Like all parents-to-be we got lots of advice before having a baby. One common theme was that I had "no idea how many diapers we would go through". Being completely clueless about this whole thing they were right in that I had no idea about any of it. We also got lots and lots and lots of diapers at the baby showers. It was an impressive pile but I kept the warnings in the back of my mind and joked that it should be good for his first week. It's gonna be about 3 1/2 weeks worth. A week ago he was making 10-12 diaper-deposits per day. It's gone up. I don't know exactly how many but when I left for a 3 day trip there was a drawer full of them and now they are gone! We have about 50 left then we have to buy more which means we have to pick which ones we are going to use. Like many new parents we had read statistics about how the average size baby will contribute something like 600,000 tons of landfill waste in their first 3 years and that the manufacturing of diapers creates 47 million cubic tons of CO2 (or something like that). Having a baby is roughly equivalent to building 3 coal fired power plants and the only "green" way to do it is to not have one at all. But we did and being responsible earth-citizens we decided to at least read about more "earth friendly" diapering methods. I suggested to Andrea that in order to be more environmentally responsible we don't HAVE to change him every single time he makes a deposit. It says right there on the bag that they are good for "up to 14lbs." and it would take Collin at least 2 days to poop that much, but she insists that we change it every time.
That leaves us with 4 options.
- 1. Let him go naked and follow behind with a bucket. This is the most earth-friendly provided you don't empty the bucket in a creek. It is also the messiest so we ruled that one out.
- Go with cloth diapers. Better than being naked, but there is a lot of mess. I also asked around and heard a lot of "yeah we tried that for a while, but then one of the diapers crawled out of the laundry and chased me out of the house". But I never heard anyone say: "we loved changing our child's cloth diapers, can't imagine doing anything else, and you should definitely do it." We'll consider it.
- There are these things called g-diapers whose motto is "love at first flush" that have a removable liner that you flush - no landfill waste. A good possibility.
- You go with disposables. Definitely the easiest and I am impressed with their load rating. A strong almost definitely.
We are going to give the g diapers a try and see what happens at least until we use them up. We have about 50 liners, so it should last a day or so then we'll see. So if you have a success or failure story let me know.
Posts
5 comments:
loved it! Grandma
It will get better. They settle down after a few months and the frequency decreases, but the mass increases proportionally, so watch out! Aunt B
We tried cloth diapers with Ethan for a few months. He had serious diaper rash the whole time (cloth doesn't work very well for some kids). After we switched to disposable ones the rashes disappeared. I'm curious to hear how the liner thing works for you.
Paul
Hey Andy -
Wait till he gets diaper rash, then you can go with the NO Diaper solution. Best way to clear it up, but only keep him in rooms with wood floors. This was usually a solution when he was walking.
Andy, we've been using g diapers since Mica was 2 months old. we still use them and we love them. (although we are starting to potty train...) it's a little hard getting the hang of it at first, but it's totally worth it. I used to belong to a g diapers yahoo users group as well, that might be helpful.
As far as diaper rashes go, we hear (and can concur from experience) there is less of a problem with the g's, since they have less chemicals than the disposables.
Post a Comment