When this whole baby adventure thing began, d.w. and I, like any good environmentally-minded soon-to-be parents, had some very serious conversations about the respective cradle-to-grave impacts of cloth vs. disposables vs. gDiapers (a category unto themselves).
In the end the decision was made for us when d.w. found a couple of dozen cloth diapers at a garage sale. Score one point for us. We were set for all Chins' diapering needs.
Fast forward a few months.
All those diapers seem to have decided as a group that they would begin deteriorating rather rapidly, and all at the same time, becoming rather ratty and threadbare.
This was a month or so ago.
We still had a lot of diapering ahead of us.
What to do -- switch to disposables? Yeah, right. I'm way too lazy for disposables. You have to take them all the way out to the trash can? No thanks. For convenience, cloth is definitely the way to go. Drop them in the wash every couple of days and you're good to go. So cloth it would continue to be.
We started looking at the cloth diaper options we had — and what options! I had no idea the diapers that were out there. Any visions of prefolds and plastic pants were quickly thrown aside when I saw the offerings available.
Now it's all about polypropylene linings and microfiber inserts. Of course, you need to watch for anything off-gassing phthalates — the complications of the modern world! Anyway, we also found some hemp inserts, which somehow hold in ungodly amounts of baby pee. (An aside: who knew babies could pee so much? It's ridiculous. I swear Chins must lose 5 pounds overnight.) And we just bought some bamboo wipes to replace the frayed flannel ones we were using.
Why would anyone use disposables when you can use fair trade organic hemp and bamboo diapers made sustainably by microloan-financed survivors of domestic abuse? Or is that just too Ode for ya?
Yeah, I just totally made that up. But you get my drift.
My personal favorites are made by Wallypop, the nomme de guerre of a wahm in Des Moines. She makes these great wool diaper covers.
What's that? Wool???
Yeah, that was my first reaction, too. Ever try wearing a sweater out in the rain? But seriously, boiled wool makes awesome covers. They don't leak, they look cool, and they're not those awful plastic pants. Best of all, when it's time to be changed Chins starts smelling like a wet sheep. And you don't need to wash them, although I'm still coming around to that one.
So yeah, cloth diapering is where it's at. But don't ask Chins. We already know what he would choose if he had his way: