These are not your grandmother's cloth diapers.

My mother: "So - I've been stocking up on diapers, when do you want to start taking some home?"
Me: "Actually, Nick and I have decided to invest in cloth diapering."
My mother: "Oh.................................................................................... well you're going to need waterproof pants and bloomers and pins and -"

MOM! Stop.

This is the reaction we get from most people who have no idea what they're talking about when we tell them of our decision to invest in cloth diapering. Most people think of the piece of white cloth that isn't much bigger than a dinner napkin (or thicker, for that matter), wrapping your kid in it, sticking a few pins in for good measure, and praying there isn't a poo-splosion.

Like this

Yeahhhhhh - I can see that holding up for about .5 seconds on a tar pooping newborn. The cloth diapers now-a-days really aren't that much different from disposables. Depending on the kind you get the only difference may be that you throw them in the washer rather than in the trash. There are a few different kinds of cloth diapers.

All-in-ones (AIO's)

These are the closest you're going to get to disposable. Change the diaper and throw it in the hamper to be washed. Easy peasy. While there are MANY obvious advantages to this type of cloth diaper there are also a lot of drawbacks - they take MUCH longer to dry (on baby as well as in the dryer / on the line) and tend to get "funkier" faster - if you know what I mean.

Pocket Diapers - 

Pocket diapers are much like AIO's except they have a removable liner. These are pretty hard to explain so I found a picture:

Common Sense, right?

These are ingenious! The picture above says they have velcro closures, but not all do. You can find CDs with snap closures just as easy and for the same price. Snap closures will last longer than velcro, so if you're leaning towards the one size diapers snaps are probably your best best.

Prefolds - 

Of course, you can still go to walmart or babysrus and find the traditional white cloth diapers and buy pins. Some people prefer these because of the cost - but once you buy the pins, waterproof covers, etc. there isn't much of a difference in price between the 1940's model and the awesomeness that is the AIO's. 

Personally, I just dropped more than I'd like to admit on 24 pocket cloth diapers. They came in the mail today and I cannot wait until my rockin' green detergent gets here to wash them all and get the ready. 

Why not AIO's, you ask? Well, with the loads and loads of laundry I'm going to be doing within the next... rest of my life, I figured it would be easier to have cloth diapers that aren't going to take forever to wash and dry. Being able to take the inserts out and wash one diaper as two separate items will make them faster to dry and tone down the funk for as long as possible. 

More to come on specifically which kind I bought and why once I get this baby out of utero and pooping in them!