Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Diapers, Diapers and more Diapers

Starting even before birth, we are faced with SO many decisions regarding our babies, parenting and lifestyle changes we will or will not make.

What are you going to feed your little one?  And regardless of how you answer that, there are a gazillion other questions to answer.  Are you going to baby-proof?  What kind of sleeping arrangements are you going to make?  If you have a girl, will you pierce her ears?  If you have a boy, will you circumcise?  Which pediatrician are you going with?  Which vaccines will you give?  When will you start solids?  When will you start the college fund?  What kind of clothes is baby going to wear?  Are you going to be super casual, all organic, dressy, rock star?  What kind of toys will you buy for baby?  All educational?  All Wooden?  Will you let baby/child watch TV?  Will there be limitations?  What kind of nursery will you do?  Will it be a "grow with you" nursery or a permanent nursery for all future babies?  Will you do baby/mommy play groups?  How often will you have pictures done?  Will baby be Christened?  Baptized?  Allowed to chose their own religion?  And in the beginning, there are 3 questions that will totally affect how life with baby is: What will you feed him/her?  Where will the baby sleep?  And what kind of diapers are you going to use?

When it comes to diapers there are 3 options.  Although, in my mind, there is only two.  You can go with cloth, disposable or Elimination Communication.  I don't really consider EC as even a remote possibility for our family though.

Once you make the decision between cloth or disposables, it used to just end there.  I know when I had Kaitlyn it was pretty simple: Cloth or Disposable.  Then, prefolds or not pertaining to cloth and Huggies, Pampers or store brand when it came to disposable.  My oh my where we have come in the past 6 years.

My original plan was to stick with pampers with Samantha like I did with Kaitlyn.  I loved everything about them, their size, their smell, their look, the thinness of them.  They were perfect.  Then, Pampers ruined their diapers by adding dry max to them and now there are too many complaints of chemical burns on babies for me to feel comfortable using them.  Now, Pampers is of course denying that there is any problems with their new diapers, but with a brand new baby, who wants to take the risk??  Bah Humbag to that I say!

Then, I came up with a new plan, stock up on gdiapers, part of the new trend of hybrid diapers.  They are cloth, but you can use disposable liners and just flush or toss them.  Then, I saw them in the store and while they are SUPER cute, and feel super soft on the outside, the inside does not feel at all comfortable for a new baby.  Maybe for an older baby, but a new baby?  No way.  And we all know how often a  new baby goes potty.  Samantha averages at least 10-12 diapers a day.  I needed a new idea.

Idea three was to get a natural diaper that was disposable for the first couple months and then switch to gdiapers or something like it.  I started using Huggies Naturals, in a futile attempt to keep chemicals from her most sensitive parts.  But, to be honest, I don't love them.  They don't really hold very much, they don't ever feel dry really, like as she is peeing you can feel the diaper get warm and then it instantly feels moist.  So, on those rare occasions that I'm not holding her or she is asleep and she goes a little while before changing, it can't be comfortable and we've already noticed some redness.  And they don't have a smell too them, which I know is because they are natural, but seriously I miss the smell of pampers lol.  AND, we've already had nearly a dozen blow outs with them.  Like, diaper is properly secured, been on for maybe 5-10 minutes, and as she is going it is leaking out of every crevice.  The worst was the diaper that leaked out both legs, the back and up to her belly button.  When I am paying an average of $22 for 72 diapers (or about 31 cents per diaper, which is $3-4 per day) I would really like to have them do their one job: keep the poop and pee inside!

Considering I still have a closet filled with the ones I bought during pregnancy, I will keep using them, but at this rate, I'll empty it within a month.

The other night I ran out of diapers while we were out and about.  Thanks Huggies, I thought 12 would be enough for being out of the house 8 hours.  I had to run into Walgreens and buy some.  They were out of huggies so I ended up getting Pampers with drymax.  I didn't want to risk generic and I figured I change her so frequently still that we shouldn't have a problem.  Oh, I was in love.  That chemically created smell, the look, the feel, oh how I've missed thee.  I would switch back in a heartbeat if I wasn't so scared of the chemical burns!

So, where do I go from here?  Do I try to convince myself that the chemical burns is just a myth as Proctor and Gamble would like me to believe?  Do I switch to a cloth diaper system when we finish our stash of disposables? 

The more I think about it, the more unsure I am.  To be honest, my desire to use cloth has absolutely NOTHING to do with the environment.  I know that sounds awful and we're all supposed to be more Green (as I sit here with my laptop on my lap, plugged in, the TV on in the background for noise, and all the living room, kitchen, dining room and playroom lights on because it's gloomy outside and I just don't like gloomy...) but I'm not.  It's ok, shoot me now.  And, to be honest, I'm not sure that cloth really helps the environment at all.   I mean, you end up using a lot more water washing, and we do live in a drought prone area, you use more detergent, meaning more empty detergent bottles, you use more electricity when you wash them and so on. 

My goals in diapering are this: Do what is the most comfortable for baby, Be cost effective, Potty Train sooner and be convenient!!  I just don't think Gdiapers hits the first two, which means I would need a system that did.  Come spring, we are on the go, a lot.  I would need to do a hybrid system that had disposables.  But, I don't want to spend a fortune on disposable liners when I'm already spending a fortune on the diapers.  I just don't know what to do.  I am awful at decisions.   And this should be such an easy one, when it comes down to it, it is simply: What do I want to catch my kid's poop and pee??

What did you do?  What will you do?  What has been the best choice for your family and why?

13 comments:

DaphneB said...

