There are many articles out there with tips to get your hubby to help with cloth diapers. There is something I find pretty common on all of them. They are written from the point of view of the wife, which makes sense, because how many cloth diaper papi bloggers are out there, really?

Here is my take. Of course, every situation is different but I will tell you my thoughts from experience from 1) having 4 kids and telling you what my wife tried on the first 3 and why it didn't work and 2) actually running a diaper service and hearing our customer's personal stories.

So first, a few dont's:

1. Don't talk about money saved - Many of the articles I linked recommend this. We run a cloth diaper service and we can tell you that this is simply not reality and if your husband starts cranking the numbers he is going to call you on it. There are very, very, cheap disposable diapers out there and, as long as you buy plenty of diaper rash cream to go with your purchase, you'll probably beat any "sensible" cloth diaper stash
2. Don't talk about the environment - Here cloth diapers win for sure. However, I'm writing this article to tell you what works and what doesn't and I can tell you for sure that although we are care about the environment (hint, that is the whole point of us running a diaper service), it was not something that won me over.
3. Don't tell us how easy it is - Particularly if you had one baby already. I changed a lot of disposables, I had a groove going, I had the brands I liked, and I had managed to reduce leaks to a minimum. We went to the pediatrician the other day: a medical professional with years of experience. He didn't know what to do with the cloth diaper Gabriel was on. So no, it is not easy for us guys.

Ok, so what to do instead?

1. Help us with the poop - One of the articles suggested this and I can attest this was what convinced me. My wife pretty much said: "if he is wearing a cloth diaper and he poops, I'll change him". I changed poopy diapers, so there was a way for me to skip changing one? Sign me up!
2. Let us keep using our disposables - From the point above you may realize that we still used disposables and we did for sure. We had a small stash and my wife used it.
3. Start a cloth diaper challenge - Okay, so you "eased" your hubby into tolerating cloth diapers. What is the next step? Guys like challenges!

So pick a reasonable number of days and a reasonable reward and then present the challenge to your hubby: I challenge you to use only cloth diapers for x days for y reward. The reward is optional, by the way (most of will just be happy to know we accepted and completed a challenge). The response will likely be:

And there you go, off to the races. I'm telling you that it works because my wife challenge me and I accepted the challenge. We actually failed the challenge (but that may be a story for another day) but after the challenge, my opinion of cloth diapers changed.

Now, as I said, mileage may vary and our customers are a good example for this. We have customers where the husband was the one asking for the service and even self-promoting the service. His reason? he believed that cloth diapers would help with the sensitive skin of his baby and he would tell anyone in his radius to do the same. I was skeptical about this but after a month of changing piles of cloth diapers I haven't needed to use a diaper rash cream once. Of course we had other customers where the husband is not supportive at all. There is hope though: sometimes we are indeed stubborn beings but we can eventually change our minds. So best of luck!