Cloth Nappies

One of Kelsey's most in-depth pieces of research in the run up to Jake's birth (and there were many of them, rather her than me!) was about reusable nappies. We had talked to some friends in the PBE and got conflicting views. Some said that they felt that they were a waste of money as it took so long to get them ready that they had to use disposables too, whilst others called them a god-send and a money saver. We were interested and had some money in our American account to put towards them.

The first thing that strikes you is just how bulky they are compared to regular nappies. You can fit around 40 disposables in the same space as you can put 8 resuables. This does make putting clothes on a little more tricky, especially onesies, as the snaps at the bottom sometimes fail to reach. In the summer this won't be a problem as the nappies are all brightly coloured and patterned so he can get away with wearing them as shorts, but for now he may start wearing more "real" clothes when he has a cloth nappy on.

The second thing that strikes you is the price tag. Like with any market, there's a wide range of prices and like any market, you get what you pay for, by and large. Ours range from £15 - £25 per nappy, which does cover the insert which means that it's a big initial outlay to get to the point where you aren't having to do a full wash and dry every single day. However, considering that the cheapest disposables on the market come out around 10p per nappy (though the ones we prefer are 16p...), you can see that it takes a while before they pay for themselves. However, at the start, Jake would go through at least 10 nappies a day, and whilst we've only started using them in the last couple of weeks, he still goes through 5 or 6 each day. Boring maths says that at this rate it would take us around 9 more months to break even. However, they're reusable so we'll just keep hold of them for baby #2 in the future.

We were sold by the idea of not contributing to the landfill created by disposable nappies (the stats say a new born creates something like a tonne of waste in nappies in the first year or two iirc) and the idea of not having the regular expense of disposable nappies each week. What we weren't sure about was the amount of effort involved in using them. Going into our third week now, it's not as hard as I thought it was going to be. The only complication is that we have 3 or 4 different brands of nappies, meaning that it can be hard to work out which inserts go with which outer layers. Fortunately, Kelsey has taken this on as one of her household chores (though she's keen for me to learn!) so I can just pick up and go. On average, we wash them every two or three days, but they're all ok for the tumble dryer so it doesn't take too long to restock.

The main bonus that we've found is that they are much more absorbent than most reusables (unless you're willing to pay top dollar) meaning that we use less and Jake can happily sleep through the night with a surprisingly heavy nappy. The main drawback we've found is when it's a dirty nappy and you end up having to spray the excess with the shower head...not a fun job!

All in all, we like using them and part of me wishes that we had been able to start using them sooner. As with this whole experience, however, you live and learn. We'll be professionals next time round!