I don't know when Pampers added that DryMax stuff to their diapers but we only used Pampers with Justice and Isaiah, and they didn't have any problems with burns at all. Our most recent usage was, what, eighteen months ago or so? Between the two of them, we only had one diaper rash the whole time...I'm a Pampers mommy!

Leesa said...

So for the disposable diapers being Green, is a big nay! Bill Nye said so in his new show. You're right with the amount of effort, water, electricity and chemicals it takes to clean them, it isn't any better than filling the landfills.

As for us. We are pampers through & through. And maybe they've changed the newborn diapers since Grace was born a year ago, but the swaddlers don't have the drymax stuff in them.

But we've watched & she has not reaction to them at all.. she's never even had a diaper rash yet=D I too love pampers!

Kato said...

Honestly, I'm papmers all the way and don't buy the chemical burns for a nanosecond. I think stuff comes long once in a while that puts an idea out there and group hysteria takes over. I have two in pampers drymax right now & their little pushes are perfect.

Trust your instincts. There's always something new people will come up with to continue making moms second guess every single part of raising babies.

Stephanie said...

I have cloth diapered all of my big kids and plan on doing the same this time too. I have had SO MUCH fun finding the newest WHAM cloth diapers... and have seen those Gdiapers, but really didn't get the point. Hope that you find a solution.

Cloth diapers are NOT the same as they even were 8 years ago. Oh sure, there are the popular brands that hit the market in a big way, but for my money and my kids skin (and our wallet) cloth for us hands down. But let me preface this with, I have on occasion used disposables, and liked the convenience of those too. I guess I just really like the cuteness factor of the cloth diaper.

... said...

Pampers drymax are safe. They fixed whatever the issue was. (if there even was an issue)Go with the pampers and save the cute cloth diapers for when she is one and not going nearly as often. :)

2SetsOfTwins4Me said...

If she doesn't have any problems with the pampers, then i would stick to that.

I know you have said you don't want to risk generics, can i ask why?
I LOVE either target brand diapers or walmarts brand (parents choice). I never have had any problems with them and all 4 of my kids have/are currently wearing them. The price is half of what you pay for the name brand and still does its job.

You can always buy a small package and try them out, i think they are around 6 dollars for a small pack.

Jessica G. said...

I have cloth diapered my son since he was 3 months old and I love it. I have never actually had a diaper blow out with cloth, which I find particularly impressive given that I was having at least one a day with disposables. And, they are actually easy to use. I have to wash them about every 3 days. They take only a minimal amount of soap (still on the same bottle a year later) and I throw in some bleach once a month. I also choose to hang dry them rather than using the dryer, just to be a little more cost effective. I currently use both the BumGenius one size and the Flip system. The Flip system has disposable inserts you can buy, but I have never used them. One thing I would say is if you buy a couple cloth diapers and end up hating it, you can actually resell them for about 2/3 what you paid.

Christina said...

I loved Luvs with my first two babies. With my third I mostly used Target brand and was very happy with them. Never had any issues and when they were on sale I would get them for as low as 11 cents per diaper. I'll probably use the same with this baby. We'll see. The whole cloth diaper thing sounds very intimidating to me and, like you said, it doesn't really seem all that environmentally friendly when you factor in the energy used to clean them.

tiffanyc said...

I love the costco kirkland brand or the target brand, both are very cost effevtive with no problems.
hope you get your diaper issued solved soon. :)

Life With Us said...

I used disposable with my first three and then decided to go cloth this time. For the most part we use FLIP diapers and they work great for us and they do have a disposable insert as well.

However I do use disposables every once in a while now, but they all seem to leak, whenever he poops.

*Tracy* said...

Denise I bought boatloads of cloth diapers for Reilly and I love them. Granted, he is only big enough for a few of them so we still have to "supplement" with disposables. We have the flips, which I LOVE and I HAVE used the disposable inserts... they work GREAT. We also have a few osocozy diapers, rumparoos, dream-eze and econobums. I love all of them. I do like the covers with hemp inserts better than the all in ones. If you want yummy smelling diapers, use some rockin green soap. I got enough diapers for Reilly to go to potty training (minus the inevitable replacement of inserts, which are only a few dollars a piece) so that I only have to wash every 3 days for just over $200. The disposable inserts for the flips are under $5 and I highly recommend getting the liners to make removing #2 a lot easier. It isn't as time consuming as I thought it would be.

Lori said...

Obviously, never got to try them out with Matthew, but we had a huge stash of BumGenius for him (newborn size to start)...with a few boxes of disposables (given at showers) for 'emergency'. I spent hours and hours and hours and more hours researching the best cloth diapers--by mom's reviews mostly. I still plan to use cloth with Luke, and have now bought the BumGenius Elementals--they are organic, all-in-one, one-size. I know several moms who swear by these, so I hope I will be also. I have a few of the Flips and the inserts (as well as the disposable inserts) for travel too. Sooo...obviously hoping that they are the success we will look for.

My husband, uber-mathematician that he is, in trying to convince me that I was just buying into the gimmick that cloth was better for the checkbook than disposable actually spent many hours (and excel sheets) trying to prove me wrong...and couldn't, if all things go as planned--with a high-efficiency washing machine, the laundry detergent through Amazon's auto-refill (CountrySaver seems to be a little known but much loved secret and is SO reasonably priced!) and a big enough stash to get through a couple of days without needing to wash...he at least admitted it was worth trying.

But I laughed when you said you were being honest in not necessarily doing cloth for the environment--because in truth, me neither!!!! I absolutely hope that is a great perk, but like you--I just want the best for the baby, our checkbook and our convenience. All the rest being good for the environment and stuff is gravy!
xoxo

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