And before you put a small child to sleep in a regular bed be sure to put a waterproof mattress cover on it. :)

The diapers are the folding kind like I had as a baby. I’ve also read rave reviews of the Mother-ease diapers that Farley mentioned.

Modern cloth diapers are very easy to use. We use “Mother Ease” (http://www.mother-ease.com/). They have simple snaps, are adjustable in size, and clean up well.

A few tips

1. Use disposables at night. Cloth doesn’t do well to multiple pees. :) A disposable will let the child (and you) sleep for longer stretches.

2. Buy used cloth diapers on Ebay. A through washing will clean them and most sellers have done a great job of cleaning them up. You can save a ton of money and you can sell them when you are done!

3. Buy a diaper sprayer (http://baby-belle-bottoms.stores.yahoo.net/diapersprayer.html). It makes spraying the poopy diapers a breeze. Toilet water is cold and it is no fun sticking your hands in it. The sprayer makes it simple – and it is quite high pressure actually so it does a better job of rinsing the poop off than you could do by hand anyway. Seriously it will be the thing that makes cloth diapers workable.

If you follow these three things I think you will find cloth diapers not only cheaper, but easier than disposables (I find the disposables have a hard time keeping big poops inside the diaper).

Good luck and congradulations!

We did the big boy bed very similar to how you are doing it. Only we started about a month before #2 was born. That way there was no attachment left when she took over “his” crib. In fact, she even took his old room and he got a new big boy room (the nursey is gender neutral and his room is now very much a boy’s room). But you are correct, you will use the bassinet for a while anyway. It worked great for us. Keep in mind that each kid is different.

And the financial impact has not been too great for us. The only unanticipated increase for us has been in health care costs. We pay per person for insurance and then had some bad luck health wise so we have almost maxed out family out of pocket. More impact than the financial has been the time management. With baby #1 you ask “What do I do?” With baby #2 you know what to do but you have to juggle the task with a two year old demanding your attention!

I am very happy for you. Congrats again.

Congratulations again on all the good stuff, new baby and new house!

My mom washed our cloth diapers by hand, no joke. In the toilet bowl. She did them in the washer too after that, but still. For people without washers & dryers though, you can get delivery service cloth diapers.

And I’m not suggesting this, just a little anecdote… when my grandparents had their first child, they were too poor for a crib, and Aunt Carol spent the first year of her life sleeping in a dresser drawer.

Ted – breastfeeding isn’t exactly free, you have to count the mother eating for two, yes?

The big boy bed thing worked for us with #1 when we had #2. When #3 came, #2 wasn’t ready. We’re keeping him on lock down in his crib as long as we can. And by as long as we can, I mean until he figures out he can climb out. We just went garage sale-ing for crib No. 2.

I’m surprised you didn’t mention food cost increases. Is your wife breastfeeding & pumping? Or are you doing formula? Formula, at $30 a big can, has to be the biggest racket of all time. We’ve done both (#1 was adopted) and breastfeeding is truly the only free lunch out there.

I liked the idea of giving the big brother the “big brother” bed and how that works as a transition. I’ll have to remember that in a couple of years when (if) we’re expecting our second.