Friday, May 21, 2010

Of butts and babies

When I first learned about my pregnancy (two months ago tomorrow) I immediately did all the research I possibly could. Up until three years ago, I’ve always been in school, and researching new things is one of my absolutely favorite things. Obviously, this whole new world of pregnancy (and subsequently parenthood) brings a ton of new reading and research opportunities to my life, and the reading has been fantastic. I’ve read about fifteen pregnancy books so far (so many that I’ve actually moved onto parenting books) and it’s always fun to find their contradictions and clarify with the doctors. I know: they must love my pages of questions! But I’m really figuring out that it’s all a big game of differing opinions out there and what works for our pregnancy and baby might be different than what is right for other people.

Anyway, one of the first things that I decided upon was cloth diapers. Disposable diapers contain sodium polyacrylate, dioxin, and TBT. All of these are gross and dangerous chemicals, both to the environment and to my baby. Is it a coincidence that diaper rash has risen amongst babies since disposables came out? Hardly. Also, do I want this crap against my baby’s butt? All of these chemicals together can stick to babies’ butts and genitals causing allergic reactions, skin irritation, and impairing their hormonal system. I just don’t want it! Also, I’ve read that every child that wears disposables from birth until two and a half produces one ton in diaper garbage. One ton! With four kids, we’ll be solely responsible for contributing four tons of garbage, just in diapers! There’s no way.

I started looking into cloth diaper “systems,” and was a bit thrown off by the price. The cost is going to run about $500 for everything I need, and that kind of made me think twice about the whole thing, until… I calculated the cost for disposables. From birth to 2.5 the cost of disposable diapers will be… ready?! $3000! Per child! To ruin my babys’ ass and the environment! There’s no way!

Plus, cloth diapers look WAY cuter!

3 comments:

  1. well... you got a point here but..., do you know the kind of chemicals involved in 'cleansing diapers' or... are you planning to mix them with your own laundry... have you ever changed diapers? what do you know about scrapping ‘solid waste’ from cloth diapers? are you going to travel with cloth diapers?

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  2. Wow, my fist ever comment!
    I've changed diapers before, but never my own childs', so perhaps it won't be nearly as bad. I've also seen so right awful messes when it comes to diapers lately, so at least I've braced myself for the worst.
    The travel thing was also my boyfriends' main concern/objection when it comes to cloth diapers, but I've found that they actually have little disposable inserts specifically for travelling, that are neither awful for the environment nor too costly. So, I think that might be a good alternative for those ocassions.

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  3. Cloth diapers are not bad. You wore them for all your diaper-life. We had an enormous red bucket where we used to add a little bit of bleach. It had a pretty tight lid and it was big enough to hold the diapers of the entire week. After machine-washing I folded them in four and hung them for sun-drying. It was a fun and pleasant routine. You never had skin rushes, and look how nice is your little butt now.

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