Why I cloth diaper

Ok so many of my friends wonder why I cloth diaper. Well the very first reason why I cloth is because of the price. Cloth for the most basic "package or system" $200 can last from birth to potty training. Disposables for 3 years of diapering can cost $2,000. You can do the math.  Unfortunately I have to part time cloth since day cares here in Utah if they are State funded or whatever program I'm in, are not allowed to use cloth. So I'm still spending a fair amount of money on both. But not as much as I would if I was full time disposables.Oh and for a speech I had to do for a class I wrote on facts about CDing and I found in two years of washing 2-3 loads of diapers it will only cost $14 extra in your water bill. AND you can reuse the diapers for multiple babies as long as you treat them nice.
 Ok so here is the tricky thing to talk about. The environment. Some people claim that the water to wash the diapers is worse then the diapers going to the landfill. Which if you do the math, on average a baby will go through 5,000 diapers. And that's if you are able to train at 3 years. And according to some studies it can take up to 500 years for one diaper to biodegrade. Now that is just a study, so it's not accurate, but even if it takes 100 years.. . that's a lot of years.Here are the stats on landfill and tree usage. 24.7 billion disposables are used a year. 92% of those diapers end up in landfills. 300lbs of wood, 50lbs of petroleum feedstock, 20lbs of bleach, 2.3 times more water used in producing disposables than cloth PER BABY!
Now for chemicals in diapers. This i'm not so happy with. All of the materials in the disposables are bleached, a bi product of bleaching are dioxins.EPA linked liver cancer, immune suppression, and lab rat genetic mutations to dioxins. Sodium Polyacrylate is the absorbant chemical that can absorb 200-300 times its weight in liquid. If ingested can cause breathing problems including asthma, Cause severe rashes, bleeding from perineum and scrotum tissue, fever, vomiting, and staph infection. In 1985 was banned from tampons because it was linked to Toxic Shock Syndrome. If as little as 5 grams is swallowed, it can kill a child.

Brooke, this next part is for you. Poop. It's inevitable. You can't escape it. When I was using disposables every time Oliver relived himself, there was a blowout. Normally there was hardly any in the diaper and everything everywhere. I can't tell you how many loads of laundry I did just from blowouts alone. Now that I have started cloth, I've only had one blow out and that's because Oliver had a stomach bug and it was pure liquid (TMI, I know. But you will get used to it). BUT with cloth you do have to wash it. Even wipe if off in the toilet since you don't want all the poop in you washer. But there are products that can help. My favorite (even though I haven't tried them yet, I will soon. Just lack of money) are flushable liners. They usually come in a pack of 100 for $7-$9  They go on top of the cloth so that when he/she poops you can just flush it down the toilet and dissolves in 20-30 days. Less mess for you to deal with. Also there are sprayers that you can attach to your toilet so that you don't have to do so much work to get the matter off. So you still have to clean, just not as bad. And honestly washing them isn't bad at all. But that's another post some other time.

So here is the latest cuteness! He loves Kix cereal and has found a new place to store it other than his cheeks.