The story may change when she starts on solids but I recommend everyone to try out cloth diapers, just make sure you have a routine and system in place to make it less overwhelming (we have two diaper pails next to the changing table, one for disposable wipes and one for the diapers, every other day we wash the diapers and liners).
Most diapers only get pee, but cloth diaper are more difficult to use, let's add 2 extra minutes, 4 or 5 times per day.
No solids means "not hard rock solids", they still make a nasty stinky brown paste. Hopefully only once per day. But that diaper MUST be partialy hand-washed, don't put it as is in the washing machine. At least a partial hand wash and then go with the rest to the washing machine. This is like an additional 5 or 10 minutes.
So it's like half an hour of extra sleep for $3, and when you have small kids sleep time is never enough.
Or $1000 per year? That little coffee a day already pays for a vacation flight.
What do you value more - $1000 or 60 hours of your time?
It's not only the time to change them, also wash, dry, fold, store. Each part adds like 1 or 2 minutes for all the diapers, in particular folding can't be done in bulk. Probably wash the diapers with shit twice once to remove most of it manually (+ 1 or 2 minute) and one in the washing machine. The 10 minutes go away too fast.
An I remember my mother talking about boiling or blenching the diapers, add like 15 or 20 minutes 2 or 3 times per week (that's like 5 minutes per day). And I may be missing other hidden time sinks.
Point being, a small expense once is one small expense. A small expense daily can easily become a huge expense.
That being said, I'm not gonna be prescriptive and say that no one should get their daily coffee. But they need to be aware what it costs them. If they know the cost and are ok with it then by all means, order away! I hope your friends are at least now making a conscious choice to spend $1000+ a year on coffee :)
I don't see it anywhere here, which is refreshing, but there's also something about cloth diaper use that lends itself to people making it their entire personality.
Well yeah, it would become your whole personality too if you spent that much time trying to hand scrub poop off of cotton.
If people ask I do tell them I use cloth diapers but I (at least hope!) don't make it my entire personality.
Maybe I'd be surprised if I asked my friends and co-workers what my personality is though.
Cloth diaper usage seems like it could also correlate highly to being vegeterian or vegan, who have the stereotype of that being their entire personality.
My eldest stopped using diapers during day at 2 and night at 2,5 years old.
Hopefully the youngest, too. She's only 1,5 but she already dislikes the cotton cloth being wet for too long, which is great. Modern diapers are so good they barely notice. You're essentially training them to just let it go because there's 0 feedback.
That is the real advantage for me as I hate diapers with a passion. No way I'm doing that for a year more than I have to, even with easier diapers.
The number I gave was a ballpark number. I actually haven't run the numbers. But in any case, this sort of argument has always made no sense to me. First I don't buy coffee every day. I make my coffee at home. And if I did, it's not like disposable diapers and daily coffee are mutually exclusive.
At the end of the day a $3 expense is a $3 expense, and adds up to over $1000 a year. Maybe that's chump change for some, but I take my wins where I can get them.
After changing and settling the child, take the dirty cloth diaper to the bathroom, open the toilet, drop the solids into the pot and flush. Grasp the two ends of the diaper, turn it inside out, and dip the middle of the diaper (where the solids were and where some may remain) into the toilet water several times to rinse it further. Flush. Squeeze out the diaper and drop it into a diaper pail to be washed later. Wash hands. Once done, dirty diapers in the pail can be washed at your leisure.
Hope this saves you some time.
I'm from a large family. I watched my parents change my diapers and years later changed my younger siblings' diapers.
Using the water from the toilet would be considered gross here. I'm not sure if the rule make sense, but I'd prefer not to break it, so we used a small buckler instead. Filling and cleaning it each time adds some time.
Twins... God bless you
At least one of my kids would get bad diaper rash, though, in cloth. We had to make sure the were constantly checked and changed even when it wasn’t obvious.
Big if lol but yes agreed otherwise!
This is probably better ROI than "breastfeeding saves money" when formula is so cheap and you avoid pumping, washing, and labor while exhausted.
That assumes
-Always available to breastfeed
- mom doesn't work (or at least has tremendous flexibility)
-and doesn't need to pump
Those are overly idealistic to me and impose overhead costs.
We use disposables while traveling. It's just easier.
