Decisions, decisions!

When parents come into the store to learn about cloth diapers, we always point out that choosing the system you want to use is the hardest part of using cloth diapers. It amazes me how much thought goes into this particular decision, when I purchased our first set of cloth diapers nine years ago (shit, I'm getting old), I had two choices: prefolds or fitted diapers (one brand, lol). Some new parents are postively paralyzed with fear when it comes to the decision of what to put on junior's bottom.


We have one of the best selections of cloth diapers in Canada, occasionally, parents-to-be come into the store expecting to see one kind of cloth diaper, the old-fashioned flat diapers of yore. Sure, that would make the decision easier, but where's the fun in that? It's not like choosing cloth diapers will be the only decision you ever make, when you go to the grocery store, you have lots of decisions to make -- what kind of toilet paper? 2-ply? 3-ply? Charmin or Cottonelle? Don't even get me started on the shampoo aisle. Point is, every day, you buy things that entail making a choice, picking one thing over another.

So, how do you make a decision?

• talk to your friends who use cloth diapers. You can benefit from their experience. What brands do they like? Why?
• check out the awesome product review section on The Diaper Pin. You will spend hours there!
• come to a cloth diapering workshop. We offer workshops on the second Saturday of every month in Ottawa and Waterloo. It's a great way to get all the information at once, a benefit of the workshop environment is that other people might ask questions you wouldn't otherwise think of, and you might even make some new friends. OK, so maybe that last point is a stretch, but still, it's possible. I have seen customers exchange phone numbers in the store before!
• sign up for our loan program. You can rent a good selection of cloth diapers for 10 days for the same amount of money you would spend on disposable diapers for one week. It's popular, there will be a wait (don't say we didn't warn you!). Get a feel for what cloth diapering involves (hello, it's just a load of laundry!), and see what your preference is.
• buy a few diapers to try out. All of the cloth diapers we sell are good brands, and let's face it, they all do the same thing (they hold pee and poop, it's hardly rocket science!). If a diaper doesn't work out, it's not a big deal, you can always sell what you don't want to keep.

What your decision comes down to is what you feel comfortable using, what fits your baby well, and what keeps your baby comfortable. Still nervous? Need specific advice?

• you want cheap? Go for prefolds.
• you want easy? Go for pocket diapers or all-in-one diapers.
• you want your diapers to last through more than one kid? Go for sized diapers.

You see? It's not that hard. Realistically, most people rely on a stash that incorporates more than one style of diaper. I used mostly prefolds with our newborns, fitted diapers with wool at night, and I send pocket diapers to daycare. You can rest-assured that in the grand scheme of things, the type of cloth diapers you use are going to have a negligible impact on how junior turns out. However, recent studies indicate use of cloth diapers is positiviely correlated with a higher IQ, 97% of Mensa members were cloth diapered as babies. Yeah, I totally made that last part up, I should probably quit while I'm ahead.