Diapers

It occurred to me on Saturday that we haven't bought diapers in 2011. Thanks to my friend Abby and her business Itsy Bitsy Bums we have been using cloth diapers for the last few weeks. We wanted to use cloth before the baby was born, but due to the crazy moving around the world that we did in the first few months of little man's life, we didn't feel that it was possible for us. Since December though, we've been using cloth, and it is so fantastic that I can't imagine returning to disposables. Cloth feels cleaner for our household (no nasty trash), for the environment, and for the baby's health. Even though we used chlorine free Seventh Generation disposables, studies show that disposable diapers can harm the fertility of baby boys in the long term, and while I trust Seventh Generation for household cleaners and laundry detergents, there is no way to create a disposable diaper without using some chemicals. Laundering the diapers is far easier than I imagined, and with the designs of cloth diapers now they are just as convenient as disposables- no pins or folding, just a snap and some velcro. Plus the diapers adjust to grow with baby, so the set of three daytime shells, nine daytime inserts and two sets of overnights can be used until we start toilet training, which saves us tons of money and saves piles of diapers from sitting in a landfill. We are complete converts to cloth, and I hope that more people will try it out, it is one of the greatest switches that we've made!