The main thing is that for many, formula is paid for via support programs, but unless you're down on SNAP you don't get diapers AFAIK.
It’s easy enough to qualify for both even at HN salaries, you just need to have enough kids.
(1) You have to ingest more than 1800 calories to get 1800 calories of milk. I'm seeing a 1.25x multiplier at a minimum so 2250 cal.
(2) That's already close to a full daily calorie intake (3 meals).
(3) Kirkland formula is $13 per 2250 calories ($32/5400cal*2250cal). You're not beating $13 per 3 meals unless you're meal prepping.
(4) This doesn't even factor in the vitamin loading via formula.
My wife breastfeeds and pumps. She doesn't love it, but she doesn't mind it.
Also, I'm no pediatrician but vitamin loading via formula seems off to me. My daughter's pediatrician told us that while breastfeeding is preferable to formula for the bonding benefits, at the end of the day it doesn't really matter as long as the baby is eating enough. We do have to supplement vitamin D in either case, which we do with pumped milk.
I don't think there's a mathematical way to optimize anything in parenting. You just try stuff and see if it works. And maybe it works for a few weeks or months. But then it stops working. Then you adapt! Maybe breastfeeding will stop working soon. Maybe cloth diapers will stop working soon. Who knows? All I know is that I'm not gonna be showing my daughter and wife a spreadsheet to show what is optimal.
Adding new parameters contingent on discretionary priorities and resources is vastly more subjective.
Enjoy parenthood.
I am enjoying parenthood, thanks :)
> Is formula more expensive than the portion of the mother’s caloric intake that’s used to produce milk
You also "ran the numbers" in the same comment.
Maybe you're not getting enough sleep from tending to your kid.
Though, you did say formula "isn't cheap" in a comment questioning the the ROI. I'm lost because that would imply you had run the numbers to call it expensive.
I agree that every family's different. I'm overly touchy on the phrasing to a fault. You get it. My point is that people seem to lean into this or over worry about breastfeeding at all costs.
We still keep formula on hand just in case (premixed because the powdered formula has a pretty short shelf life). We found that my daughter doesn't really like it, but that's not really relevant. But in any case, the premixed formula is 2-3x more expensive than the powdered formula, which is why it's a bit surprising to me that someone would say that formula is more cost-effective ROI. Anecdotally we haven't really noticed a increase in our monthly grocery bill, and my wife is back to her pre-pregnancy weight and has stayed there for a few weeks.
Just thought I'd pass along the one training suggestion I have. Cloth or disposable.. when you're ready for them to move off it - it really helps if they're able to see and associate their bowel and bladder movements with the physical artifacts.
I suspect it helps it click faster that yes, "this is the stuff that needs to go into the potty and not pooling around my legs in a clammy cold puddle".
Cloth diapers help a lot with this. It's one of the reasons kids on cloth diapers are usually much earlier trained.
Modern diapers are so good there's essentially no feedback.
I agree that the modern diaper is so good that it effectively disconnects the feeling of evacuation from the consequence of it.
I think the other thing kids pick up on when you're mopping up their floor leavings is the grossness aspect, which is a bit more learned. They see you grimacing every time you touch it - they see you taking care to ensure that it doesn't get on other parts of your body. Toddlers watch body language and reactions a lot to understand how they should relate to things.
This terrifies me! We have carpets. Some tile, but also some carpets. I guess it's not too different from when the cats have an "accident" though, just bigger messes.
We do have a bidet but it's a toilet seat bidet so we may need to rethink our system.
We also use a cheap synthetic fleece cloth liner, too. We just got a couple yards of it from fabric store and cut it into strips. The poop mostly hits that, and since it’s synthetic it slides off well.
However there's a two-for-one at my local stores, so in reality we pay more like $20.
[1]: https://www.libero.com/product/touch-open-diaper/touch-4-ope...
We go through maybe 5-6 a day for our 6 month old. The number I was comparing was probably when she was newborn and going through 10+ diapers a day and requiring multiple diapers per change because she'd pee or poo on her new diaper while changing her. We've been using cloth diapers since she was 1 month old.
We do keep some disposables on hand when traveling and just in case we forgot to do laundry or whatever, but I think we've maybe just used 3 or 4 in the past 5 months.
Worked fine.