wow thanks for all the information. what would be great starter ones for a 10 month old who weighs nearly 22 pounds (he lost weight cause he's been sick)
Also how is the cloth diapers when they are sick and have it all watery cause lately my son has been sick and its been coming out of his diapers.
My ds had norwalk/noro-virus over christmas, and with 2 weeks of diarrhea, we never once had a blow-out onto his clothes. So a good cloth diaper will beat a disposable diaper hands down any day.
We switched to cloth with my dd when she was 8 months old and used fuzzi bunz pocket diapers for the first while. Pocket diapers have a waterproof outer and an inner fabric like fleece with a space at the back to put absorbent material like microfiber or hemp or whatever you like. The fleece pulls the liquids into the insert and also keeps babies bum feeling dry. It also makes solids pretty much fall off into the toilet so you don't have to dunk & swish or any of that.
Fuzzi Bunz come with inserts when you buy them, and getting a few extra inserts and doubling them up at night will get you through a whole night without any leaks. My 2.5 yo regularly is in her night diaper 12 hrs without leaks.
As for where to start... depends on what's important to you. Ease of use? Daddy friendly? One-step? or is it more about whatever will work and saving money? There are a ton of different options available, I will say not to go out and buy gerber prefolds and plastic pants though because it won't give you a true sense of what cloth is like.
There are a ton of online sites that sell diapers, prefolds are most economical, pockets have the adjustable absorbency and waterproof outer so no additional cover is needed going for them... you can also get a diaper that is all-in-one and goes on like a disposable and then goes straight into the wash.
So maybe post a bit more about who'd be using the diapers, what's important, that kind of thing and there are quite a few of us around here that cloth diaper and will probably be able to help. You might also want to visit
www.diaperswappers.com It's a site devoted to cloth diapering and lots of moms there help give info on where to start and learning the basics.