My first big baby purchase!

I am beyond excited.  I just made my very first baby purchase!  Technically, I was there when Andy bought a Batman onesie last week (don’t ask), but that was DEFINITELY NOT my purchase.

I bought 24 cloth diapers.

Since long before we found out we were pregnant, I have been researching cloth diapers.  I have a lot of reasons.  The biggest, though, and probably easiest to guess, is that I am cheap.  Like cheap.  It pains me to spend lots of money cheap.  But the more I looked, the more I liked.  First, cloth diapers are not like they used to be.  Not even at all.  My mom used the old prefolds with safety pins and cover.  She won’t even recognize these puppies.  I ordered two different types of All-in-One diaper, where the whole diaper is built similarly to a disposable, goes on with hooks, and can be tossed into the laundry with little effort on my part.

Another reason I like the idea of cloth is that disposable kind of creep me out.  I had a student give a speech about disposable diapers last year, and when she cut it open and showed the gel inside, the whole thing kind of bothered me.  It seemed really chemically and unnatural, and I don’t know how I feel about that coming into direct contact with the little butterbean’s skin for 2+ years.  And, did you know that it takes 500 years for one disposable diaper to decompose in a landfill? 

Of course, that alone wouldn’t do it for me.  Really, the cost is the big issue.  Most estimates say that parents spend upwards of 1500 to 2000 dollars on disposable diapers in one child’s lifetime.  I just spent 346 dollars, and I could very well have enough diapers to get me through ALL of our children’s lifetimes.  Heck, even if I find I need more and order a few, I will still come in at a HUGE cost savings.  And, parents who cloth diaper repeatedly report significantly fewer cases of diaper rash and diaper blowouts.  All of this makes the extra laundry and spraying a dirty diaper in the toilet seem worth it to me.

On to what I bought.

I ended up buying 12 BumGenius 4.0s from Cottonbabies.com (they are on sale WHICH NEVER HAPPENS).  We got the yellow, blue, and green so they will be gender neutral.  These are a  one-size diaper.  They say that they fit babies from 7 lbs. until they don’t need diapers anymore.  Most of the reviews, however, say that they are not the best for newborns as they don’t snap tight enough.

So for the newborn days, I bought 12 Fuzzibunz diapers which are sized for babies 0-8 months.  I got whatever gender neutral colors they had—two blues, orange, yellow, and green.  We may find that we need more than 12 newborn, and that’s totally fine—I can always order a few more :)

I can’t find a good picture that I can download—but you can see everything at www.cottonbabies.com

I am seriously excited about these arriving.  Now to figure out the rest of the stuff :)