The other day, I packed my diaper bag with four cloth diapers. I was going to be gone for the afternoon to visit a friend, and I had assumed that four diapers would be enough. Usually, I come home from an outing with a couple of extras to spare. We were driving out to visit a friend who lives in South Lyon, which, given that I don’t drive on the freeway, was about a 45 minutes drive from my house. We had a few stops to make first.
At each stop, my little girl would whine, “Dauber!” which for those not fluent in Ayla-talk means “Diaper.” Even though the diapers can hold a few piddles without overflowing, Ayla has sensitive skin and I change her after each one. You can imagine my fret as we drove into the city limits of South Lyon, a two hour visit and a car ride home still ahead of us, when Ayla requested her third diaper change of the journey. I had no choice, I had to run into a pharmacy and purchase some ‘sposies.
‘Sposies is too cute of a word for such a destructive product. I have often wondered why those of us in the cloth diapering world propagate such an endearing term for an item that promises to be using up valuable land space for our children’s great- great –great-great- great-great-great grand children to deal with.
(1) It’s too frilly of a term to describe a product that we put against our children’s reproductive organs that contains, dioxin, TBT, and sodium polyacrylate. ‘Sposies is too fun of a word to describe the product that with prolonged use will blunt or completely abolish the physiological testicular cooling mechanism important for normal fertility in our sons.
(2) And yet, there I was, at the drug store about to purchase the smallest package of disposable diapers I could find.
And then it hit me. When you cloth diaper, you can turn virtually anything absorbent into a diaper. Granted, I was using Fuzzi Bunz, so they normally would require the shell to be washed after every use, but I could turn it into a diaper cover: Bypass the insertion into the pocket! Lay something absorbent on top of the fleece instead!
I put down the ten dollar pack of plastic diapers, left the baby care isle and went to the bargain shelf, where much to my delight there were hand towels on clearance: a four pack for a dollar.
Cloth diapering wins again!
(1) Link, Ann. Disposable nappies: a case study in waste prevention. April 2003. Women’s Environmental Network.
(2) C-J Partsch, M Aukamp, W G Sippell Scrotal temperature is increased in disposable plastic lined nappies. Division of Paediatric Endocrinology, Department of Paediatrics, Christian-Albrechts- University of Kiel, Schwanenweg 20, D-24105 Kiel, Germany. Arch Dis Child 2000;83:364-368.
So I read this a few days ago excited to see that you were able to escape sposies. And today i was reminded of why I dislike them so much, yes you can get colors and characters and just buy them and toss them, no extra laundry, right? Ha. I have my own daycare and thanks to Dawn’s guidance, my daycare is a FuzziBunz daycare. But some parents still send there little one’s here in a sposie and send one for them to go home in. Right now half the kids I watch are CD full time and the other half are CD only when they are here.
So moral of the story – when changing a messy poopy CD, carefully un-snap or un-fasten, remove the diaper, wipe the baby’s diaper area, place diaper in wet bag or container, rediaper baby and replace any clothing that was removed.
And when changing a messy poopy sposie, wrinkle your nose at the smell, try to figure out where to put your baby cause poop is already squeezing out by the legs and up the babies back, once you have found a secure place to change your baby, remove poopy clothing, place in laundry container you can wash, remove poop covered diaper, wipe the baby’s diaper area, wipe the baby’s legs, flip the baby over and wipe the baby’s back, flip your baby back over, dispose of sposie as you usually would, rediaper baby, go pick out new clothes for baby and then plan to launder the fabric your baby was changed on or at least wash it well since while the diaper was squeezing it went everywhere.
So wash a diaper that contained the mess if you choose cloth or wash the clothes, changing pad cover and anything else poop was squeezed onto. Please give me cloth!!! My choice is FuzziBunz, but anything is better than a sposie (all references to sposie today are referring to Pamper’s, since it squeezed everything everywhere today) And I will definitely remember if I am running low on FuzziBunz, I can use them as a a cover!
Jenifer,
Thanks for the input- I totally agree- if you are already washing the cloths, changing pad, etc.- then bring on a FuzziBunz!
-Crystal
I laughed so hard about the sposie changing image. Thanks for that! It’s SO right!
Hi, I’ve been trying to find the publication you mentioned in your post: Link, Ann. Disposable nappies: a case study in waste prevention. April 2003. Women’s Environmental Network. Do you know where I can download it from? Thanks a lot
Nice Blog.I like to know more regarding this topic.