We asked the diapering experts at website Born To Love to teach us all about the different fabrics and styles available for today's cloth diaper.

Our new friend Catherine McDiarmid at the pregancy and parenting site Born To Love gave us all kinds of helpful insights into the world of cloth diapering. Check out the different styles, fabrics, and cost of different kinds of cloth diapers.

Cloth Diaper Fabrics

Terry Cloth
The most absorbent of the diaper fabrics, the advantages of terry include it's durability and increasing softness with laundering. It doesn't shrink when you wash it, either. The only down side is it's bulkiness, especially if you need to double your baby's diaper.

Birdseye Cloth
Although the most expensive diapering cloth, Birdseye is tightly woven and very absorbent. This soft cloth will also last the longest of any diapering fabrics.

Gauze Cloth
Weighing in as the lightest of all the diaper cloths, gauze is soft, loosely woven, and finely spun. This makes for a soft, comfortable, and absorbent diaper for your baby and his skin, since it's porous weave allows air to move about freely.

Flannel
The most common diaper fabric, flannel is parents' favorite since it's soft to touch. Flannel also fairs well with most baby's skin. In addition, flannel is the easiest fabric to come by. Sounds like a winner.

Diapering Styles

Flat Diapers
These large squares or rectangles of flannel, terry cloth, or gauze are many parents' favorite because they are the most cost efficient and fastest drying. Many parents also find it the most versatile diaper since they can fold it to make it fit baby exactly, placing the thickest part of the cloth where baby needs it most, while others find flat diapers' ambiguous folding techniques a pain.

Prefolded Diapers
If you order your cloth diapers from a commercial diapering service, this is most likely the style you will get. Prefolds require very little or no folding, and there are several layers of extra-absorbent padding placed down the center of the diaper. They are also the easiest diaper to use with standard closing covers - but pins, Di-D-Klips and Snappy diaper fasteners all work, too.

Shaped Diapers
These hour glass shaped diapers are comfortable for baby, little or no folding is required, and rarely require fasteners like pins. They fit easily inside a velcro closing cover, too. A diapering dream.

Fitted Diapers
With elasitc legs and fitted elastic waist, these diapers close with velcro, snaps, or ties. Fitted diapers are the closest to resembling a disposable diaper.

All-In-One Diapers
The easiest of all the diapers to use, but also the most expensive. Their waterproof backing makes them harder to clean and more difficult to dry than the other styles. They also fall short in the air-circulation factor. But, they are convenient, mess-free, and provide an extra inner layer of absorbent of fabric.

Many thanks to Catherine McDiarmid, who has been running her cloth diapering business and website Born To Love from Oshawa, Canada. She has won numerous web awards for her boundless information on cloth diapering.