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Diapers: Disposable vs. Service
We are expecting to have our first child in January 2004. Can
anybody provide information regarding the pros and cons to each of these two diapering methods? We are interested in first person experiences. Thanks in advance. |
#2
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Diapers: Disposable vs. Service
In article ,
Greg Hiscott wrote: We are expecting to have our first child in January 2004. Can anybody provide information regarding the pros and cons to each of these two diapering methods? We are interested in first person experiences. Thanks in advance. I used a service for all three of my kids, and was very happy with it. I grew up changing cloth diapers and washing them at home (I had much younger siblings) so diaper pins didn't throw me at all, though I understand there are some new things on the market that eliminate the need for them. I had to teach some of my kids babysitters how to diaper a baby with cloth diapers, as it is not something everyone knows how to do. I used them primarily for ecological issues, though I think it was also cheaper than disposables. (Washing wasn't a viable or economic option, as we lived in an apartment and didn't have a washer/dryer -- coin op it gets REAL expensive to wash diapers!) However, I don't think you can beat the convenience of having someone come by your house once a week to haul away all the dirty ones and leave a stack of clean ones in their place! The only time I had a problem with diaper rash, the diaper guy tested the ph of one of the wet diapers, and after that brought diapers that had a final rinse that neutralized whatever the problem had been. One of the two services I used even had training pants, so I could substitute 1 pair of training pants for 2 diapers when my kids got to that age. Finally, there was multiple-insurance if we ordered in advance: when we unexpectedly had twins, we were able to double our order for $2 a week! It's been a long time, but if I had it to do over, I would definately use a service again. meh -- Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care |
#3
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Diapers: Disposable vs. Service
I did a cost comparison while pregnant with my third. In reference to
west coast pricing of diaper service, even if I constantly used cloth diapers from a service the cost exceeded the cost of the name-brand disposable diapers (Huggies Ultratrim, Luvs, Pampers Baby). The service/delivery fee is where the problem arose. For twins (where you are getting more diapers per delivery) the scale tipped the other way. Washing your own cloth diapers also tipped the cost scale toward cloth. On a subjective note, I did not like handling cloth diapers. I took care of a two month old boy for 8 hours each day for about 3 weeks. His mother chose cloth diapers and I was happy to try it--particularly since I was 2 or 3 months pregnant with my third child. Boys make the diaper completely wet where you handle the clips/pins. I don't think I have every touched the "wet" part of a disposable diaper. The T-shaped clips make changing the diapers much easier. The covers make cloth diapers virtually leak-proof, but only if the particular covers fit your baby. Another subjective issue I ran into was keeping the wipes separated for trash. I suspect that washing your own and using cloth wipes would resolve that problem. So, I stuck (every pun intended :-) ) to disposables for the third time. Ironically, after using Luvs with my first two children, I have used Huggies Ultratrim with my third. Luvs and Pampers both contain Aloe Vera in their liners, which my third is allergic to. Karen G |
#4
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Diapers: Disposable vs. Service
"Greg Hiscott" wrote in message ... We are expecting to have our first child in January 2004. Can anybody provide information regarding the pros and cons to each of these two diapering methods? We are interested in first person experiences. I used cloth diapers for the first year, disposables thereafter. I think if I had had someone to talk me through the problems I was having at the one year mark I would never have gone to disposables, but that water went under the bridge some time ago. I liked using cloth. They were less expensive, among other things and didn't add that much to the laundry load. For the first month I had a service [baby shower gift]. They were fine. The diapers were always clean, on time, and they provided more than enough. When I switched to caring for them myself it wasn't much more work, just two loads a week on average. I already had the supplies as I'd bought diapers and rubber pants prior to receiving that lovely gift. After I switched to disposables I found they were quicker to change. They were portable. The laundry didn't seem to change, either, but, hey, that's life! I suspect that DS and many other children these days show interest in potty training at a later age than the generation of the 1950's [cloth diapers] mainly because disposables remove the wetness from contact with the skin and they are not as aversive to wear as the child ages. But, that's just my theory, for what it's worth. The main drawbacks of the disposables were cost, trying to figure out what DS fit into *now* as opposed to last shopping trip, and occasionally encountering shelves that were out of the brand I wanted in the size I wanted. Cloth has changed a great deal in the last 8 years. The wraps are better, more likely to work well, and much easier to manage than pins [I ultimately used pins, not wraps, due to cost of wraps]. They tend to even the edge on speed of changing baby, and with an active wiggler/toddler that becomes very important. You want to get more current info from those using them now as my info is outdated on the wraps. Personally, if I was having another baby, which I'm not, I'd go for the cloth again, after getting more current information and finding someone who could coach me on folding and keeping baby dry as baby gets larger and very mobile. then again, I also like hanging out my laundry to dry. Some people think that's weird, too. -Aula |
#5
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Diapers: Disposable vs. Service
I used both.
