Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Doing My Part to Preserve the Earth (one diaper at a time)


I'm expecting a package in the mail tomorrow. I'm very excited about it, but also a little nervous. You see, it is a package of cloth diapers. That's right, I'm converting to cloth. I had never really thought about it before, but last week I was looking up articles on how to recycle old jeans when I saw an ad on the sidebar for gdiapers. The diapers looked super cute, so I clicked on the link. The site got me thinking aobut alternatives to disposable diapers, and I spent the next three hours researching cloth diapers!
I came to realize how bad disposables are for the environment. Think about it. You take your baby's poop, wrap it up in a plastic casing, and send it to the landfill to sit for who knows how long (many suggest 500 years)!
There are so many choices out there when it comes to cloth diapers. I did a lot of research and decided that I just need to try out several different types and brands before I decide what I want to go with. My package will include some prefolds with Snappis, two different diaper covers, a BumGenious all-in-one, a pricey Gro Baby organic one-size-fits-all diaper, a FuzziBunz pocket diaper, and a few others that I don't remember. I'm excited to try them all out and will keep you posted on how it goes. Wish me luck!
By the way, if you're thinking about jumping on the cloth-diapering bandwagon, enter this contest, maybe you can try cloth diapers for FREE!

3 comments:

Jamie said...

Hooray for cloth diapers! We wimped out with Seth and went back to disposables. But we have used prefolds with snappis (I like the snappis a lot better than diaper pins) and we've used fuzzibunz. For some reason it seems like the fuzzibunz was our default night-time diaper. I don't remember why.

Robyn Maughan said...

I am sorry but that is just gross! I love the environment and all, but man I have heard my parents talk about cloth diapers with my sister and I just couldn't do it. Hats off to you though!

Ace said...

As another alternative, some of our friends went diaper-free. They have worked with their son since he was born to essentially train him to go in the toilet (by holding him over it). The parents just watch for his signs that he has to go (and actually it is more about training the parent than the kid). We didn't think it would work, but we saw it in action this summer. Amanda just held her son over the toilet and he went. She said they have used less than 10 diapers and have accidents extremely rarely. Their son is just over a year old and is already toilet-trained. This saves the environment even more than cloth diapers, due to the loss of water in washing those.

We thought about doing it with our daughter, but it is geared more for parents who don't work. If you are at all interested, I have a book I can send to you on the diaper-free method. Very few other societies use diapers, and the whole diaper-free concept is pretty popular outside of the U.S. Let me know if you want the book.