My experience with cloth diapers is too long ago to count, but we did it most of the time for three kids, using the original three dozen prefolds we got when the first one was born. Of course, we also used pins and plastic pants, so as I said, not the same as now. But even with that, it wasn’t that big a deal. My niece has a 16-monther now and uses cloth, even though the baby started daycare recently. They live in a NY city apartment, so laundry facilities are elsewhere in the building, and they’re still making it work and don’t seem to have a problem with it. I can’t give you details about what they’re using, just saying that even in what look like maybe adverse circumstances, it can be happily done.
Wait, what? Why would they not biodegrade in a regular landfill?
I’m not really sure how to take that. Humor is how I deal with the problems and anxieties of life and I don’t plan to part with it. Are you trying to say that after 6 months I will be so subsumed into the role of parent that I will no longer find joy or laugher in my own life, and become a typical mommy-blogger pod person? Or that parenting is such a grueling task that I will no longer have the energy to laugh? Or are you just being kind of a buzzkill for no apparent reason?
Unlike a compost pile, the stuff in a landfill is compacted as much as possible, with little exposure to light or air. From a New York Times review of a book by garbage researchers from the University of Arizona, “But, surely, paper is biodegradable? Well, yes and no. The garbage project regularly uses newspapers to date garbage layers precisely because, even after several decades, they remain intact and perfectly legible. The problem, the authors say, is that, landfills ‘are not vast composters; rather, they are vast mummifiers.’ There is biodegradation, but its pace is measured in centuries, not decades. Even organic materials, such as food scraps, remain unchanged after 30 or 40 years.”
Maybe I’m stuck up, but I don’t consider cleaning pee/poop fun. I’d rather just buy disposable diapers.
You know, right, that even with disposables there’s lots of poop and pee to clean? It doesn’t just magically disappear into the diaper–there are still butts to be wiped. And blowouts. Blowouts are fun.
Its amazing, though, how quickly a parent gets used to poop and pee. Before baby, it’s all, “OMG!! Poop on my shirt!! I must incinerate it now! And shower twice!” After baby, it’s, “Oh, god, now I have to change my shirt again. I wonder if there’s any clean ones left…this is the third one today. Well, that stain on the blue shirt was pretty tiny…I’m sure no one will notice…”
I know you have to wipe a baby’s privates. :rolleyes:
This is my cue to exisit this particular thread.
We used disposable for my first son and cloth for the second (bumGenius, Bumware and assorted other brands). The cloth was no big deal at all. We even started out doing the disposable thing for trips, but dropped that after we got used to the whole thing. I did the washing myself, usually a small load every other day (which is less than I do now that they’re both bigger boys). My second son potty trained about a year and a half earlier than my first and I think the cloth diapers were a big part of that.
Cloth diapering is not a big deal at all.
We inherited some cloth diapers with kidlet #1. Tried a few times, and *every *time it was a poopy disaster. We gave up pretty quickly.
No. No, you can’t.
What kind of hepatitis infected babies are you hanging out with?!
We cloth nappy Baby From Mars who’s now 15 months. I started off using prefolds plus a cover, but she very quickly fitted her 3.0 Bumgenius pocket nappies, and these are still my favourite (have also tried Tots Bots, Happy Heinies, Fuzzi Bunz and Pikapu).
Washing is done at 30deg in an efficient frontloader, using Potion washing powder (made by the Tots Bots company) which is designed to be antibacterial at 30deg, is phosphate free and enzyme free. In reality the amount of washing powder you use is minimal; less than half of what you would use for an equivalent clothing wash. Most brands recommend not to use anything else on them - no napisan, vinegar, bicarb etc which they say can degrade the nappies over time. I use a 1/4c bleach every so often (maybe every few months), but normally a good wash and some sun deals to any smells and stains. Smelly nappies or those that are less absorbent tend to require a slightly different amount of washing powder - I also give a really good hot wash with no powder every few months just to strip them well (excess powder affects absorbency).
From what I’ve read, the environmental effects are kind of neutral in terms of water use - there is quite a lot of water and power used to make disposables, which seems to be about equal to the water used to launder. Disposables also tend not to biodegrade, as landfills tend not to offer ideal conditions.
In terms of convenience, you theoretically need to drop solids into the toilet no matter what you use; in practice I’d doubt most people using disposables do so. Because of this the smell of cloth is actually minimal when it’s dry pailed - I put them into a dry bin and wash every couple of days, and carry a wetbag with me when we’re out
We also line dry, both for the environmental benefits, but also because sunlight does a great job of removing any final stains, as well as santising them.
I also find cloth great for keeping in smells; we recently used disposables when she caught molluscum and I was amazed at how intense the smell was when she needed changing! I feel like we had fewer poo blowouts with cloth when dealing with breastmilk poo, although it’s true that they can leak on occasion more than disposables. They are also really cute! I don’t mind her walking around in a cloth nappy at home (although she recently worked out how to undo the velcro, so I’ve invested in a few of the new BumGenius 4.0 with snaps), whereas the disposables never appealed to me.
My childcare centre is happy to use them; others I interviewed either used biodegradables, or would send her home in a cloth but only used disposables in the centre - this is one reason I chose the centre I did.
