g-Wiz

Welcome to month 8!

Catching up on a few things.

Firstly, we have some poops acquiring the consistency of tomato paste. Whippersnapper has been eating "solids" - which are actually purees, plus whatever biscuit bits migrate into his stomach after copious slobbery gnaws. He's mostly breastfed still, but eats this stuff daily. We get poops every 2-4 days.

I throw the poopy pants into the dry diaper bucket and throw everything in the wash - still on cold, still with vinegar, and it comes out fine. I did do a hot wash of a bunch of diapers I suspected of diaper cream buildup, but it was more for psychological reasons than rational ones: the diapers were still performing more or less the same. I've read of "breaking down" the diapers every three months with a hot wash or two - diapers that had become essentially waterproof.

I don't know what those folks are using for diaper cream (axle grease?) but I haven't encountered any pee beading up on the cloth...

Number 2...hahahahaha....

Jocoseriously, I got some gDiapers. We're on the verge of going up a size from the Thirsties Duos Size 1, which work great - but being an epic dabbler, I had to try out the gDiapers.

On the whole, it's a toss up. If you're using Duos and you like them, I can't recommend switching unless you're just dying for a change of scene. On the upside, you don't need as many g covers because they have snap-in "liners" or pockets that actually take the diaper. I have 7 Little gPants and about 15 liners. I bought some extras, and some two-packs of the gPants had an extra pocket/liner each in them.

The gDiaper has a good disposable liner which I can recommend. It's biodegradable, and flushable - if you follow the instructions, and you're not on septic...and if you have relatively modern plumbing. If you're on septic, you'll just fill it up, and if your house is prone to clogs, you'll certainly have trouble flushing these blobbies - but in a new home on sewer, they're fine. You have to break them apart with a little swishy-stick.

I haven't had the opportunity to try out the flushability firsthand - I'm on septic AND I have old plumbing.

The gDiaper disposable liner does seem to cut down generally on waste if you're working back and forth between cloth and disposable. Added benefit: you can preload a snap-in pocket with a disposable liner and take it on the road with you for easy change. Functionally, the benefit over the Duo is that the gPocket thing constrains the diaper on all sides, front and back - the Duo only loads in the front, leaving some creative folding and stuffing to be done while fastening and fending off arms and legs.

The gPants cover has some nice comfort features - wider waistband comfy thigh gussets. They also cleverly fasten around the side toward the back - timely if your tyke is getting grabby with the front-fastening diapers (which is everything else on the market - including all disposables).

The Duo has a narrow elastic waist, and generally tends to bunch down in the front in a way the appears a little uncomfortable. On the upside, the general construction of the Duo seems to breathe better, and we're still using some Thirsties Small covers for nighttime use with a great wad of diaper to keep the butt dry (we've been having rash problems).

The snap-in pocket/liner of the gDiaper is really pretty much plastic as far as I can tell - great for dry outside, but no breathing inside. The Duo is polyester lined with neoprene, so it breathes pretty well and stays dry outside. The gDiaper restricts the diapering function to the "hot zones" and leaves more area not needing absorbency generally open to the world - which is good for those parts.

The gDiaper constitutes a system, including the disposable liner, and a custom cloth liner made of polyfleece and cotton. These are pretty nice, soft on the baby side, but are a little light-weight when it comes to absorbency, and tend to wad (not quite wide enough). I should mention that were using "Medium" gPants and "Medium/Large" liners. The disposable liner looks big enough to size up, but I'm skeptical of the custom cloth liner - it's only just big enough to fill the Medium gPants. I mostly use a folded up cotton prefold that stays in place better and absorbs more than the custom liner. We use custom liners for times in the morning when we know we'll change him again soon - maybe he likes a break with the softer ployfleece.

(Probably it's all in my head - the kid eats carpet and sits in his own excrement without batting an eye. Studies have proven that sad babies don't care if they're wet or dry - they'd rather just be picked up and held.)

The Duos promise to get your kid out of diapers in two sizes - which is a big cost benefit. If you started out with a small kid and end up with a big one, you could be into 4 sizes of gPants. On the other hand, you'll need at least 8, and preferably 10-12 Duos in each size, whereas you could get maybe 6 gPants and 6 extra snap-in pockets in each size of gDiaper.

Laundering is the same for both. I'm curious about how the pockets will hold up after repeated washings, but I imagine they'll do fine. The gPants do take longer to line-dry. They're double-layered poly-cotton. The Duos dry really fast, even indoors - maybe a few hours at most inside and an hour or less outside on the line. The gPants take about as long to dry as a t-shirt.

If you're brand conscious and you want a stylish baby, the gPants clean up. Other than that, it's probably just preference. I would recommend getting a gDiaper rig to try - and if you're a gDiaper user and you need to go up a size, try out a Duo. Go with what you like. I don't know about anything else because I haven't used it. I guess you could pack a paper bag with straw...

50 Million Tons of Thermoplastic Resin Later...

'How Bad For The Environment Can Throwing Away One Plastic Bottle Be?' 30 Million People Wonder

January 19, 2010 | Issue 46•03

A local resident discards a plastic bottle—just as he has done his whole life—with no perceivable effect on the environment.

