It is 9:50pm on a cold, clear night. I just finished entering my payment information for a package of Honest disposable diapers. This is, perhaps, a very boring and unimportant piece of information for most people. However, for me, it is one fraught with meaning, the conclusion to a very long and drawn out argument that I have been having within my head for the last several weeks. You see, while to most people diapers have no great significance other than an infant necessity that requires absolutely no thought or emotion, these poop and pee catching garments have been of great importance to me. Something changes, when you have a child, and suddenly the things that are important aren't, and things that you would have typically overlooked seem absolutely vital. So it is with diapers, my friends.
When I was about five months pregnant, I made the enthusiastic and exciting decision to cloth diaper my son-to-be. I spent about 48 hours straight (initially) with my head in my laptop, reading as much as I could about every kind of cloth diaper that had ever existed.All-in-ones? Pockets? Inserts? AI2's? FB?s ALKJLKAS? I learned the acronyms, and I researched the companies. Over the coming weeks, I read every tutorial I could find, and spent countless hours watching videos. Better for the baby!? Better for the environment?! No gel beads covering baby's bum?! CHEAPER?! A-FREAKING-DORABLE?!!?! I was absurdly excited. [Here is a link on on cloth diapering systems, and here is a link to a site on the benefits of cloth diapering and lots of other info.]
Eventually, I came up with a plan for which diapers we would use, based upon price and quality. I purchased the diapers and enthusiastically practiced on a teddy bear in between washing and folding them tenderly repeatedly. I organized them every day. Looking back, it is a bit silly to think of the excitement I felt at the thought of my tiny baby POOPING in those cute teensy diapers. Oh, hormones.
It was during my research on cloth diapers that I discovered, by clicking on random links and lots of Googling, that cloth diapering was often part of a much bigger parenting picture. The term "crunchy" was baffling to me, but soon I began reading more and more and was whisked away into the world of cyber parenting forums focused on the world of Crunchy. Terms such as "attachment parenting" and "babywearing," evoked endless hours of Googling, and much of what I read really hit home with me. Unfortunately, there is a dark side to the internet and parenting co-mingling, and this is something that I would soon find out.
When we brought my son home from the hospital, I couldn't wait to get one of those diapers on his sweet newborn tushy. It was huge on him! I remember the shock, as the diapers had seemed so tiny on my teddy bear. For the most part, we used cloth diapers full time from that point on. There was a brief period where we switched from one type to another. I enjoyed our diapers, and got pretty caught up in the world of work-at-home-moms (WAHMs) and most of our fancy diaper stash was (is) comprised of diapers sewn at home by fellow mothers.
It was also during this time that I became heavily involved in several online communities comprised of like-minded parents. As many other mothers can attest to, parenting choices easily slip from being simple, personal choices that we make for our children, to loaded choices which not only speak volumes about our character and our lives, but rather seem to become our lives and define who we are. As a teenager dyes her hair to make a statement about who she is, a mother proudly slaps an unbleached Indian cotton prefold on her kid's butt and covers it with an upcycled wool cover. There is no reason not to be proud of the choices that you make for your child. There is every reason not to sit on a high horse while you make those decisions, and this is a lesson I would soon learn.
I will not say that I judged other mothers for deciding that they did not wish to cloth diaper. I didn't. I did, however, feel that I was making the better choice for my son. I spoke enthusiastically with other parents about choosing cloth diapers over disposables, citing repeatedly how amazing they were, how budget-friendly they were, and how much easier it was. I respected that other parents chose not to cloth diaper their kids, but I will freely admit that sometimes I felt like they just didn't get it.
Ha. Haha. Hahahaha. And then, my kid turned one. Until he turned one, my son did not eat very many solid foods, and as we do practice baby-led feeding, he has never consumed purees. This means, my friends, that he has eaten whole foods from the gate. One day, I went to change my son's diaper, and almost shit my own pants when I saw what was inside. "What the hell is that?" I thought, my eyes big, my nose shriveled. Surely, my son did not create that. In fact, he did. And so began my battle with toddler poo.
At the same time, I was dealing with things in my life outside of my son's diaper that were very real, and very stressful. Life has a way of being like that sometimes, and it does not stop because your child poos something out of Alien. In addition, I began to experience issues with something we had dealt with in the past, back when my son was excreting wonderful water-soluble breastmilk poo - diaper build up. Build up on cloth diapers leads to diaper rashes, and despite stripping (Google it) and using other tips and tricks, I could not be rid of a red-bummed child.
And on top of all that, my son also morphed into a monkey-ish Houdini who absolutely refused to lay still for the five seconds that it took for me to snap the stupid snaps on his (really cute) diapers. Suddenly, these amazing and easy cloth diapers that I was once so proud to lay claim to had become a giant drain on my energy. My son was leaking through his clothing repeatedly, given that I even managed the diaper onto his bum. His diaper area was constantly red, and I was changing him every hour to help with this and thus putting myself through the nightmare of pinning him down to snap the stupid snaps (oh, and let's not leave out having to put him into different diapers dependent on daytime or nighttime.) I dreaded changing him every change for fear of a giant cluster-poop of broccoli and beans and peaches that somehow NEVER got onto the handy disposable liners. I get tired just thinking about all of it.
In the end, we temporarily switched to disposables that I had stuck in the closet months ago, while I cleared up his rash with diaper rash ointment that was not cloth-safe. We soon tried to switch back, and lasted two days before I decided to just use one disposable. One turned into many, of course. Since then, I have been debating with myself over whether I should gather my pride, hold my head high and wrangle my son back into his (really freaking cute) cloth diapers, or continue to use disposables when the very word once stuck fear and failure into my heart. Tonight I had an epiphany of sorts when I realized that I was making it too hard on all of us. Cloth diapers worked for us for 13 months. I enjoyed and loved our cloth diapers for those 13 months. I will even admit that I may at some point go back to loving cloth diapers. However, they are no longer working and I have neither the time or the desire to try standing on my head and soaking them in God knows what to make them work. I am not going to lose mom points because I decided to take the initiative and make it easier on myself and my son, despite losing face in the world of crunchy moms. Being a mom is hard work, and right now, as my son grows and matures into a toddler who is already testing the limits of the world around him, I am finding it far more lucrative to spend my time on the internet reading about tips, tricks, and methods to parenting him. I am a fantastic mother who has, and will, make several mistakes. This is not one of them.
