After changing a rather heinous diaper this morning (Glad to have you back, Cutlet! What? You're not potty-trained yet?), I pondered one of those ponderables just about every parent thinks of at least once during the Diaper Years: Where do all these diapers end up, anyhow? The short answer is, the dump (ironic that a dump sometimes gets them there, too). It's hard to get a real answer as to how many disposable diapers are thrown away per year; counting them isn't a job I'd like to have, either.
Hardcore environmentalists say diapers are the No. 1 material found in our landfills. Others – incuding scientists who have studied our trash and the makers of disposable dipes themsevles – say otherwise. Either way, there's a whole lot of diapers being tossed away. We could blame Marion Donavon, inventor of the disposable diaper, or maybe the throwaway society in which we live. It's always tempting to blame someone else, but when it comes down to it, cloth diapers are yucky. Ask my mom, who didn't have a choice in using them with me, but had a choice with my younger sister who came along at the right time and was covered in disposables from infancy to pottyhood.
We have some friends who use cloth diapers (they have built-in fasteners, so you don't have to use pins). It was a decision they made after much discussion. It means facing poop head-on rather than throwing soiled dipes away and "forgetting" them until it's time to take the garbage to the curb (that is surely a reminder). It also means doing an extra load of laundry; I wouldn't want to wear any clothes that had ridden the spin cycle with 'em. It does mean not having to buy disposable diapers, which are anything but free. And if any of us are susceptible to the guilt-trip laid upon us by some foaming vegans, there are those pangs of self-hatred as we cur-plunk another load into the trash. So for some, cloth is king.
I'd much rather not use diapers at all, but then we'd have mop the floor that much more often. One of our pre-parenthood gifts was a book by a couple with a herd of children, titled To Train Up A Child. One chapter suggests that because it is unnatural to force children to soil their drawers, it's quite possible and more natural to potty train an infant. That's a nice thought, and one I can see the merits to. However, for us it was unrealistic. It would have required 24/7 vigilance in watching of our kid's face to see if he was about to drop a bomb. That couples' Web site is here, for those who want more information. Good luck!
Now the part of our program where me make a generalized and sexist statement ...
So, for now we're stuck changing diapers for our boy. Some people with girls like to put on a smile and tell us about how their sweet little muffins learned to go potty at age 2 and haven't had an accident because they are such sweet muffins and so incredibly smart and so on and so forth. Well, the first step to potty training is the child's muscle development, which often happens first in female children. And knowing what my sister put my parents through as a teen-ager, I smile and know that I'd much rather put up with my son's crap in this manner than put up with a daughter's crap later on. Although, every child is a blessing – or has the potential to be if we open our eyes.
I'm doing my part to cut down as much as possible on the number of diapers my kid goes through. Right from birth, I skipped the whole "newborn size" diapers and just put him immediately into big adult diapers. Instead of changing his diaper 10 times a day, I just change it once a week. After all, you don't change your kitchen trash bag every time you toss a banana peel in there, do you? Hell no, you change it once or twice a week. That's my diaper policy. Yes, some would call me a genius.
I worry that you may be right about the "crap" I'll have to take from my daughter when she's older. She already acts like a teenager and she's only 3!
Hopefully my son, who's already beaten her when it came to learning to crawl and stand up, will be potty trained at least by the time she was (33 months). I've got a lot of time before then, considering he's not even 8 months ... uuggh, I hate thinking about it! :)
Can you imagine if they start to recycle disposable diapers? Umm..I think I'll pass on those.
Hey, not all daughters give their parents trouble! We were potty trained early and had pretty uneventful teenage years.
Oh, and I read that the #1 thing cluttering up landfills is actually paper. As in, old papers from offices. So we should all make a special effort to recycle paper at work! It's the easiest thing.
Well...I used a good many disposable diapers when my daughter was an infant, but I did manage to cut down on overall usage by paying for a diaper service. I used cloth diapers for months and didn't have to "face the poop head on" at all. Once a week or so I placed the dirty diapers on the porch and they were replaced with clean cloth diapers - which, believe it or not, always smelled good when they arrived.
Since I'm a tree huggin' dirt worshiper, I was determined to use cloth diapers. That thought lasted a whole three hours. Four children later, I cant imagine using cloth diapers. That's where I have to stop and rethink this environmental stuff. We do enough other good stuff to make up for the diapers we threw into the landfill!!
I have always used cloth diapers, right from the very beginning. Nothing fancy, just the old-fashioned diapers that needed to be folded, pinned, and worn with rubber pants over top. Our youngest is now 14 years of age and is long out of diapers, but if i had to do it all over again, i would opt for those good old diapers and rubber pants all over again without so much as a second thought .