The Diaper Debate (a little long, bare with me)

So babies need diapers. Back when I was a child, mothers wrapped folded pieces of cloth around baby's bum, used gigantic safty pins with ducks on them to hold it together and covered it with vinyl pants. When soiled, the cloths went into a big bucket of water to soak until wash day. And the smell was awful. Did I miss anything?

Then came the fabulous technology of disposable diapers. These are pieces of paper and plastic wrapped around baby's bum, which are simply thrown away after use. They have evolved to include some sort of mystery substance that turns into little jelly "seeds" when wet. I'm pretty sure this is the absorbent part, but I don't know what it is, until I see it tucked into the folds around baby's thighs because the diaper "over-absorbed", if you know what I mean.

Lately there has been some debate over which of these methods is the best, for the baby and the environment. I have noticed a marked increase in the amount of trash I take out each week, so much that we may have get the larger sized can for our household. (The blue thingys you haul out to the street once a week) Our baby, on average, uses two garbage bags (the tall kitchen drawstring variety) of diapers each week. As he gets bigger he will use fewer diapers, but the diapers will get bigger, so I figure this is what we can expect from him. Now, in our tiny town of 3,000 people, let's assume there are 100 kids in diapers, for the sake of easy math. (That's newborns through 3-4 year olds, and it's a pretty good approximation) That's two hundred bags of diapers each week, or 10,400 bags of human poop going to our landfill each year!(And this is just a tiny rural town. Now imagine a city's diaper load!!) Not to mention the fact that those diapers will take 500 years or so to break down, due to the amount of plastic and "mystery jelly seeds" they contain. And on that note, what are those mystery jelly seeds? Are they going to tell me down the road that they cause cancer? (Like talc baby powder.)

So I decided to look into cloth diapers. I remember my younger siblings wearing them, and one never forgets the smell of the "diaper pail". However, doing a little internet research, today's cloth diapers are totally different. These ain't your mamma's cloth diapers! Sure, they still have regular squares of cloth, but even the pins have gone the way of 8-track tapes. Now they use a thing called a Snappi to hold them together, or you can use a "wrap", where you just lay the diaper in it and it goes on with velcro. Plus, and this is my favorite part, they make what they call AIO's or All In Ones. These diapers have an absorbent inner and a waterproof outer, so they work just like disposables except instead of throwing them away, you wash them. Plus, they come in cute colors and prints. You almost don't want to cover them with pants! And they don't go into the bucket of putrid water, either. They sit in a dry pail until wash day, which surprisingly is less smelly. For my little breastfed baby, smelly isn't really a huge problem. But once he starts eating food, this is something to think about!

The debate claims that washing the diapers is just as bad for the environment as throwing them away, and they have a point. I usually wash clothes in cold water, but diapers need to be washed in hot water. However I usually use about a 1/4 to 1/2 cup of detergent in a load of laundry, but in the diaper load I only use about a tablespoon of liquid detergent. (Seems counter-intuitive, but you don't want too much soap with your diapers. It also makes me wonder if I'm using way too much soap with my clothes, which are far less "dirty" than diapers! Something to think about.) And they use no bleach or other harsh chemicals (except the occasional Oxyclean) and no fabric softener (or dryer sheets). So in reality, a load of diapers costs probably half what a load of regular laundry costs me. And the water from your washing machine goes to the same place as the water from your toilet. And they are prepared to treat human waste at those facilities. The landfill is not. We are supposed to be removing as much poop as we can from disposables too, (it says so on the package!) but hardly anybody does this. Cause, lets face it, it's icky. And if you have to take that extra step and deal with the poop, than the "simplicity" of disposables isn't so simple after all.

Now let's talk money. We go through a little more than a package of diapers (80 count) a week. That's about $10.99 every week. (Not counting wipes, which is debate for another day!) And we use Luvs, a mid-priced diaper because the cheaper "store" brand diapers tend to leak and gave my angel terrible diaper rash. But if you use higher end diapers (Pampers, Huggies) add another two or three bucks. That's $572 a year, times three years (I'm being super optimistic here!) is $1,716. (Or $2,184 if you use Huggies.) I don't know about you all, but a thousand here, a thousand there...pretty soon it starts to add up to real money! If you bought the most expensive cloth diapering system, you'd pay about $600. Total. That's for the BumGenius brand system. And there are many less expensive options.

So, I've decided to give cloth a chance. I have chosen to sew my own diapers, saving even more money! Plus, it's kind of fun. Here are some pictures of a few of my "creations".

These diapers have a fleece outer, and a microfiber soaker inside. (Think ShamWow, only less hokey.) The pattern is a hybrid between Mama Bird and Rita's Rump patterns, both free on the internet. My first try was a disaster, but now I think I've got it figured out! (Lest you think that I am one of those seamstress, stay-at-home moms, let me assure you that I am not! I can barely sew a straight stitch, and I'm using an archaic sewing machine that used to belong to the husbands mother. We rescued it from a storage barn and cleaned it up. It has two speeds, zero and seventy miles per hour.)

We still use disposables too, but hopefully we can cut back by using cloth, and as my "stash" of diapers increases we can use less and less! I'll let you know about some of the trials and tribulations of using cloth as I get more into it. But for now, it's something I want to try, if for no other reason than to say that I gave it a shot!