Doody Duty

Some musings on diapers:
I always try, whenever possible, to be as environmentally conscious as I can. I will carry my bottle or can back from lunch until I can find a recycle bin. In college, my friends and I were in an environmental club. I don't eat meat and I scorn gas-guzzling SUVs. Therefore, in that vein, I fully expected to use reusable, washable diapers on my children. I am told that there is a cloth diaper service in LA that costs under $20 a week which I guess is even less money than buying disposables.

I was also told we should use disposables at the beginning, though, because babies go through so many and the pile would build up too much if they were cloth. We were lucky enough to have 3 baby showers thrown for us, and at each, we got-you guessed it-disposable diapers. We had over 400 of them. We also got a diaper genie, over 1,000 disposable wipes & a wipe warmer (more on that below). So I figured, great, one less thing to spend money on, we'll use those until they're gone and then try the cloth service. But then this weekend we were just given some more diapers in size 3. At this point, I don't know if we will ever switch to cloth. She seems to have a lifetime supply of disposable! And we are always thrilled to get hand-me-downs from our friends, less things we need to buy. So we will keep accepting the diapers when people bring them. (I guess people buy the jumbo packs and their kids grow out of them before they can use them up.)

Also, we didn't know, until a more experienced mother was visiting and told us, that at first we had been putting the wrong size Lauren. We were using size 1, when we had a whole unopened packet of size "n". It turns out "n" is for up newborns up to 8 pounds and "1" is for newborns up to 11 pounds, iirc. So we should have been using up the "n"s first. Now we know. And we've also discovered that Pampers seem to be a bit more absorbent than Huggies. For the first few weeks of her life, she never had a leak or stain on her clothes, and that was with the Pampers Swaddlers, size 1 and then size n. The first time she finally had a wet onesie, it was while wearing a Huggies. And it has happened a few other times this week, while we are going through the Huggies, size n. Don't know if she has outgrown size "n" in that brand (they seem to fit though) or if it's just the way her shape is with that brand or what. But if we do purchase more disposables, I think we'll go with Pampers. Oh and Luvs were okay, too.

Re: the wipes warmer, Ryan wanted to get this for her in the worst way, because our friends mentioned their son used to cry when getting changed until they got one. My attitude about it was, there are going to be lots of harsh realities of life, unpleasant little things that will happen to Lauren. She needs to get used to a cold butt. And also, we won't be able to take the wipes warmer when we're travelling, so if she's spoiled by it, then she'll scream when we're changing her out in public, which would be worse than her just getting used to cold wipes ALL the time. I needn't have worried. Turns out the wipes warmer does warm the wipes, but they are only warm on your hand when you grab them out of the container. By the time you move the 5 feet from warmer to baby's bottom, they get cold. So I don't know what the point is. But Ryan's happy, he got his wish. Lauren cries about 50% of the time she gets changed, whether it's cold or warm or in between. It depends more on how tired she is than on the equipment conditions. ;)