising a baby is hard enough with out the pressure of cloth diapering.  I don't think my baby will grow up to be a different person because they didn't have flips or 4.0's and I pray their bum will be just fine despite our decision.  I give mad props to those who use CD's and are committed.  I am amazed at all you do for poo.  :)  When I am done cleaning poo off of my babies back, crack and crevices I want to be done with it.   I want to dispose of it and never look back, not have to scrape it into a toilet, not have to separtate my diapers, just throw it away.  In response to our visit to the world of cloth diapering on Friday, Saturday we went to Sam's and bought two boxes of newborn diapers and one box of wipes to help cushion our pockets next year.   We will buy a couple of boxes of different sizes each time we visit Sam's and hopefully that will take even more stress off of us next year. 

Now, I can't do anything about the diapers in the landfills since we aren't going with CD's and I do feel bad about that but I will just have to step up my recycling game and keep driving my prius to help our earth!  Doesn't driving a hybrid get me some brownie points here?  :)