With child #1, I used my own cloth diapers at home during the day but disposables at night and when we went out (didn't feel like carrying around wet, dirty diapers). The system worked very well for me and I never ran out of diapers because I always had cloth on hand. Laundry wasn't a big issue at all, thrown in a load of diapers every other day, end of story. With child #2. I used a service for the first three months as that's when I did find the laundry to be a bit overwhelming, the newborn diapers that just get changed again and again and again.... But, we still used disposable when we went out. I then reverted to child #1 system. With my last one, #3, we used mostly disposables and I honestly can't tell you why. I did use cloth, but not to the same extent as the other two, but it wasn't because disposables were easier, it just kind of happened. good luck with which ever you choose, Marijke, in Montreal "Greg Hiscott" wrote in message ... We are expecting to have our first child in January 2004. Can anybody provide information regarding the pros and cons to each of these two diapering methods? We are interested in first person experiences. Thanks in advance. |
#6
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Diapers: Disposable vs. Service
Greg Hiscott wrote:
We are expecting to have our first child in January 2004. Can anybody provide information regarding the pros and cons to each of these two diapering methods? We are interested in first person experiences. Thanks in advance. We did everything -- service to start with, then cloth, washing the diapers in our washer. And we used disposables at night. DS especially was able to soak completely and thoroughly a double-diapered cloth wrapping. Disposables kept him dry enough that he would sleep through the night. The service was okay, but we thought it was more expensive than doing our own washing -- not a viable option for all, I realize. We probably would have opted for the service over disposable only. When DD was in diapers, we lived in a rental, with no *ahem* legal washing machine (long story), and I we used disposables. They are still decomposing somewhere in a dump in Rhode Island. Scott DD 10 and DS 7 |
#7
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Diapers: Disposable vs. Service
x-no-archive:yes Greg Hiscott wrote:
We are expecting to have our first child in January 2004. Can anybody provide information regarding the pros and cons to each of these two diapering methods? My experiences are longer ago than anyones, but they are personal for all of that. My mom thought that a new mom shouldn't have to worry about washing diapers, so she would always give at least a month of diaper service where possible. And where possible (i.e. it was financially possible for us and it was available where we were living), I continued the diaper service for at least a couple of months. After that, I usually washed my own cloth diapers. For some of the time I didn't have a dryer so I had to hang them out on the line to dry, and that did take time and some management of weather. (They don't dry very well when it is rainingg). I also used mostly un-prefolded diapers - just rectangular gauze diapers that could be folded any number of ways to fit any size or configuration of child. I liked the cloth diapers so much better than disposables - I'm totally not freaked out by touching a wet diaper or rinsing a dirty diaper in the toilet or any of that stuff that folks complain about, and never minded the smell much either. YMMV Of course at that time disposables were in their infancy, and weren't anything like they are now (neither apparently are cloth diapers). The closures were often not secure for instance. I did use disposables when I was traveling for the reasons noted because I didn't want to carry a dirty cloth diaper around with me. I used rubber or plastic pants over the diapers almost 100% of the time. When the children were potty training, they wore training pants which were very thick (about 1/2 inch) regular cotton pants. There was no such thing as pull-ups. IM totally without personal foundation O, pullups aren't really a good advance over the old method. grandma Rosalie |
#8
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Diapers: Disposable vs. Service
Greg Hiscott wrote in :
We are expecting to have our first child in January 2004. Can anybody provide information regarding the pros and cons to each of these two diapering methods? I changed to a diaper service with my third when she was about a year old. I used wraps, which did up with velcro (no pins needed). It was slightly more complicated then disposables, but not much. The least convenient thing was that if you change a disposable when you are out, you can dispose of it. With a cloth diaper, you need to bring it home again. -- Penny Gaines UK mum to three |
#9
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Diapers: Disposable vs. Service
In article , Greg Hiscott wrote:
We are expecting to have our first child in January 2004. Can anybody provide information regarding the pros and cons to each of these two diapering methods? We are interested in first person experiences. We used a diaper service for about the first year, then bought a stack of the diapers from the service and started washing them ourselves. We used disposables when we traveled, and found them to work about as well as cloth, but disposing of them in the trash bothered us. It is environmentally unsound and unsanitary. The disposables were much more expensive than washing cloth ourselves, and slightly more expensive than the diaper service. The diaper service was definitely worthwhile for the first few months, as we had a baby that never seemed to want to sleep. We did not get enough sleep to deal with huge laundry loads. We could have switched to washing our own sooner than we did. The diapers we used were shaped and had plastic snaps---as easy to use as disposables. I believe that they were custom made for the diaper service we used, as I have not seen such good cloth diapers for sale in the catalogs. We did get cloth diaper covers also---I forget the brand now. We ended up using the cloth diapers longer than we had originally expected (late toilet training), and they eventually fell apart due to chlorine bleach damage to the cotton fibers. One other thing we did was to get about 2 or 3 dozen small washcloths (all right--we didn't buy them, we cut up and overcast a couple of old Stanford towels left over from my grad school days), so that we could wash the baby's bottom with warm water using a clean cloth each time. We have a counter in our bathroom between the sinks, and we converted that to a changing area, so that we had warm water readily available. We used "wipes" when outside of the house, but found them much poorer at getting the baby clean and comfortable. -- Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels) Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed) Professor of Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics Affiliations for identification only. |
#10
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Diapers: Disposable vs. Service
Penny Gaines wrote:
I changed to a diaper service with my third when she was about a year old. I used wraps, which did up with velcro (no pins needed). It was slightly more complicated then disposables, but not much. The least convenient thing was that if you change a disposable when you are out, you can dispose of it. With a cloth diaper, you need to bring it home again. We used diaper wraps and a diaper service, but when we went out, we put The Kid in disposables. Best of both worlds. beeswing |
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