making the earth greener one tiny baby at a time

Saturday, July 10, 2010

The "D" Word


Let me start this new post by saying that I can't believe I am a person who talks about diapers. And I talk about diapers a lot...and think about them even more. I have done exciting things in my life! I've sipped wine in Paris, smoked a hookah in Istanbul, at one point I even had a wild monkey on my head. But if you are at all passionate about the environment you will quickly become consumed with how much trash your new baby makes. 2% of the solid waste created by Americans are diapers. That is 18,000,000,000 diapers a year that take about 500 years to decompose. Think about that. The dirty diapers that you made as a baby should finally decompose by the time your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandchildren are born.

So here is the long and the short of it all. Cloth diapers are a bazillion times better for baby and Earth, but crazy hard on you as a parent. When my daughter Phoebe was six-weeks-old I decided to go 100% cloth and get a diaper service. This is HANDS DOWN the way to go with cloth diapers, especially to start. The service and everything they provide is cheaper than regular diapers, so it's a win-win! In the Los Angeles area there is one provider; Dy-dee diaper service (www.dy-dee.com). They are wonderful. They drop off the diapers, the dirty diaper bin, and instructions. You drop the dirty diapers in the bin, and once a week they haul them away and give you fresh new ones. But do you want to hear the nitty-gritty?

I was a total dumb-dumb and didn't consider that I needed something to keep the diapers together and keep them from leaking. This led to an emergency trip to Babies R Us to get diaper pins and vinyl undies. Problem solved? Nope. Diaper pins are a nightmare, even the cute little ones I bought with flowers and peace signs on them. They are hard to maneuver, especially around a wiggling baby. And the worse thing about pins is that they are actually pins! In an effort to not pierce tiny Phoebe's skin I pierced my own several times. I had just about had it with them, so I did a little research and found this amazing product called the Snappi. It's one stretchy piece of rubbery plastic that easily pulls the baby's diaper together. It turned out only two places in all of LA sold these tiny miracles, and one was just blocks from my apartment! The store is called Green and Greener (4838 Laurel Canyon Boulevard, Valley Village CA 91607) and it's great. I nearly wept when I brought the Snappi's home and used them for the first time. You may think I am over-dramatizing my cloth diaper experience, but what you need to realize is that I was trying this on my own. My husband had gone out of town for the first time since the birth of our daughter and I was completely sleep-deprived and overwhelmed.

Here is one more vital fact you need to know about cloth diapers, and get ready, because it's a doozy. When you switch to cloth you will change about 3x more diapers than you will with disposables. Yes, I said it. You will have MORE diaper changes. Disposable diapers are designed to wick away moisture. This is why your baby can pee several times in them before they cry to have their diaper changed. But while wearing a cloth diaper (which is healthier for your baby's skin) they will want their diaper changed every time they go. I learned this lesson between 3 and 5 AM the second day of cloth diapers when I changed SEVEN diapers in that two-hour period and was sure Phoebe had some illness where a symptom was excessive urination. A week after the diapers had first arrived I felt like I had been thru boot camp. I was a non-stop diaper-changing machine, carrying a bag of dirty cloth diapers, in my pin-pricked hands, home with me after a day out with Phoebe. I remember collapsing on the sofa wondering if someone could actually die from exhaustion from too much diaper changing.


I had had it. I was done. Parenting was so exhausting to begin with, there was no way I could keep this up. But I found a way to make it work...sort of...


To be continued...


totally depressing environmental fact:
the average baby will use 13,000 disposable diapers in their lifetime.



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