When I was pregnant I did not even consider cloth diapers. When someone mentioned it, I thought, "No way! That's too old-school." I was picturing an old dirty cloth with huge clothes pins on the sides. I didn't really consider that much had changed since "back in the day."
Boy, was I wrong. I had no idea there were even so many different types of cloth diapers on the market. So here's my takeaway from using both.

Disposable Diapers

For the first couple of months we used disposable diapers for my son. We started with only a handful of newborn diapers before he quickly grew out of them. My ignorance again got the best of me when I thought the huge lot of diapers we got from our baby shower was going to last us for a while. WRONG! In about a week and a half, Ryan went through $40 worth of diapers...and he's only 2 months old! We weren't using expensive diapers either. I highly recommend Amazon's Brand of Diapers - Mama Bear because they were inexpensive but not cheap. They are a quality diaper for the price you pay. I never had any "blowouts," they fit Ryan well, and because we signed up for Amazon Prime we could easily order more when we saw we were getting low. You can't beat free 2-day shipping. And it saves us both the hassle of driving to the store just for diapers. Considering we live in a very small town in North Carolina, where the nearest grocery store is a 20 minute drive away (that is, when there's no tractors you get stuck behind).

Pros:

• Can be inexpensive compared to the start up price for cloth diapers
• Convenient, just toss when you're done!
• Breathable and most brands are very absorbent
• Different sizing options

Cloth Diapers

I first started using cloth diapers after I realized that we had just gone through a huge box of diapers in about a week and a half and considered we were probably going to spend over $100 on diapers in just one month! Ryan has zero tolerance for dirty diapers. There could be a drop of pee in his diaper, and he wants out, right away. That was a nice thing about the disposable diapers, is that as soon as he started crying, we could quickly look at the wetness indicator on the front and tell his diaper was dirty.

One day, my mother-in-law brought over a handful of little cloths that she said could be used as burp cloths, dish rags, or whatever. Turns out, they were cloth diapers. So...I tried it out one day. Ryan can't walk or crawl yet, so I set him up in his playmat/activity gym , covered him with one of the cloth diapers, and voila! MY realization that cloth diapers can help us save money came!
This is when I started my research and excitement about cloth diapers.

First, I figured, I already do a small load of laundry every day, so that it isn't all piled into one huge laundry day. This meant that washing the diapers was no big deal.
Next, we already had about 10 cloth diapers (not covers) that I would use during his playtime and wash every day.

What I was looking for was a diaper that I could use my own inserts with, that could be used more than once during the day, and was inexpensive. And we found these. We seriously considered getting the Charlie Banana cloth diapers but like I mentioned earlier, I wanted to be able to use them more than once, and ues our own inserts. I may end up getting one diaper of a few different brands, but for now, I'm a fan of the LBB brand.

You may be wondering about all the other advertised accessories like a wet bag, toilet sprayer, additional inserts and what I can say is: I use just an old pillow case inside a trash bin in the bathroom for a wetbag, a friend is giving us her toilet sprayer since she has no more need for it, and I DID purchase more inserts. The ones that came with the diapers we purchased were microfiber and I wanted a material that would be comfortable again Ryan's skin and was more absorbent.

Types of Cloth Diapers