Cloth vs. Disposable Diapers

So let’s talk about diapers. Yes, I said diapers. While I was pregnant, my brain was constantly going a mile a minute. I was always worrying about what we will need and worrying about buying things we didn’t need. One of the things I had to think about was diapers. I wanted to do what was best for our baby and was constantly on google ( even when I was working ) looking for the best products. Along this google journey, one of the things that I ended looking up was diapers… cloth or disposable?

Before I was pregnant I automatically thought I would use disposable. You know, they’re easy and convenient but I wanted to look into cloth. I had heard they are great and better for your baby so obviously, I had to do my own research. So this is what I found out about both cloth and disposable diapers and where I landed on the decision.

Let’s start with cloth. When I first thought about cloth diapers, an image of a baby from the 50’s pops in my head with a white cloth wrapped around its bottom with two pins. Well, this isn’t how cloth diapers are nowadays. Cloth diapers have come a very long way… they don’t use pins anymore. They use multiple snaps so the diaper will grow with the baby ( added bonus ) and a lot of them have inserts.

Now, one of my concerns about cloth diapers was the laundry aspect. I didn’t want to have to be washing stinky, dirty diapers every day. Well, they have thought of everything! There are actual companies that come and pick up the diapers on a weekly basis so that you don’t have to. A lot of the companies that do the diaper cleaning and pick up also have a diaper rental so you don’t have to go out and buy over 80 cloth diapers. One of the other benefits of cloth diapers is that most of them are organic materials such as bamboo. They also come in lots of super cute colours and patterns.

Cloth diapers have reusable or disposable inserts so you can choose what best works for your family. There are even reusable wipes that you can get as well and just toss them in with the inserts when you do the laundry. So cloth diapers are more Eco-friendly and can either be more cost-effective or not depending on if you choose a diaper service and if you choose to use disposable inserts or not.

Disposable diapers have also come a long way since I was a baby. They are softer and more absorbent. There are more brands and options of style with each brand. For example, Pampers Swaddlers, Pampers Baby-dry and Pampers Cruisers even Pampers Overnight. Most of the disposable diapers have an indicator strip to let you know if the baby has a wet diaper. I personally think this is very cool. Disposable diapers are very convenient, you don’t have to keep the dirty diaper in the diaper bag when your out and about you can just toss it in the trash. Another really cool thing is you can get lots of free diapers from different companies for being pregnant.

Shopping for disposable diapers can be very overwhelming and confusing since you don’t want to waste money on a big box of diapers to find out they don’t work for your baby’s body shape. That’s why I like the free care packages, to be able to try a bunch out. You can sign up with companies such a Nestle, Similac and Pampers and they will send you a little care package right before or right after your baby is born with a bunch of samples and coupons for their products. A lot of the diaper companies also have a rewards program where each package of diapers have a code and you add that code in the app or on the website and you can either earn free diapers or other products such as money towards Shutterfly ( a photography company ).

So there very large differences between cloth and disposable diapers and lots to think about. A pro’s and con’s list worked well for us on deciding to choose either cloth or disposable. We ended up choosing disposable because of our lifestyle. We are always on the go and being able to quickly change our son’s diaper and dispose of it without thinking is very convenient for us. I really love the idea of cloth diapers and the environmental aspect of them and I praise the families that can do it, but right now they just aren’t for us.

We ended up going with Pampers Swaddlers and now Pampers Cruisers. Pampers Swaddlers were amazing, they were soft and had that amazing indicator strip. Pampers cruisers are working great with Noah with how busy he is, unfortunately, the cruisers don’t have the indicator strip and I really miss that.

We tried a few different brands out and none of them worked like the pampers did. We really really didn’t like Huggies for how stiff and hard they were, they didn’t have the nice softness that Pampers Swaddlers did and also didn’t have that amazing indicator strip.

The link below to the diapers my busy boy used/uses.