Cloth Diapering

That title alone probably gives most of you "baby boomers" nightmares of safety pins and plastic diaper covers.

And many of you Gen-Xers probably get the heebie jeebies at the thought of washing poopy diapers.

But, I'm here to tell you, I'm hooked on cloth diapers. And these ain't like the kind your mama used to use... :)

They look more like this.

There are many good reasons to use cloth diapers; environmental, health, etc. But there are two main reasons that we've "gone cloth": 1. ECONOMICAL and 2. TRASH-EATING, WILD DOGS

Let me explain #2 and forgive me if you've already heard this one:
Ankara has a wild dog problem. In my opinion they also have a trash problem. You see, every night millions of people in this city set plastic bags full of garbage outside their apartment doors. The "kapıcı" (the man or woman in charge of cleaning the apartment building) then comes around and collects the bags and puts them in a big pile on the curb outside. There are no big dumpsters. There isn't a container. Just a big pile of plastic bags. Around 10:00p.m. (give or take a few hours) poor people and junk collectors come around and dig through the bags. They open the bags and inevitably things get a bit strewn about. Then, around 12:00 midnight the wild dogs arrive on the scene and take what they deem to be edible. They do an even greater job of strewing things about. Finally at around 2a.m. the loudest trash truck in the world comes by and takes all the leftovers of the trash.

Anyway, about a year ago, when Eli was still in diapers, the wild dogs got into a bag full of his really really gross diapers and drug them out across the tiny bit of green grass that we share with the rest of our apartment building. You can imagine how horrific it was for me to step outside early one morning and see TONS of ripped up poopie diapers. It was like we'd been Tee-peed only with dirty diapers! I knew they were Eli's, and my guess is the rest of the building did too as he was 1 of 2 kids in the building still in diapers. So embarrassing. Long story short, the kapıcı cleaned up the disgusting mess but the memory has remained with me for this long.

So, for this, and several other reasons, I knew I wanted to use cloth diapers with Noah (I wanted to with Eli but chickened out at the last minute). There's no better place for cloth diapers than http://www.cottonbabies.com/ . They're a great company, whose diapers are known all over the world, but their headquarters just happen to be in St. Louis. Check 'em out.