Sierra is a TCO Recipient and mom of two. Sierra originally wrote this post for the TCO blog in 2020.
Hello, I’m Sierra! I’m a mom of two boys. I have a now 3 month old and a 16 1/2 month old. We started cloth diapering as soon as my youngest was born. My toddler had the hardest time in disposables. We could never find something that didn’t leak (especially overnight). We went through tons of different diapers and dealt with way too many rashes. When I got pregnant with my second, I knew I wanted to cloth. Especially with two under two, I knew I’d be saving money. We’re a military family- my husband is a marine, and I’m a SAHM. We didn’t have the funds to fork out a ton to get started and I was bummed we would have to use disposables. And then someone told me about The Cloth Option. I applied and was approved. Before I knew it, there was a package of diapers and inserts on my porch. They sent sooo many options for us to experiment with. We quickly fell in love with pockets, especially for my squirmy toddler. They also provided so much support and information on how to use and care for the diapers. In the beginning we had a little bit of a hard time getting my newborn to fit and not flood the diapers (even newborn). He had really skinny legs and a chunk belly. But, we did it! We fully cloth two kids and love it!
Sadie, from TCO, frequently reaches out and is super friendly and gives awesome advice and resources. We’re super thankful that we were able to use this resource. We currently still have TCO diapers as we slowly build our stash so that it’s manageable with two kids in diapers!
We haven’t bought disposable diapers since my youngest was born 3 months ago. We had a few left over for my toddler in case of emergencies, but have only had to use a few (I forgot a diaper at home, oops)! It’s saved us tons of money. We currently still use disposable wipes, but maybe we will venture into cloth wipes soon.
Our saving grace for getting my husband on board (especially with poops) was fleece liners! I read somewhere that you can cut fleece into liners, and tried it out. Super easy! Saves time in handling poop diapers, and fleece isn’t too expensive. And I handle the laundry, so he has no quarrels! Lol.
It’s been a great experience with TCO, and I’m super thankful for it. I’ve bragged about it. Without it, we might still be fighting the disposable battle!
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Do you want to try cloth but find the initial cost a barrier? Apply to receive a cloth diaper package from TCO by visiting www.theclothoption.org/apply.