Cloth Diaper Conspiracy

Interesting article I saw on my Facebook today: The Cloth Diaper Conspiracy, Is there one?

I have always wondered, why the mainstream baby & departmental stores do not display or sell any kinds of modern cloth diapers? If it was not for the blogs and online stores, I would have never known about the existence of it, except the traditional prefolds.

It might not be wrong to say that the mainstream baby diaper market is very much monopolized by the disposable diaper manufacturers, who are afraid of losing business once parents start going disposable-less. This reminds me of the (not-so) classic case of AMD vs Intel processors where AMD sued the hell out of Intel for monopoly. It is not just the geek in me that knows this, I was once employed with the underdog AMD. If only there was a super-huge cloth diaper manufacturer that could sue the daylights out of the disposable biggies. These are just my wild imaginative desires, do not sue me back.

Back to cloth diapers, in real daily life, it is not easy telling or suggesting to people about cloth diapers. More often than not, they think that I am selling a product. I am merely just sharing my experience of better baby diaper management and use. There are also people who comment cloth diapers are inconvenient because we have to wash the poo/pee, instead of just throwing away the dispos. Point very much valid, but think again, don't you have to wipe/clean your baby's bum bum after the business? We don't find that difficult or dirty. In fact, once you have given birth and are taking care of your baby, I think there is hardly anything that we can find disgusting.

The additional cloth diaper laundry is regarded as burden to some. We do manage the numerous baby laundry of tops, pants, burp cloths, bibs and what not. It is not like we have disposable versions of these clothing items. If you wash these laundry, cloth diaper is just another. With prior rinsing of cloth diapers, you can very well chuck them all into the washing machine together with the baby clothes.

Cloth diapers may seem a little expensive in the beginning. It is more like an investment that you see the savings in the long run. At average, one cloth diaper could cost from RM30-RM60. Assuming you have 20 pieces of RM50 each, total of RM1000. The cost of a disposable diaper is about RM0.50, assuming you need 8 diapers a day, you spend about RM1460! RM460 savings in the first year itself! The cloth diapers that you buy will last your well throughout the 2nd and third year. With disposables, you will continue buying more and more till your kid is toilet trained.

Sanju has been on cloth diaper system for 14 months now, and with proper budgeting and planning, I have saved a great deal on disposables. And what about the utility bills? They are almost negligible as I wash the cloth diapers with baby laundry. At the same time, I have saved myself a lot of hassle and sanity from the tedious traditional diaper laundry!