Cloth Diaper Dropout

I’ve been pretty kind to myself with the whole “second baby syndrome” thing. I believe that for every thing a second baby doesn’t get compared to the first, the second baby also gains something.

You know… like Vivienne may not get homemade baby food, but she gets parents who are more relaxed about naps, bedtime, etc. Certainly there are advantages and disadvantages. But in the grand scheme of things, is Vivienne really going to care that I didn’t peel, chop, steam, puree, and freeze all of her fruit and veggies?

I think not.

So like I said, I’m being kind to myself. Because having two kids is harder than one. Because we are full-time working parents with a house and a yard to care for now (when Nora was a baby, we lived in a 900-square-foot condo). Because two children somehow manage to produce like THREE TIMES the laundry that only one does—I swear.

Shortly after Vivienne was born, there was a crazy coupon available for Wegmans disposable diapers. It was printable, and available for more than a month before it expired, so I printed tons of those coupons and picked up as many packages as I could. Because $1.89 for ~36 diapers? Amazing price. Our daycare provider was on board with Nora’s cloth diapers, but I could always tell it wasn’t her favorite thing to deal with. Even though we made it as easy as possible on her—just throw the diapers into the wet bag, poop and all, and we’ll take care of it—it still was not as easy as disposables. So we picked up a ton of disposable diapers, thinking that we would use them for overnight, as well as for sending to daycare. We would go back to cloth as soon as they were gone.

But all of those diapers have lasted. We STILL have like six packages, a mix of size 3s and size 4s. (Vivienne is wearing the size 3s, and probably won’t wear the 4s for a while yet.) And Viv is on her way to eight months old. Woohoo, thanks, Wegmans!

The thing is? We’ve grown pretty fond of disposable diapers. We’ve only been using the cloth on the weekends. And I’ll tell you what—even with only doing diaper laundry once a week (and only about 8-10 diapers), our washing machine is still seemingly going all.the.time. Every night of the week. And we certainly have enough evening chores on our hands without having to worry about adding stuffing cloth diapers on top of all of that.

Last weekend, Target had a good coupon available for $15 off of a $40 Up & Up purchase. We went and picked up a package of 180 diapers and a box of 800 wipes (as an aside—even when we’ve cloth diapered, we’ve still been responsible for sending disposable wipes to Mary’s). With the coupon, 5% off Cartwheel offers for both the diapers and the wipes, an extra 5% off for using my RedCard, and a $5 gift card (that I earned from a baby food promotion they had going on a couple weeks ago)… our total was only $18. Who can argue with a deal like that?

For me, cloth diapering has always been about more than the money savings. I’ve always appreciated the feeling of knowing I’m cutting down on the billions of diapers in landfills, too. But… I’m sorry Mother Earth. Convenience has won out this time around, as it has with other things (like the aforementioned store-bought baby food instead of making my own at home).

When we picked up that giant box of diapers at Target, it sparked a conversation between Michael and me. Should we even continue with the cloth diapers at all? We built up a mostly new, sizable stash (like 24 diapers?) again for Vivienne, and is it worth holding on to if we’re only cloth diapering two days a week? I mean, we’re talking about saving like eight diapers every seven days. That’s it. Sure, we could keep doing this for the next two years until she’s potty trained, then sell off the stash—which should still be in pretty excellent shape given the part-time use. Or, we could sell them now for like new prices and just be done with it.

I’m torn.

Part of me feels that using cloth diapers only two days a week is actually more hassle than it’s worth. We’re running a full wash load once a week, but only for eight diapers instead of a “full load” of 18 diapers. We have a dresser drawer dedicated solely to cloth diapers… when we are only putting a dent in it each weekend. But then I’m like, but what about the environment?? And OH BUT THEY’RE SO CUTE! (I almost died when I saw the new Audrey diaper from BumGenius the other day. Lord knows I don’t need it, though!)

What do you think, fellow cloth diaper moms? Is it worth continuing with cloth diapering part time? Or should we just throw in the towel? And if we do continue, maybe we should go ahead and sell off at least half of our stash?

Any other moms out there who cloth diapered the first child but ended up giving it up for the second? Fellow cloth diaper dropouts?!