GDiapers....Or: I'm Turning Into a Hippie

But I think true hippies smoke weed and drive Volvo's so I think I'm ok. For now.

Forewarning: this is a post about diapering. So if you don't care about diapering. Or being a hippie. Or poop. Or the earth. Then you might want to skip over this one, may God have mercy on your consumeristic soul.
Just kidding about that last part.

Before Owen was born, I had considered using cloth diapers on him. They're more environmentally friendly, gentler on baby's skin, cost-efficient (depending on the route you choose), etc. etc. But then I saw (through a lady I knew who was cloth diapering her newborn) how much freaking work it was and elwww, you dunk it in the TOILET to rinse off the poop? --->insert gagging sounds here <---- That quickly brought to an end my grandeur ideas of being earth-friendly and I opted for the Pampers route. For the next 5 years. We should own stock in Pampers. Seriously. But a few months ago, I came across this new product called G-Diapers, which are actually flushable diapers. Sounds weird, right? But no...it makes a lot of sense. You buy these cute diaper covers with a plastic snap-in liner (which Tyler is modeling in the photo above) and then you put in this flushable insert (think giant maxi-pad for babies). When you change the diaper, you pull out the insert, put a new one in and then flush the old one. Genius! Considering the fact that as a nation, we throw about 18 billion diapers away each year into trash cans and bags, believing they've gone to some magic place where they will safely disappear. The truth is, most of the plastic-lined "disposables" end up in landfills. There they sit, tightly wrapped bundles of poo that take about 500 years to break down. Ellw... That's a whole lotta stanky dipes. The G-Diapers flush away all that stuff - where it belongs - in the crapper. Or...if you're out and about and don't want to mess with flushing, the GDiapers break down in about 30 days. You can click on the video HERE to watch a side by side comparison of normal plastic diapers deomposing next to the GDiapers. Pretty eye-opening. And gross.

Price wise, GDiapers are slightly more expensive. Depending on the brand you use, about 4-8 cents more per diaper. But isn't keeping the earth clean for your kids worth the extra investment? So I ordered a starter pack to give them a try. And by golly, I liked them! I tentatively told Steve-o about them before I ordered...testing the waters, seeing if he was up for the bit of extra work involved and he was game and said to go ahead. So I did, and they're working fabulously.
But THEN...oh, then....I REALLY got granola, and I thought, maybe, just MAYBE, I could use the G-Diapers part of the time, and cloth inserts inside of the G-Diaper cover when we're at home and save some money AND the environment. HOoooo boy. I was feelin' crazy. Again, I tested the waters with Steve....he wasn't sure, but he would give it a try.

Now, lemme just tell you that the days of the folding-of-the-cloth diaper and securing with a pin are LOoooonng gone. There are so many cloth diapering options out there that my head was about to EXPLODE from information overload. AIO's, inserts, doublers, fleece, cotton or hemp? which is better? this one's more absorbent, which ones leak, which ones for nighttime, blah, blah, blah! Ack!
I finally got a little bit of an understanding, after I emailed a few online distributers and basically said, "help me! I'm in cloth diaperland hell!" and they were super nice in explaining things to me so my virgin cloth diapering brain could understand. So I ordered some hemp/cotton inserts (super absorbent PLUS soft and natural on baby's skin) and have been using those during the day when we're at home. AND.....they're great. And last night Steve even said, "man, I wish we had known about all this stuff when owen and aj were babies". So I think that's a pretty good sign that things are going just fine.

Our diaper trash can in the nursery is pretty empty these days...and in just the few weeks we've been doing the G-Diaper/cloth combo deal we've saved a LOT of diapers from ending up in the landfill. Just for us alone, an average of 5 diaper changes per day (more when they're little, less when they're bigger), we were putting about 150 diapers a month in the trash....

that's 1,680 per year
about 5,040 over each of our kid's lifetime until they're potty trained. So with 2 kids, we've put about 10,000 plus diapers in landfills, that won't break down until our boys great great great great grandchildren come along. Field trip to the dump kids! Let's look at great great great great great grandaddy's poopy diapers!

Anyway, that's my product endorsement/save the planet plug for this week. If you're interested in learning more about G-Diapers, or cloth diapering, you can check out the links below, or feel free to ask me questions and I'll try to answer. It's really not that hard and if you have wee ones, I think you should check it out. Not to mention, they're really cute. Soft diaper covers are much cuter (and comfier) than crinkly, crunchy plastic diapers.

Tyler likes 'em....doncha buddy?

See. I told you.
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G-Diapers

General Cloth Diapering Info

Cloth Diapering FAQ
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Groovy man. I'm off to make some beaded friendship bracelets and tye-dye some t-shirts.
Catch ya later.