WASHINGTON—Wishing to dispose of the empty plastic container, and failing to spot a recycling bin nearby, an estimated 30 million Americans asked themselves Monday how bad throwing away a single bottle of water could really be.

"It's fine, it's fine," thought Maine native Sheila Hodge, echoing the exact sentiments of Chicago-area resident Phillip Ragowski, recent Florida transplant Margaret Lowery, and Kansas City business owner Brian McMillan, as they tossed the polyethylene terephthalate object into an awaiting trash can. "It's just one bottle. And I'm usually pretty good about this sort of thing."

"Not a big deal," continued roughly one-tenth of the nation's population.

According to the inner monologue of millions upon millions of citizens, while not necessarily ideal, throwing away one empty bottle probably wouldn't make that much of a difference, and could even be forgiven, considering how long they had been carrying it around with them, the time that could be saved by just tossing it out right here, and the fact that they had bicycled to work once last July.

In addition, pretty much the entire states of Missouri and New Mexico calmly reassured themselves Monday that they definitely knew better than to do something like this, but admitted that hey, nobody is perfect, and at least they weren't still using those horrible aerosol cans, or just throwing garbage directly on the ground.

All agreed that disposing of what would eventually amount to 50 tons of thermoplastic polymer resin wasn't the end of the world.

"It's not like I don't care, because I do, and most of the time I don't even buy bottled water," thought Missouri school teacher Heather Delamere, the 450,000th caring and progressive individual to have done so that morning, and the 850,000th to have purchased the environmentally damaging vessel due to being thirsty, in a huge rush, and away from home. "It's really not worth beating myself up over."

"What's one little bottle in the grand scheme of things, you know?" added each and every single one of them.

Monday's plastic-bottle-related dilemma wasn't the only environmental quandary facing millions of citizens across the country. An estimated 20 million men and women wondered how wasteful leaving a single lightbulb on all night really was, while more than 40 million Americans asked themselves if anyone would actually notice if they just turned up the heat a few degrees instead of walking all the way downstairs and getting another blanket.

Likewise, had they not been so tired, and busy, and stressed, citizens making up the equivalent of three major metropolitan areas told reporters that they probably wouldn't have driven their minivans down to the corner store.

"Relax," thousands upon thousands of Americans quietly whispered to themselves as they tossed two articles of clothing into an empty washing machine and turned it on. "What are you so worried about?"

No Job too Small, No Cover too Small

Ask my wife: it can take me an hour to work myself up to buying a cleaning product, only to put it back on the shelf before leaving the store. Like Yossarian, I'm convinced that they're all out to kill me (think about it for a second, and you'll notice it's true) - and on top of that, I don't really enjoy spending money.

I didn't have time to get around to ordering any cloth diaper stuff before the baby was born, so the boy was in disposables when we took him home. Left on my own, it would have probably taken me an eye-bulging month on the internet to buy anything to put the poop in.

Luckily for me, I have great friends. The kick-ass folks at Dogwood Bread Company pitched in and bought me my first cloth diapering rig (you'll see these referred to elsewhere as your "stash". Not sure where these cats grew up, but around my house as a kid your "stash" was small green and smelly and generally kept in your sock drawer.)

The diapering gear was shipped to our house and got there maybe a week after the boy. We got 6 Thirsties Duo diaper covers (made in USA), 24 pre-fold organic cotton unbleached small diapers, and 12 big ones. They came from punkinbutt.com.

We also got a wicked-cool object called a Snappi - which was really fun, until I figured out a better way to use the covers and diapers without it. The Snappi is still pretty fun - I used it to put a diaper on the cat.

The boy was born 6lbs 5oz, and by the time we got home from the hospital, he was 6lbs. He is what they call a "banana baby" - meaning long and lean. He's also breastfed, which keeps him pretty lean as he grows. The Thirsties Duo cover has a pretty nifty system for adjusting the size, so you can technically use one set until about 9 months and another until potty training. (By-the-by - I hate measuring babies by age. Who's stupid idea is that? Measure them by weight.)

Unfortunately for us, the banana boy's spindly legs weren't fat enough to fill up the inner gusset in the cover - which is the levy for the whole system - no gusset, no containment.

So, we used the disposables until he was four weeks old, and then the covers fit. We had to buy one more full box of the disposables before we got into the cloth. Could we have figured out a way to do cloth the whole time? Probably.

But, you know, I was really damn tired, and my wife was sore, and we had no general idea what the hell we were doing. Give yourself a break every now and then. You're going to make up the difference in the long haul.

Up Next: Containment!

Early Guest

Our son was born two weeks before the due date. He was also 6lbs by the time we got him home.

I figured I had those two weeks to finish my research and shopping for cloth diapers and covers. I didn't. The hospital used Pampers Swaddlers - Size N - on the baby. They worked great, and fit well, but I really detested the baby powder smell, and the reactionary types tell me that phthalates are a no-no.

Disposables are also supposed to give baby more diaper rash. Didn't seem to on this kid until later.

Not surprisingly, the baby survived. Also, the hospital lets you loot the postpartum room, so we made off with enough diapers for a couple weeks, which was great because we didn't have any at home when my wife went into labor.

One of those packets about fills an 8 gallon garbage bag when it's done soaking up baby droppings, though.

Earth: 0. Me: $20 savings.

Next up - cloth diaper covers are too big!!