Oh, isn’t that fun?
It got worse for us, our “struggles” started turning into actual struggles, and finally one day when I was just furious, I loudly asked her WHY she pooped in her underpants. “Because I’m ANGRY WITH YOU!” she shouted back.
:eek:
Oops.
We switched strategies the very next morning, and things are going much better now.
What kid of mammoth baby shot out your cooter what filled up a washing machine with glorified napkins several times a week?!
If this is such a big deal, why don’t you wear diapers? You poop just the same, your poop goes to the exact same water treatment plant.
You’re going to need to provide a cite for that. I just have a hard time believing that the resources it takes to create and re-use–several hundred times–a single cloth diaper has the same environmental impact as a synthetic diaper. I’m not going to argue personal cost. I’m sure you thought that one out pretty well.
Doubled diapers for absorbency, diaper covers…8 changes per day at minimum (at least, that’s the minimum your newborn should be wetting to indicate good hydration) and a couple at night…that’s 20 or more diapers per day. If you want good water flow to actually clean them, you can’t put more than 40 in a regular sized washing machine.
Yes, but my poop is escorted out of the house with 2.2 gallons of water, not the 40 gallons used by most conventional washers for one load.
And it’s NOT such a big deal. That’s exactly the point - on environmental concerns, it’s just about a wash (pardon the pun). So choose on other grounds - convenience, what the baby seems to like, which gives your particular kid less diaper rash, or whether you like to do laundry or not, if you like the adorable diaper covers for cloth…whatever you like. You just don’t get tree-hugging points either way.
That’s our Girl! I can hardly wait till she becomes a Doper!
“I’ve just searched through all Mom’s threads & comments on me. Here’s my side!”
Has anything like that happened in SDMB history yet?
Consider this in the spirit of fighting ignorance…
When my kids were newborns, I ended up with a full load of laundry almost every day, and I was using disposable diapers. Using cloth would double that, at least. And it is difficult to leave soiled cloth diapers around waiting for a full load- by difficult, I mean fucking disgusting, even if you swirl them in the toilet first, like my mom had to teach me.
Have some kids before you make snide cooter cracks, m’kay?
People still shit their pants well into adulthood, my friend. You just think it’s only you until you’re in a comfortable long-time relationship. Not often, uaually, but it happens.
Stewie shits whenever and wherever the mood strikes him, especially for revenge. Don’t let that “just a baby” stuff fool ya! 
Thanks, WhyNot. This environmental crap is complicated.
Hey, I wasn’t trying to be mean here. I was just trying to how dumbfounded I was while being a bit goofy because, let’s face it, we’re talking about poop and “cooter” is a funny word. No offense meant.
Okay- I misunderstood. Except that now i see that guy in the ball cap from The Dukes of Hazzard birthin’ babies… :eek:
::tries to look dignified…fails::
Er. I’ll just be over here in the corner, putting ointment on my sprained dignity.
Okay, I laughed too.
Apparently disposables still take forever to break down in land fills tho? If so, seems that cloth is the way to go if one is worried about environmental concerns.
And, people are much more willing to take a dirty cloth diaper with them instead of leaving it where ever they took it off the baby…
However, I have a feeling that disposables have become so popular that the accessories that made cloth managable in the past may no longer exist. Except now there are diaper services - how do they compare in price to buying disposables?
I had diaper service for my two kids back in the 80’s and it was the Best Thing Ever. We used disposables for long trips and the daycare/babysitting center, but since they didn’t go there all day every day, they were mostly in cloth…and boy, were they eager to get potty-trained!
Plus they got fewer rashes. I have no idea how it compared price-wise exactly, because it’s been a long, long time, and the service was a gift from Grandma, but I do remember that it was cheaper for me, as a stay-at-home (well, okay, I did a lot of volunteer stuff and they went to the daycare a lot!) than for the kids who were in daycare all the time and wore disposables all the time.
In fact, I remember the diaper service telling me, at one point…“it’s time for you to switch to all-disposables…you’re not using enough diapers a week to justify the fee” when my last one was almost potty trained.
This thread has motivated me, if nothing else, to never, ever had children.
Yeah, I searched for a diaper service when my daughter was born, but no luck. They’ve all shut down around here, except for one which had a website and a phone number, but no answering machine or person to answer the phone apparently. After a few weeks of calling everyday, I decided the website was a dinosaur and stopped calling.
I may have been hasty, or they may have gotten their act together. Almost 5 years later, they have a new and improved website; maybe they’ve gotten someone to answer their phones, too. Bottoms Up serves the Chicagoland and Southeastern Wisconsin areas. Diapers are $8.50 for 40; they suggest starting with 80 per week, so maybe theirs are absorbent enough not to need doubling. Diaper covers or plastic pants not included. (Diaper covers are available for $7.50-$7.75 each; plastic pants $2 each.) Service for 80 diapers is $17.45 a week. So it’s about the same as disposables, too.
Diaper services are some of the worst environmental offenders, however, as they use far more and far hotter water and detergents than a home laundry to keep everything looking so clean. From Bottoms Up’s website:
I don’t know any parents who leave soiled diapers “where they changed the baby” unless it’s a trash can in a ladies’ room or something. I am much more likely to see a dog poop bag left on the ground.
There is still a good market for cloth diapers, accessories and diaper services. In terms of cost, I have seen numbers which suggest that disposable diapers cost $50-80 per month, which is roughly what a diaper service costs, so it might be a wash.
Parents choose what is best for their child, and every child is different. My nephew suffered terrible rashes with cloth diapers (an absorbancy thing), but also had problems with standard disposables. Now they have found success with unbleached disposables.
But if you’re changing a cloth diaper in public, what are you supposed to do with it? Just carry it around with you? I don’t have kids, but for that reason, definitely disposable.
I live in/near a touristy area and occasionally see diapers left in parking lots, behind street lamp poles, and tucked away in other public places. It’s not a huge thing, but neither is it difficult to put them in a trash bag in one’s car until you find a trash can. It’s rude, is all.
Man o man…My son was completely potty trained at 17 months. The instant cost savings was awesome. We used disposables from the beginning. Between cost of a service, convenience, and all the rest, it was the only choice.
The end of the Toxic Dump Stage is truly a whole-family celebration!!
Put them in a baggie? The poop isn’t going to come creeping out to attack you in the middle of the night on some long lonesome highway. (Movie idea?)
Also, you can buy totes.
Life is so simple.
Meh. The idea of carrying poop stained anything around with me is just too gross for words. Plus, all the work of washing them in addition to caring for a baby? Ugh, no thanks. This is one of the things that, along with tampons, I’m grateful we have in this modern day of ours.
Tampons and high heels. Two good reasons to not be reborn as a woman, imo. 