A cloth diapering dad's first impressions

Since this sub skews very female I wanted to write down a dad's perspective to help other dad's using or on the fence about cloth diapers.

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BACKGROUND

My wife and I are currently living in China. I originally brought up that we should use cloth diapers just after my wife got pregnant and she agreed without hesitation. For us it is not financial related, it is purely a decision to reduce waste. The convenience economy is a fantastic thing, but seeing all the waste all of this on demand delivery services create every day just in my compound we wanted to do our part.

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I will be going back to work tomorrow after my paternity leave. Our son is 18 days old.

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BUILDING THE STASH

After we made the decision it was off to the races trying to determine how we would tackle this. The links in this sub are very helpful for the ins and outs and the different types of diapering available. After a few weeks of research we decided on the Charlie Banana OS pocket diapers. We decided on the pocket diapers because they seemed to be the most strait forward for our circumstances (We didn't go with AIOs because we do not have a dryer and it is very humid in Shanghai. Given this was a HK company I thought they would be easy to get in China, they were, but very expensive; we ended up buying off amazon and shipping to my parents house when we were back last Christmas. This was actually my reveal that my mom was going to be a grandma. I let her open the box.

In the end we had to borrow a suitcase to bring our diapers back and had 28 in total. We also did buy some items in China, such as wipes, changing pads etc.

Pro Tip: If using reusable wipes, when you buy them or make them take the number you think you need and DOUBLE it!

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PEOPLES THOUGHTS ON OUR DECISION

Overall most people were pretty positive. My mom brought up stories of how me and my sister were cloth diapered (sheets and safety pins) and how amazing diaper technology has advanced. One of my friends told me that her mom uses cloth diapers on her dog and swears by them lol. Most of the negative comments were from places of misunderstanding, such as, its so difficult, do you really want to always be touching poo?

Pro Tip: Babies poop... a lot! After a couple weeks chances are during a change baby will pucker their anus an projectile poo with intense velocity in your direction; after this spraying some poo into a toilet isn't so bad.

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THE FIRST DIAPER

Our son was a big boy, weighing in at 3840g (8.5lbs ish). We put cloth on him in the last day at the hospital before coming home (4 days old). Changing the diaper was the same as when I changed the disposables in the days before. Absolutely no more difficult. The fit was fine on the smallest setting (XS) and since then we have even increased a little bit (S1). He got all sorts of comments from the doctors and nurses; this was not something they had seen before.

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CHANGING DIAPERS

After baby is changed I take the diaper to the bathroom. I have a bidet house that double as my diaper sprayer. I have a little stool (about a foot high) that I sit on while cleaning out the diapers. First I get all the poop off the wipes. Second, I remove the insert and completely soak it and wring it out (so there is not much pee or poop water festering in the bag waiting for laundry). Lastly, I hose all the poop out of the pocket. After the night I will do this in bulk with all of the diapers that were soiled overnight.

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LAUNDRY

We have a front load washing machine. Currently, I have done laundry every day and a half. I should be able to stretch this out to 2 to 3 days as baby gets older and uses fewer per day. After the diaper is used and rinsed I put it in a PUL bag (diaper pail liner), no lid and so far no smells.

First we do a rinse cycle no detergent, this takes about 15 minutes.

Second we do a heavy wash with TIDE (liquid) detergent.

The pockets and wipes go on the drying rack and the inserts go on a small heated drying rack we bought (we found even in the summer without the added heat the inserts dried very slowly). We could skip this if we did laundry more frequently.

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FINAL THOUGHTS

So far so good. Like anything in life it is all about setting priorities and getting into a routine. Yes cloth diapers take a bit more effort than disposables, but after a few days it becomes normalized and not a big deal. I have done 90% of the diapering to date and all of the laundry. I am going back to work tomorrow so lets see how my wife will handle it. She still has another 4 months of maternity leave.