Status Report: Diapering Baby B

Wow. So in my last post, I discussed our quandary as to how we will diaper our eight month old son. On Sunday, we visited our friends Kathleen and Jim and Kathleen graciously lent me some of her cloth diapers (and inserts, and covers) to try out.

Holy cow! There are just a ton of options in the cloth diapering universe! In contrast to the ones my parents used (plastic covers, tri-fold diapers, safety pins), the cloth diapers today are amazing. I have hemp inserts, bamboo diapers, wool covers, fleece diaper covers that go inside the "actual" cover. It is almost overwhelming. But, Kathleen was patient and I have a (pretty) good idea as to how to get them on poor Baby B without too much in terms of hysterics.

Unfortunately, Baby B does not seem to agree with our attempt at waste reduction ... last night I tried a cloth diaper around dinner time and he fussed for about two hours. Until I took the cloth diaper off. One thing that I think the disposables have going for them is that they have much less bulk. Baby B is a mobile sort of boy, and the cloth diapers seemed to impede his crawling. I might need to go for less absorbency and more mobility... hopefully that will keep the little monster from screaming!

Environment: Reduce (?) -- Diapering Baby B

We now come to the point in the journey where I'm at a loss as to what is the "right" thing to do. We currently diaper our eight-month old bouncing baby boy in disposable diapers. We tried cloth diapers with his older brother (who had allergies, in defense of the cloth diapers), with catastrophic, poopy-everywhere results. It was bad. So we're a little concerned about going back to cloth diapers with Baby B. At the same time, chucking diapers into a landfill (that will stay in the landfill for hundreds of years) is not that compelling.

In doing the research as to what type of cloth diapers we might want to check out, and in looking to see if the "green" disposable diapers are a better alternative, I stumbled across a bit of a quandary: there's no agreement as to whether cloth or disposables are better for the environment. The problem is that a green diaper chucked into the landfill isn't going to break down -- nothing breaks down in a landfill; the conditions aren't right for things to "degrade" or compost naturally. Cloth diapers require more water to clean. So, it seems that what really matters is what resource constraints you have in your area -- if you live in LA, which has water constraints, disposables might make more sense. If you live in a place where there's little room for waste, but plentiful water, then cloth might make more sense.

The research seems to confirm this hypothesis: this article from Wired by Elisa Batista (here) comes down that there's no clear "winner" on either health or environmental claims. And if you really start reading, the diapering business as a whole seems to prove out that there are no easy ... or even "right" ... answers (check out this article, which is a reprint of an Ohio State University Fact Sheet). And I will admit, I'm not ready to potty-train my eight-month old.

After reading maniacally, I called a friend who went through a similar soul-searching when her son was about one. Her son is now about two and a half, and she offered to let us take some of her cloth diapers on a test-drive. So, in good news, we're reducing the number of disposable diapers during the cloth diaper experiment, and if they work out, we'll see if we can transition to cloth at least part-time. That being said, I'm potentially signing myself up to launder dirty diapers, but it can't be much worse than what I'm washing now!