I ain’t afraid of no poop.

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Who’s afraid of a little poop?

Me, or at least I was.  My name is Sharon and I am afraid of poop. I wanted to cloth diaper my little one but I was afraid it would be harder, messier, and more expensive than disposables.  And really, was it any better for the environment?  In spite of my fears I started cloth diapering my then 18 month old two years ago.

If you are using disposables properly, cloth diapers are really not that much harder. The truth is, even with disposable diapers you are supposed to get rid of the poop.  You should be flushing it down the toilet.  I only know one person in real life that actually does that.  I never did.

Messier?  Well there’s still baby poop to deal with and baby poop can always be messy.

More expensive?  Perhaps the start up cost seems expensive but in the long run you can save thousands.  There has long been an argument based on an old study that cloth is not really as environmentally friendly because of all the water used to wash them.  Guess who sponsored that study?  Word on the street says it was a disposable diaper company.  Hmmmm.  Do you really think that my 2 or 3 extra washes a week is comparable to millions of never decomposing sposies filled with human waste in our landfills? I think not.

When I went to a cloth diapering seminar, the expert in charge talked all about the different kinds of diapers, AIO’s, pockets, fitteds, covers, prefolds, flats and on and on.  I had done some research so I was keeping up.  But all I wanted to know about was the poop.  For god sake’s tell me what to do with the poop!   I asked specifically how do you get rid of the poo.  My mother had filled my had with visions of swishing diapers around in the toilet.  Um, no thank you.  They just kept telling me it’s not that hard.  I just wanted to yell out prove it, show me!  But a live demonstration would be weird, and we were in a library, so no yelling allowed.  I wanted a step by step process of poop handling.

Skeptically, I went home armed with all of my new cloth diaper knowledge.  Still I was afraid.  I started to dream about them.  Seriously, I was dreaming about diapers.  Finally, I took the plunge.  Just for my sanity and some sleep.

Here’s what that girl in the library really wanted to know about cloth diapers:

You prepare like you prepare for any diaper change. Get the offending child, wipes, new diaper, changing pad and any other lotions or powders etc.  Put baby on mat, open diaper, wipe baby, put dirty diaper aside, put new diaper on, kiss baby.  Then take dirty diaper to the bathroom and put in diaper pail if just pee.  If it has poop you use a diaper sprayer to get some poop off and put it in said diaper pail.  Voila!

Of course then you have to wash them.  Which is not really an extra  step because you’d have to take those dirty disposables out to the trash at some point.  My friend asked me one day, like I was a crazy person “But aren’t you always doing laundry?  She stopped me before I could answer.  “Forget it. We’re all constantly doing laundry.”

Fast-forward two years.  I am now cloth diapering my second child. I actually carry around poop in my diaper bag if I have to, amazing really.  Of course it’s in a very fashionable, zippered (read – no mess), wet bag.  It is a part of our lives.  It really is no harder than using a disposables. With the money saved on disposables this mama was able to purchase a new front load HE washer to further save the planet.  Take that.

I ain’t afraid of no poop!

Edited: I should’ve added some resource links.

Before DiaperLab opened locally.  I purchased most of my stash from Jillian’s Drawers.

At TLR we use and heart mostly Bum Genius and Fuzzi Bunz.

Diaper Jungle, Diaper Swappers, and Diaper Pin are good browsing.

Or talk to ANY mama that cloth diapers. We loooooove to talk cloth!