What Is the Best Kind of Cloth Diaper?

This is the question I was trying to find an answer to when I first started researching cloth. The trouble, and what I wish I would have known, is that there is no real answer to this question because cloth diapers are highly personal. It would be like asking, "What is the best kind of underwear?" The answer completely depends on the circumstances, which can change at any time. I wear different underwear to work out than I do to go shopping, for example. The same is true for cloth diapers. Not only is each baby different with different needs, but babies' needs change throughout the day and change even more as they grow.

If you're new to cloth, there will be a learning curve as you figure out what works for you and your child and when it works. If you're waiting on a new baby, you can't possibly prepare a perfect stash of cloth diapers that will be ready when the baby comes. You can't know which quirks your baby will have that make using cloth exciting. Each baby is so unique, and that's what I didn't fully understand before my daughter was born.

Here are some of my daughter's quirks that have affected how we cloth diaper that we couldn't have known about before she was born:

• She has skinny legs relative to her size
• She's tall, and therefore long in the rise
• As a newborn, she hated feeling wet for even a moment
• She eats more, and consequently pees more than average babies her age
• She has fairly sensitive skin
• She's bigger than 93% of babies her age, and therefore blows through sizes much faster than we anticipated

Your baby will have his own set of quirks that affect your cloth system. The absolute best thing you can do to prepare is to have a large variety of diapers. Don't buy all one kind. If I could start over at the beginning, this is what I would change.