eco friendly diapering. finding your happy medium.

Hi Everyone,

You have asked for snippets from my life, well here is the first installment. And it is about diapers. Sorry all, it has been a very hot topic for me, hence why it is on top of my list of things to talk about.

This is a long one, bear with me.

If you told me that I would be scrutinize over diaper materials, organicness (is that even a word!) of a diaper yada yada, I would have said that you had lost it. If you mentioned that I'd be washing cloth diapers, I'd probably laugh hysterically and in between breaths have something witty to dress the laughter in.

Okay, so now that we have clarified that I was blissfully oblivious to the diapering subject, I will move on.

Before Special Kay, as we referred to her way back when, arrived, I did all my research. Hours of reading, gazillions of bookmarks flowing out of my folders and pdfs of my favorites, I bought what I thought was my happy medium. I knew I was NOT, I repeat, N.O.T going to be washing anything that had p(oo) in it! Clickedy click and I ordered tons of Gdiapers.

Lovely, the boxes arrived and I was in colorful diaper heaven. The premise of these diapers are that, it comes with plastic liner which snaps into a colorful cloth outer and cotton insert fit snugly into the plastic liners. You can flush inserts that have poo and compost the pp. How great is that?

Now, all I needed was the baby.

40 months later, Special Kay landed. Gdiapers flying around in the house, car, out of bags. Here we are trying to get the hang of a new baby, how ever Special K she may be, wondering if we will ever sleep again and then we realized that no matter what we did, Gdiapers just did not want to get with the program. Program being containing the poo inside the diaper. No matter what we tried we had major blowouts.

Did our Special K have some magical poo that transported through diapers? We ended up doing laundry everyday to wash her soiled clothing, bedding, baby blankets, our sheets...well, you get the idea. I sat there calculating and then realized that I was still using tons of water and energy just to keep things clean, clean things that would get soiled 10 more times that day. It was apparent that my happy medium had turned into a no medium at all. I have to add, I really really really wanted Gdiapers to work. It simply would not for us.

I was confused and sort of in a diaper panic. I wanted to be earth friendly and use a product that would be healthy for my baby girl. I found 7th Generation. Nice diapers, but the idea of disposing them still did not sit right by me.

Clickedy click. I found cloth diapers that looked cute, so I bought one to test drive it. The diaper arrived and though I can put together the most complicated gizmos together, I actually looked for instruction for this one piece cloth diaper. Oh the irony!

It took me about 2 months to get comfortable with cloth diapers and I ended up testing a lot of brands. I was soon speaking the diaper lingo well and when I spoke hubby needed a dictionary to figure out what I was saying. AIOs, hybrid AIOs, fitted, prefolds, pockets, flat...

I felt good and once again I felt I was in charge of my own diaper destiny.

Once the washing and drying dilemma was solved, I reached for my cloth diapers more and more. Now we are on cloth diapers with diaper covers and we use soakers for night time quite often. I have opted to get a hand cranked gizmo called Wonderwash, which we refer to as the "bubble" to wash and rinse the cloth wonders.

Once they are clean, I wash them once again in the washer with hot water. Then I hang them outside and let the hot sun work its magic. Hubby was not too happy with the hand cranked "bubble" thingymagig, so I am in charge of the handle and the crank. He was a little unsure of the maneuvering capabilities of cloth diapers at first, but finally he has mastered the art and babe no longer looks like a 5 year old has diapered her.

Are there any perks you ask? Well, babe has never had a diaper rash, we save money by not buying gel filled disposables and the biggest one - Mother Earth does not have to deal with our...how do you say...crap! Yeah, these are the kind of perks I can live with.

For real, did I write this long about diapers? Unreal! My life has morphed into something I barely recognize now. Kids, they do change your life. For good. And for the better.

Before I sign off, feel free to let me know your happy medium and/or questions. Also, I promise to keep the next blog post shorter and about anything but diapering.

Happy Diapering,
Sevi