Cloth Diapers

Cloth Diapers have changed my life.   We used disposables with our oldest daughter and have used cloth virtually all the time with our youngest.  We have actually found that cloth diapers are easier to use, our house doesn't smell as bad, and she has had fewer diaper rashes.  Actually, had I known how easy cloth diapers are, I would have used them with our older daughter.
When we were deciding about whether or not to use cloth we had a lot to consider.  The first question was how would it change our routines.  We were so used to changing diapers and throwing them away that it seemed the easiest thing to do.  We were concerned about our initial start up cost and my husband just didn't like the idea at all.  At the time I worked in an Early Intervention program and was lucky enough to meet some moms who used cloth diapers.  I asked them about their experiences and heard about the brand that we ended up using, the Bum Genius.  This seemed the easiest to convince my husband about and he was amenable to the idea.  We decided to ask for the diapers as our only "baby shower" present since we had so many toys, clothes etc. from our oldest daughter. Actually, we were able to register for them through maineclothdiaper.com  Amazingly, we received 15 diapers as presents and have used them since she was about three weeks old.  The reason we waited was because the diaper seemed to rub on her umbilical stump and although the doctor said there was no feeling there, it looked really uncomfortable to me so we used the vast supply of newborn diapers we had from the hospital.  Once the stump fell off, it was go time!
There have been some negatives, though.  We have a hard time finding pants to fit our littlest darling since the cloth diapers are so gigantic.  Her butt looks huge with a cloth diaper on!  The other negative has to do with recent developments.  Now Maya is crawling and with crawling (mostly commando style) her diaper appears to fold down and she leaks pee out of the top of the diaper.  Sometimes it happens when she is sleeping, too (she is a stomach sleeper).  It doesn't happen all of the time-just often enough to keep us on our toes.  I am hoping that as she starts replacing bottles with solid foods she will be passing less urine and the diapers will not have as much of this problem.
The other issue is laundry.  I have a system in place where I go no more than two full days between diaper loads.  I wash the diapers twice (once on cold and again with hot) with my homemade laundry detergent and they seem to do well.  Every couple of months, I have to strip them and then they appear to be as good as new.
When Maya was about 7 months old we went camping for 5 days.  We bought a package of disposables to take with us since we didn't want to trek into town to do laundry during that time.  We were so used to the super-absorbancy of the cloth diapers that we could not change her diaper enough.  Instead of using 5 diapers per day (cloth) we were going through 8-10 disposables.  Not to mention, clothing changes.  Luckily, I had over-packed so she didn't end up smelling like pee for the whole trip.  She also developed a diaper rash during that camping trip.  However, her shorts did fit for the first time that summer.
I highly recommend cloth diapers for many reasons, mostly because they have made our life much simpler.  It has taken a bit more organization (making sure that we have clean diapers on hand) but over all, cloth is definitely the way to go for us.