Diapering

Those of you who know me personally, or have kept up with my personal blog...know that I have done the cloth diapering thing before. I actually really enjoyed the researching and creating that eventually went into making the cloth diapers that I created for my little one, M. Well, the time has come to experiment with this again.

I wrote off cloth diapering mostly because of diaper rash. I didn't start on M till she was a year old and by then, I'm afraid, her little bum was used to be high and dry. So doing the cloth thing even with the wicking and such didn't really seem to help much. So I gave as a donation to a local group, all of my previously used and perfectly washed cloth diapers. They were so great made from PUL and Hemp and so on...and they had been washed gently without fabric softener or bleach, with some baking soda and vinegar, and always line dried. But alas, none for the boy due anyday now.

Well, then I discovered these. Gdiapers. Check out their site and it just might change the way you do your diapering. The ingenious design is amazing. The snap in liner being the key if you ask me. I'm no earthy, hippie type...at least not that I think (though some may disagree) but I do find a great deal of value in doing my part for the environment. These diapers are amazing cause the refill insert things are flushable, and biodegradable by the end of 3 months or so. Seriously. Watch the video. So I'm kind of pumped about this possibility.

My dilemma here has to do with cost effectiveness vs. environmental friendliness. You see a disposable diaper takes about 500 yrs. to break down fully due to the plastic in its make up. These liners they use take about a quarter of a year to break down fully! What?! But they are a specialty thing and you don't often find coupons and such for these, so the cost is somewhat more than just buying disposables. I'm not really worried about convenience, cause I've done cloth diapering before and the convenience factor is really less of a big deal than you would think. So, I have a hard time justifying more from my already tight budget for diapers just so that I can be a little friendlier to the environment...still...

I got to thinking, if I use half as many disposable liners and the other half homemade cloth liner/doublers, then I'm dividing in half the amount of money I spend on a weekly basis for diaper allotment. This is beneficial in more ways than one. I can now justify my environmental friendliness, AND if I get really tight, I don't have to buy diaper refills at all in a pay period, I could simply only use the cloth liner/doublers! Now this is all provided the diaper rash situation remains under wraps. I would chose to do some disposable prepurchased liners for that factor alone, cause it seems to keep the baby's bum dryer. We shall see. So I think I'll be working on sewing these inner liners from some of the preexisting mounds of flannel receiving blankets that I have and some fleece for wicking.