The modern nappies are super easy to use, and even Boy From Mars (initially not planning to do any nappies at all, hah!) is happy to use them without complaint.
And finally I work 4 days a week - they take perhaps half an hour of my time a week in washing , hanging out and folding; this will translate to perhaps $2K per child, and therefore well worth the expected $4K savings if we get a second kid (plus any resale value after that) - that’s a really good holiday we’ll be able to take, or a lump sum towards their secondary education.
When she had her baby my cousin decided she was going to use cloth diapers. Everyone, including her mother and our grandmother (who had dementia and was incontinent) told her she was insane. I think she lasted a month or two before switching to disposables full time. No local diaper service and they were living in an apartment with shared laundry :eek:.
I don’t think most people find it fun. I’m sure I wouldn’t. It’s just that your idea that you can get hepatitis fromn a healthy baby’s diapers is patently insane.
We’re doing cloth diapers (bumGenius) on our son. I’d say the biggest problem is getting the poop off the diaper before putting it in the pail. If it’s a sticky one, it’s just a pain.
Once that’s done with the laundering is dead easy*. One cold wash, one hot wash with an extra rinse, then stuff 'em in the dryer. We also line dried the shells for a while, because the dryer was (presumably) damaging the velcro tabs. But after a while we gave up on that, and the velcro seems to be holding its own. Every few times through, throw some bleach in the hot cycle, and it’s clean and fresh.
*Dead easy once we realized we were using too much soap. Before that, it was leak city, the soap makes the shells less absorbent, so it just leaks out before getting to the inner liner.
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I’d say the biggest problem is getting the poop off the diaper before putting it in the pail.
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Do you have a little sprayer on your toilet? It gets everything off before you even put it in the pail. We’re way done with diapering and I still use it - it was especially handy when one of my kids stepped in dog poop.
I used exclusively cloth diapers, about half of them inherited from my older sister’s children. I washed them in soap flakes (not detergent) and bleach, and in sunny weather hung them outside to dry. In those days I had far more time than money.
We also have our own well, so there was no extra cost for the water. I think I saved a ton of money.
I am the farthest you can get from an anti-vaxer.
My babies had IIRC far less diaper rash than my granddaughter (diapered exclusively in disposables) has.
Also, when the diapers are no longer needed for their original pupose they make marvelous cleaning and dusting cloths.
I used cloth exclusively for my firstborn’s first six months, until I realized that the diapers were so bulky that they were preventing him from learning to sit up on his own. We switched to disposables and he was sitting up by himself in under a week.
I think that the issue may have been the diaper wrap we were using, but by that point, buying an entire new “diapering system” that I would’ve been happy with was cost prohibitive.
For our daughter, I entertained the idea of cloth, even to the point of purchasing a few new cloth diapers (I had given away the others because they just didn’t work well), but I got lazy and have used disposables almost since the day she was born. I like them far, far better. I wish I could endorse cloth more - they sound so much better in theory, but I didn’t have a great experience with them.
I don’t have kids yet, and none of my friends with young kids/babies used cloth.
However my mom entirely cloth-diapered me and my two younger sisters in the 80 and early 90s - and did not use a diaper service. She was a stay-at-home mom of course, so had the time (and hardly any money at all). I am 5 and 7 years older than my sisters so I remember washing diapers with her. Used diapers went in a smell-proof pails, when the pails were full she scraped what poop she could into the toilet, rinsed each diaper thoroughly in our bathtub (I helped with this part!), and washed in hot water with bleach.
We were all potty-trained fairly early and my mom swears using cloth helps with this… unlike disposables, cloth immediately gets soggy and uncomfortable when soiled, so babies/toddlers gain an understanding of the cause and effect of peeing and pooping more quickly. Or so that theory goes.
I guess my view is, of all the environmental options out there, this should rank awfully low on your list.
Watching my in-laws do it while they owned 4 cars, had a huge dog, etc etc just left me a bit baffled.
Otara
We used cloth diapers for our two kids. My wife was really, really, really into the whole ‘scene’ for our firstborn, buying diapers handcrafted by vegan moms with cruelty-free cotton harvested by moonlight, etc. etc. She knit and felted her own wool soakers. We had a mix of prefolds and covers and pocket diapers. With a sprayer hooked up to the toilet, the majority of the poop was taken care of immediately. We kept all the diapers in a single bathroom, so smell was controlled, and we washed dipes every two to three days.
Over time, we shifted more toward prefolds with waterproof covers rather than lameass wool ‘soaker’ covers which I don’t think work for shit. Pocket diapers seem to me like a bigger pain; for one thing you have to fuss with them to get the pad in, but worse than that when you pull the wet pad out, I guarantee you something will get flicked onto you or the wall. With use, the pocket diapers seemed to have the most problems with retaining odor, too. We kept almost all of the diapers, though, because my wife had such an emotional connection to them.
Now that our kids are out of diapers, I have a big box of lint-free prefolds under the workbench - they make fantastic rags. We even use them as dishtowels, handkerchiefs, and washcloths! We still have all the pocket diapers too, although I can’t think of a good alternate use for those.
Hepatitis! Hah!