Lessons Learned in Cloth Diapering: Why I Cloth

So my friend Amy recently has been blogging about cloth diapers, and I thought I would continue the "series" I had begun "years" ago.

As I described in my earlier cloth-related post, I started researching cloth diapers when I was pregnant.  Why?  Well here's why I was interested and why I still use cloth.

1. I read an article when I was pregnant that talked about how chemicals and materials that used to be found in feminine hygiene products but have since been outlawed are still found in disposable diapers for babies and toddlers.  So something isn't safe to have near my reproductive organs for four days out of the month but it is safe to be on my baby's twenty-four seven for the first four years of life??  Awesome.  (Armstrong, Liz and Adrienne Scott   Whitewash: Exposing the Health and Environmental Dangers of Women's Sanitary Products and Disposable Diapers, What You Can Do About It. 1993. HarperCollins.)
2. They are super cute.  
3. You save THOUSANDS of dollars over the cost of disposables.  
4. They don't leak.  Seriously.  I have had probably three times more leaks in disposables than in cloth.
5. Nuggets like this: "In May 2000, the Archives of Disease in Childhood published research showing that scrotal temperature is increased in boys wearing disposable diapers, and that prolonged use of disposable diapers will blunt or completely abolish the physiological testicular cooling mechanism important for normal spermatogenesis."  Need I say more??
6. Environmental issues up the ying yang.

Bottom line is that disposable diapers are a relatively new invention, and they are packed with all sorts of gross-ness that we just don't know the long-term effects of.  Cloth is cheap, clean, healthy, cute, and all around better.   I do use disposables at night or when we are out and about (blog post to come regarding that) but I feel like any time my son is in a cloth rather than disposable diaper it is a better thing.