Why I quit using Cloth Diapers

Valinda
Oct 2, 2020
3 min read

Updated: Apr 25

Edit 2022: For our second child we will start cloth diapering again!

I don’t like to admit it and I feel a bit ashamed about it because I feel so strongly towards it but I feel I have to be honest with you all. I have stopped using cloth diapers. I really don’t like that I no longer use them. As you can see here, there are so many posts here about why I love cloth diapering but as of now I am no longer using them and I have several reasons why.

Worn out diapers

My baby girl is 3,5 years old at the moment (and still not potty trained…) and we have been using cloth diapers since she was about 12 weeks old. So after over 3 years of using this set of cloth diapers, they have started to wear out. The fabric is significantly thinning (and even see-through in some places) and being less and less absorbent resulting in more leaking, more diaper changes, and even more laundry. I have hopes that she will start to use the toilet soon so I don’t want to invest in another set of diapers.

Potty training

Kids being potty trained sooner was one of the reasons I started to use cloth diapers. Lots of people informed me that their kids were potty trained before the age of 2 and they thought that the cloth diapers were a big help in this. Unfortunately, I don’t see it. Like most cloth diapering parents, we started potty training when she was 18 months old and it was actually going really well as she was able to do her business on the potty. At some point, we took a 2 week holiday and didn’t do any potty training during, and since then everything has been going downhill.

Technically my girl is potty trained. She can walk around the house half a day without wetting herself but once she needs to go, she doesn’t go for the toilet or a potty, she asks for a diaper…

She thinks the toilet is scary and does not want to go near it. When we put her on the potty without a diaper she just sits and asks for a diaper after a while. The only progress we made is that she can do her business in the diaper when on the potty.

As she considers disposable (organic) diapers as ‘non-real’ diapers, I hope that she will be pushed a little more towards using the potty.

Relapse

The most important reason for me to stop using cloth diapers is that I recently had a large relapse for my depression. As you might have read here, I had severe postnatal depression after the birth of my baby girl. Because my shop has been growing very fast since the beginning of this year, I have been working around the clock, taking too few breaks in the last couple of months resulting in a burnout.

I had to start using antidepressants again to be able to take care of myself. My man had to work from home for a few weeks so he could also take care of me and our girl. Knowing that you can no longer take care of yourself is very hard and resulted in me feeling even more depressed. As I tend to be very stubborn, it was my man how pushed me towards the doctor to ask for medication again as I would have to prefer to fight this on my own but I think, in this case, he was the smart one.

So, it has been a rough few weeks but I am doing better. I am just very tired. Too tired to do more laundry than necessary so, the cloth diapers were the first to go, unfortunately. I don’t like it but at the moment my mental health is more important. At this moment I feel well enough that I can take care of my girl and even play with her once in a while which I think is more valuable.

This was a bit of a personal story about the reasoning behind the end of my cloth diaper journey. Looking back, I loved cloth diapering and if I ever have a second kid, I will start this whole journey all over again. I think it is just a bit sad that it did not end in the way it should have been.