by Megan Marshall, HCHI

Owner, Your Perfect Birth 

When I was pregnant with my first child, all the new baby info I read told me I had two options when it came to diapering my child:  hiring a diaper service or using disposables.  A diaper service sounded expensive, and everyone I knew used disposables, so that’s the route I went.

Along my parenting journey, I met some moms who used cloth diapers and washed them themselves–no diaper service for them!  They all seemed to be great moms, but their parenting style and lifestyle seemed to be different than mine.

They were moms who were environmentally conscious.  I like trees and nature and all, but I’ve never considered myself a tree-hugger.  They were moms who co-slept with their babies.  I couldn’t sleep if my babies were in my bed!  They were moms who breastfed their children–and continued to breastfeed when their children were old enough to come up and ask for “boobie.”  I breastfed my boys, but a whole year was plenty for me, thank you very much!  Essentially, they were moms who seemed just a little too “out there” for me…they just didn’t seem like “real moms” like me.

So I stuck with my disposables, spending more money on diapers each month than I care to think about.

With my second baby, I wondered about cloth because he had such sensitive skin–nothing seemed to cure the ever-present rashes and eczema on his poor bum!  Would switching to cloth help him?  I read some articles and looked into cloth a little bit, but everything about it seemed so overwhelming.  What kind do I buy?  How do I wash them?  I didn’t have anyone with personal experience I could ask about cloth, and the images I had from early childhood of my mother dunking cloth diapers in the toilet were so disgusting to me that I pushed the thought of cloth out of my head and kept buying giant boxes of disposables each month.

Then I became friends with a gal who used cloth diapers.  When I asked her about them, she said, “Oh, yeah, we use cloth!  I’m not trying to save the planet or anything…I’m just cheap!”  Then she explained that her brother or cousin or someone is an accountant, and he did all the math and figured out that there is no comparison–cloth is cheaper!  By A LOT!  For one child…and even more so if you plan on having more than one.  I can’t remember the exact figures she gave me, but they were totally eye-opening.

Armed with the knowledge that a “real mom” like me used cloth, I decided to look into it again.  Kelly was extremely helpful with this process, answering millions of questions and helping me make the switch easily.  Without her, I think I would have been stuck in the overwhelmed phase and never had the courage to take the plunge and make the switch.

It’s been over a month now, and I’m super happy using cloth diapers–and so is my son’s bum!  Even though I started late, I calculate that I will have spent about the same amount of money on my cloth stash as I would have if I had kept my little guy in disposables.  And the best part is that when we have another baby, I’m already set for diapers–no need to work that into the budget!  My sister is excited that I will be able to pass my diapers down to her, too.

And about those other moms who were just a little too “out there” for me…I wish I had listened to them sooner!  Turns out they ARE “real moms”…and we have a lot more in common than I thought!

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Megan Marshall is a certified Hypnobabies® Childbirth Instructor, living with her husband and two beautiful boys in Provo, Utah. She is the owner of Your Perfect Birth, providing Hypnobabies® Childbirth Hypnosis classes in her community. When she is not teaching, she enjoys reading, exercising, doing crafts and projects around the house, watching movies with her husband, and just hanging out with her family.