Wow, don't remember it being that expensive! I used cloth diapers for both my children and I'm pretty sure that I've saved much more than that. Pre-folded might be a bit of a luxury. Take a little effort with the standard ones and at least feel a little better that you're investing in protecting the environment for your children!
At this point I don't plan to have any other children so investing in $900-1400 USD in cloth diapers that in a matter of a year or two I'm going to have to throw away just didn't make sense to me.
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With my son, I can't just use the standard ones because as it is, just putting a regular disposable diaper on him is a chore because he has nearly crawled away before I get that done. I watched my friend put on a standard cloth diaper--and her son is very mellow and just laid there the whole time--it still was quite a process. If I have to fold and secure the cloth diaper as you have to do with standards there is no way it's going to work considering my sons temperment. And after that you need to put a covering on so if that standard cloth diaper gets wet it doesn't leak.
So, for prefolded diapers it ranges from $900-1400 USD to buy. That is, buying 10 diapers for each day (my son goes through at least that many--especially now that he's eating solid foods) and washing those every 3 days which I've gathered is pretty much standard.
Even using disposable diapers, my son, with a little observation from the adults in his life can "communicate" when he needs to use the toilette and so he has his own little potty that we use with him sometimes. So, I am not at all worried about potty training him--even with disposable diapers.
As far as the environmental issues go--I do agree that cloth diapers are best but the main damage has already been done as far as we're concerned as my son will be out of diapers soon enough. Also, everyone makes their own bad impact on the environment--my good impact is that I don't drive a car so....
As I said, I'm not planning on having any more children so for me to fork out that much money for an article that you can't exactly sell or give away after use doesn't make sense.