The great diaper war

In case you didn’t notice, in my apparently shocking baby squeezins diaper post, the great cloth verses disposable diaper war is over and Kurt won out. The issues I brought up in favor of cloth diapers were less diaper rash, faster potty training, and the use of Sodium polyacrylate in disposables. Kurt wanted the ease diapering that comes with disposables and he was thoroughly disgusted with the idea of washing dirty diapers in the washing machine.

The non-issues were:

Environmental - I’m not at all convinced that cloth is anymore environmentally friendly than disposables. Yes, you can use it repeatedly for multiple children but it still has to be manufactured, often using bleached cotton. Polyesters are also used in newer brands of cloth diapers to wick the wetness away from baby, and water and detergent is consumed to wash them. No matter what brand is used detergents are not as friendly to the environment and soap, but soap cannot be used on diapers as it reduces absorbency because it leaves a film that overtime can also cause odors to linger. Cloth diapers also require a cover – usually plastic.

Disposable diapers, obviously manufactured, use wood pulp from trees specifically grown for diaper purposes. So toss aside the deforestation argument. They have a plastic outer layer and collect in landfills. But landfills are changing and they aren’t all as evil as they once were.

Waste Management to tap landfill methane
Garbage hauler to spend $400 million to turn greenhouse gas into power
updated 8:26 a.m. PT, Wed., June. 27, 2007

Waste Management Inc., the nation’s largest garbage hauler and landfill operator, plans to spend roughly $400 million over the next five years building facilities at 60 landfills to convert methane gas to electricity, its most ambitious renewable energy project to date.

Financial – We are not in a financially strapped type of situation. If we were, I would not have been looking at Fuzzi Bunz and Kissaluvs as my main cloth diapering choices. While I did want to do cloth diapers, I also wanted it to be just as easy to change as disposables. For the true economic diapering, the prefold cloth diapers are the award winners. They cost about $1.50 to $2.50 depending on size and fabric type. About 36 diapers and 6 to 8 pairs of plastic pants in three sizes and you’re pretty much all set. Unfortunately, they leak on a much more regular basis than then disposable “blow out”. Depending on how I ultimately went about things my totals would have been somewhere between $750 and $950 and that doesn’t include cloth wipes, and washable dirty diaper bags. The brand of disposables that we chose would cost about $1100 over the course of two and a half years ($29.99 for a box of 234 – rounds up to thirteen cents a diaper, twelve diapers a day for two and a half years). We don’t use twelve a day and the bigger she gets the fewer she uses per day. Fewer diapers come in the box as she goes up in size though so it may even out my padded number.

The Issues I had for cloth/against disposable diapers:

Faster potty training – I don’t have any valid evidence that cloth diapers would lead to faster potty training, but because cloth doesn’t have the wetness wicking powers that the super absorbent disposable diapers do I added faster potty training to my list of benefits with the assumption that most babies wouldn’t want to sit in their own filth. I have heard of many toddlers that could really care less if their pants are wet and/or poopy and will continue happily playing until someone tells them they stink and wrestles them to the ground for a diaper change, so going cloth might simply be adding more work without any benefit in that arena. I hope that my kiddo isn’t one of those.

Diaper rash – Cloth or disposable, no matter how a baby is diapered they’re going to get diaper rash sometime during their diapered years simply because they’re in a diaper. I know this, and I have not found a single piece of credible information that can say for certain that one type of diaper will without a doubt cause fewer rashes on my baby. I was just hoping that with cloth, maybe we would have less rash problems than with disposable. Based on my scouring of the internet I’ve found that the best ways to avoid diaper rash aside from letting the little one run around nekkid (it is good to let them air out a bit, but I prefer not to clean urine and feces off the couch, floor, etc.) is to change her right after she goes. This is the problem I have because there are times that she lets out one more little fart. It’s so little it hardly justifies another change regardless of the type of diaper. The other thing is nighttime. She sleeps for four hours at a time and I’m not about to wake her up to do a diaper check every hour just to make sure it’s dry. At least in disposables it’s wicked away from her skin.

Many sites say that if cloth diapers are used that it’s best to use a cover made of a breathable material and not plastic to “let air circulate”. That’s fine, there are also waterproof pants that are made of “pul” (polyurethane laminate) that are very popular in the cloth diapering community. Seems odd to me to have a community based on the way one diapers their baby but oh well. I also think it’s funny that pul seems to be regarded as a better choice than plastic when both are waterproof and I don’t think either is a breathable material. There are also wool covers, but that seems like it would be too bulky for daytime use, and too hot for indoor summertime use.

Sodium polyacrylate - Up to this point, all issues and non-issues either come to a draw or lean a little more towards the disposable diaper. The one thing that hands down leans towards cloth is the fact that ALL disposable diapers use sodium polyacrylate for super absorbency. sodium polyacrylate is the same stuff that causes Toxic Shock Syndrome in women that wear tampons and don’t change them frequently enough. As I’ve said before, I know there is a difference between the internal use of tampons and the external use of diapers. I have not found incidents where a baby has died or become sick due to the sodium polycrylate in disposable diapers. I know it’s an unrealistic fear, but I still don’t like the idea of sodium polyacrylate in my baby’s diapers. So why are we using disposable diapers despite my fear? Number one, because I know it’s an unrealistic fear and number two, because Kurt said, “I want you to be able to spend time with your daughter instead of cleaning diapers all the time.” He really hits below the belt doesn’t he?

So we are using Costco’s Kirkland brand diapers and their wipes. We went with a store brand diaper not because it’s cheaper but because they don’t add all the dyes and perfumes. I’m really happy with their wipes too because they’re thick, made with cotton, and alcohol-free.

We did use cloth wipes for the first month because in the class we took about newborn care said not to use commercial wipes for the first month. They said that for the first month that the baby’s skin is adjusting to the new waterless environment and to simply use a damp cloth for wiping. I’ve heard that it’s good to go back to damp cloth wipes during diaper rashes as well.

A couple good links for further diaper debate reading…
Among the Earth Baby Set, Disposable Diapers Are Back, By MICHAEL SPECTER, Published: October 23, 1992.
Revisiting the Diaper Debate