Pampers vs. Parents Choice: Are Name-Brand Diapers Really Better?

I have a 4-year-old daughter, Haley, and she was in diapers until she was 3 and a half! That's 3 and a half years of buying 1 to 2 packs of diapers a week! That's 8 packs of diapers a month, 96 packs a year!

When I first found out I was pregnant, I wanted to go ahead and stock up on diapers before the baby got here. I stocked up on all the name brand diapers that I could!! I was telling all my friends and family that if they wanted to get me something, then get me Pampers! Well after Haley was born, it was no time and I was all out of diapers! By that time, I was realizing how much money it takes to have a baby! I went to the store to buy some diapers and saw the big price difference between Pampers and Parents Choice. I decided to go ahead and try out the Parents Choice and I can say, they were just as good as the Pampers!

Now if you parents are like me, then I know you don't like to think of the overall price you are paying for diapers each year. It could get very depressing!! This would be the point where you might want to close your eyes as I calculate how much you are paying for those name brand diapers each year.

Ok, I checked Target and they sell their jumbo pack of Pampers for $9.99 which at a size three is only about 30-35 diapers, so lets just round that up to $10.00. You buy 2 packs of Pampers a week which would be $20.00, 8 packs a month would be $80.00. Then lets times that by 12 and you have $960.00 a year for Pampers for one baby!! Just think if you had twins or triplets!! Now keep in mind that this is not counting when your child gets sick and goes through twice as many diapers as the last month or when your child uses the diapers on her baby dolls and tears the tabs off of them (my daughter loved doing that).

So now you see that you are paying $960.00 a year on Pampers. Lets say you decide to use an off brand of diapers like Parents Choice (my favorite). At Walmart, they sell the Parents Choice diapers for around $6.00 (you get the same amount of diapers as the Pampers, give or take a few). OK, lets do this again. We will times $6.00 by 2 and you get $12.00 per week. Then we will times $12.00 by 4 and you have $48.00 per month. We times $48.00 by 12 and we get $576.00 per year!! Wow, you are saving $384.00 dollars!! That alone is enough to convince me that the off brand diaper is my new best friend!!

But for you parents that still need a little more convincing, let's talk about the quality of the 2 diapers. We can all say that the name brand diapers are definitely cuter then the off brand diaper, but really, who is going to see the diaper besides family? (No, I am not talking about when your child is in the middle of the store and takes off their diaper to throw it on the floor and run around diaperless!!) Besides the looks between the two diapers, which is better? Some people say that the off brand diaper doesn't hold up as well as the name brand diapers do. I have used all kinds of different diapers and diapers do leak sometimes whether it is Pampers or Parents Choice. Babies are active, so sometimes the diaper looses the battle of "no leaks". No matter which brand of diapers I use, I would change my daughter around the same amount of times everyday. So, say you change your child 10 times a day, is there even enough time to test the theory of off brand diapers leaking more than name brand diapers? Whenever I changed my daughter's diaper right before bed, and right when she woke up in the morning, there was almost never any leaks through the night, and that is using an off brand type.

Now there are more name brand diapers and off brand diapers than just Pampers and Parents Choice. Those are just my favorite ones. Now, the only thing you have to decide, is what to do with all that extra money you are saving when you change to the off brand diapers!!

So in conclusion, potty train as fast as you can!!!