Saturday, November 22, 2008

Top Ten Reasons to Use Cloth Diapers

1. They save you MONEY!! Estimated saving for using cloth diapers varies depending on the where you gather up your numbers, but an easy way to calculate the savings that you could expect to see is by using the savings calculator at the Diaper Pin. It is amazing to see how quickly cloth diapers will pay for themselves…regardless of if you choose economic prefolds and covers or a more upscale pocket or all in one diaper system…

2. They are soooo much easier on the environment than disposables! For each baby diapered with cloth diapers, you will be saving 4,000-6,000 diapers from going to the landfill…accumulating in landfills at the rate of 3.4 million tons per year. These mounds of soiled diapers (Do you know you are actually supposed to flush the poop off of a disposable before you toss it in the trash can!?!?) are not able to break down well in airtight landfills…This process could actually take several hundred years!!! Disposable diapers accounted for 2.1% of the garbage in landfills in 1998, the last year that this information was collected.

3. The chemicals in disposable diapers…Dioxin, Tolune, xylene, ethylbenzene, styrene, isopropylbenzene, sodium polyacrylate…Sounds like stuff I don’t want near my babies!! There are questions about the safety of these chemicals…

4. Using cloth allows you to choose from organically grown, and sustainable textiles. Cotton is one of the world’s most widely known crops, but it is also popularly known for it’s pesticide use. When you choose to purchase organic cotton (or organic bamboo or hemp) you are choosing to support the harvesting of chemical free crops.

5. One of the best feelings I get about using cloth is knowing I will not have to run to the grocery store to get diapers. We used disposable diapers with our first 2 children, and it seems like I was always needing to call my husband, mother in law, or neighbor to pick up a pack of diapers for me…I love the freedom of knowing that as long as I have water at my house, I can have clean diapers.

6. Disposable diapers do not allow the skin to breathe…In May 2000, the Archives of Disease in Childhood published research showing that scrotal temperature is increased in boys wearing disposable diapers, and that prolonged use of disposable diapers will blunt or completely abolish the physiological testicular cooling mechanism important for normal spermatogenesis.

7. Cloth diapered babies tend to learn to use the potty earlier than babies who wear disposables. For the most part, babies who are wearing disposables do not feel wet when they pee, due to the reaction of the chemicals in the diaper. Cloth diapered babies actually get the opportunity to feel wet when they have peed, so they usually will want to learn to go to the potty sooner.

8. Cloth Diapers can be used for such a long time. A good quality cloth diaper is made to stand the test of time, and can easily be used for multiple childern. After your children are finished using them, their legacy lives on…they are the best cleaning cloths available! They are perfect for cleaning around the house and for cleaning cars…A disposable simply gets thrown away…

9. Cloth diapers are CUTE!!! There are such a wide variety of diapers on the market today, that getting the perfect fit is only a portion of the shopping equation…you get to select from some amazing fabrics (cotton, bamboo, hemp, velour, minkee…) as well as a HUGE selection of colors and prints. I don’t know where you will find any diaposable diaper that holds a candle to how cute cloth diapers are.

10. No one wants to wear paper underwear…Imagine the feeling you have when you are at the doctor’s office and they ask you to slip into their little paper gown and sit on their paper covered table…Not the best feeling, huh. Wouldn’t it be great if you could say, “no thanks…I’m going to slip into my cotton velour gown and sit on my minkee blanket”…Seems a little bit more comfortable… I think babies should be as comfortable as we are…so we should stop dressing them in paper.

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