Diaper Dilemma

Did you know that disposible diapers are estimated to take 500 years to decompose? They are wildly terrible for the environment and new parents know that we use A LOT of them. Since before Griffin was born, I have been exploring the use of cloth diapers. I can't say I am or was an obsessive researcher, but I have surfed a few websites and asked around to a number of friends about the issue. The good news is that there are dozens of new-fangled models of cloth diapers that supposedly make it so easy to use them - they are not the old style tri-folds with pins that your parents are familiar with. I actually have a number of friends who swear by them, in fact. But one thing most people say is that they aren't worth it for newborns, because almost no models of the new cloth diapers fit well enough to avoid leaks, and you change diapers so many times a day that it's too much work to keep up with the laundry at first. If you want a kinder, gentler disposible, either for this newborn period or because you just can't take cloth diapers, they make environmentally friendly disposibles like the brand Seventh Generation, which is what we've been using from the start. They're not cheap, but they work well and I feel better about my environmental footprint at the moment.

The first story we have is about diapers and size. When Griffin was already maybe two weeks old, the diapers started leaking pee. My mom started cursing the "environmentally friendly diapers" as being crap, and went out herself and bought a pack of Pampers. But they leaked too! So annoyed by this, my mom actually called Pampers to complain. I'm not kidding. So the guy told her to try moving up one size to size 1's, instead of the Ns (newborn). So we did- and we bought a pack of each- Pampers and Seventh Generation in 1s to try and guess what? They both kept Griffin dry! Turns out he just peed a lot! Now Griffin is about 11 lbs (as of last week, probably more now) and starting last week he was already leaking through the 1s and so the next order we make (they're cheaper online), we'll be buying Seventh Generation size 2s, which are supposed to be for 12-18lbs. Right about on schedule- maybe we should read the labels better!

But in the meantime, even before I delivered, I had heard about a cloth diaper alternative called G-diapers, that my neighbor raves about with her newborn twins. They are cloth diaper outer coverings, with a disposible, FLUSHABLE liner that goes inside. Best of both worlds, right? And they even fit her twins when they were around 8 lbs. So we found a "starter kit" on Craig's list, being sold at a good discount by a nice couple who had had the same idea as us, but their daughter's legs were apparently too chubby to fit the diapers. It came with 3 cloth covers, plus six of the plastic liners that you fit the disposible liners into, which snaps into the cover. And a pack of 40 liners. They were pretty easy to put together and looked, though bulky, kind of cute. Except that the first time we tried to flush them, they stopped up the toilet and my dad went crazy and forbade us from ever flushing them again, citing the potential thousands of dollars of pipe and sewage damage we were about to inflict on him. Damn! Well, I thought, at least putting them in the garbage is better than nothing, b/c they are thinner than disposible diapers, and biodegradable. Except that it didn't take long for them to start leaking too- and for both my mom AND Steve to start cursing out the G-diaper. In theory, you just keep using the cloth covering and plastic liner and wash them just once in a while. But with the leakage problem, we have to wash them almost every time. Now we are struggling to use up the original pack of 40 liners, b/c my mom and Steve hate using them and I try to only force their use during the day when we expect a short period between feedings, so that we know we'll change him quickly and prevent the risk of too much pee, or even (yikes) a nice watery newborn poop in there.

*SIGH* So, G-diapers were a nice experiement, but we'll likely use up the liners we have and try to pass on the covers to someone else who wants to try. They do make washable, cloth liners for G-diapers too but I'm not sure I want to risk again that their absorbancy isn't enough for us... And of course now, all my pre-delivery research on the regular cloth diapers has disappeared from my baby brain head so I need to start again. And with Steve hating the G-diapers so much, I fear his reaction to full-on cloth diapers. He's not a fan of baby poop (who is?) and so you really have to feel the environmental pull to do the cloth diaper thing. Which I do, but at the moment there are several of us in the household helping to change diapers- and I want to keep it that way! That and your pocketbook....maybe if I keep having him order the disposibles online and seeing the bill (man does the cost add up fast!), he'll be more persuaded. We'll see!

On another note, we recently got the pictures back from Griffin's newborn photo shoot. There are too many to post here, but I've put up an album on my facebook page, and will put up some of the best ones in the next week on this site. Here are a couple cute ones- with Griffin modeling the nice earthy brown tone of the Seventh Generation diaper! We give a special thank you to Caitlin Domanico, our photographer, who took 2 1/2 hours with us to get these shots! Check her out at caitlindomanico.com. These were all taken on July 11th, 2010, when Griffin was about 3 weeks old.