The gDiaper and Your Baby Can Read!

My wife and I decided to take the plunge into the world of cloth diapers about 45 days ago. The disposables were getting expensive, and the environmental impact is pretty high. I'm not a raging tree-hugger, but I do my best to recycle what I can and try to lighten the load I put on the environment. After all, Zoë will be the one dealing with it 40 years from now, not me.

We looked at several brands, and decided on the gDiaper. The nice thing about the gDiaper is it is the hybrid of the cloth diaper world. There are biodegradable/flushable inserts that can be purchased, as well as a hemp based reusable cloth insert. Now, the cost of the biodegradable/flushable inserts is quite high (much higher than the disposables), so we use those fairly rarely, and stick with the reusable inserts. After some trepidation about leaks, we let he go overnight in one and we didn't have a problem. She also now had a lovely cushion on her behind while trying to walk around, and we were throwing far less into the trash. That was the good. Now the not-so-good.

Diaper rash. Cloth diaper companies swear up and down that babies using cloth diapers have less diaper rash than disposables. I found this to be complete bullshit. In fact, the incidence of diaper rash with the cloth diapers was actually higher than disposables for Zoë. Perhaps she had a reaction to the hemp inserts, but even with the flushable ones she didn't fare any better. Another problem area is that if your baby is turning over/mobile, getting one of these diapers together completely will be next to impossible. In order to combat this, we planned to assemble the diapers (shell, vinyl barrier, cloth insert) to be ready for changing. This worked well in theory, but in practice (as we are both working parents) we had a hard time to keep these things assembled ready for action.

As for the environmental impact, it's a tossup. Sure we're not throwing lots of disposables into the landfills, but now we use two laundry loads worth of water (and electricity) to fully clean the diapers. Not to mention drying. The inserts are so thick, we need to run the drying cycle twice.

We're now in the midst of deciding which way to go with diapering. I have a feeling it might be a mix of both cloth and disposables.

We also purchased Your Baby Can Read, for a trial (which we now have to keep because we lost track of time to send it back....) We are glad that we had to keep it. Zoë is almost 11 months now, and is starting to understand more and more words that are used in the DVD set. Tonight the word "head" was on the screen and she put her hand on her head within seconds of the word popping up on the screen. She also waves when the word wave is on the screen, before the word is said, or a child is doing either action. Pretty amazing stuff. My wife does Early Intervention and loves these DVD's, but they are not a magic bullet. You need to be interactive with your child while he/she watches the DVD's.

And now, since Zoë has turned 10 months, she is fully mobile on both feet. She is still a little wobbly, but she's moving. It's quite fun to watch her walk. I think I'll watch more video of her walking tonight!