Cloth Diapers: going with the G

I am not a very au-naturale kind of girl. I looooove makeup. I still use hot rollers in my hair sometimes (lingering effects of an eighties childhood). I like doctors, I don't generally distrust Western medicine. I was recently completely unable to have Lyla sans epidural, despite the desire to know what it felt like. I started--desperately--NOT wanting to know ANY more about what it felt like pretty early into labor. I also eat meat, prefer JuicePlus to many vegetables, wear leather and would wear fur if I had any.

So, I thought I would never, never be interested in cloth diapers. To me, they went in the "things mothers can do to make their lives needlessly more difficult" category. I was so wrong!

I don't even have a thoughtful reason for why I first became interested in them. I just thought they would look really, really cute on Lyla. (Of course, they do!) But I couldn't justify the (supposed) work, or commit to the whole thing based on the cuteness. So I started to do some research. And, wow, was I shocked. Not that disposable diapers are technically pretty environmentally unfriendly; I knew that. It's much more. Some of the most horrifying disposable diaper facts included:

Nearly 10 billion diapers are thrown away each year.

Disposable diapers take 100 years to disintegrate, because they are made largely of plastic.

Disposable diapers take up 1-2% of landfills.

There are more--exposure to chemicals, etc., but those three really stuck with me. Another surprising one: The average baby goes through around $2,000 worth of diapers before being potty trained. It doesn't seem like that when it's 20 bucks here and there, does it?

So, I was disturbed enough to start looking into whether or not there was a product out there I could handle. I didn't want to be stuffing and un-stuffing diapers full of...you know. I also didn't want to be lugging dirty cloth diapers around in my diaper bag, but didn't want to resort to using disposables when I went out. If I was going to do this, I wanted to do it whole hog.

I won't go into what I didn't choose and why. Just tell you that the research I did led me to gDiapers. They're a California-based company that first set out to make biodegradable disposable diapers, then added cloth to their line. The diaper is adorable.

It involves three pieces: the outer, colored layer, alot like underwear. They call them gPants:

 The middle layer, a waterproof "liner" that snaps in and out of the gPants and holds the third, inner layer, which is either disposable or cloth.  This is a photo of the disposable liner already inside the plastic layer:

The disposables bio-degrade within 100 days, and can be composted or even flushed down the toilet if you feel so inclined. I don't. The cloth are made mostly from hemp, and are so soft!

As you can see from above photo, the inner liners--the ones that do the job, so to speak--just lie down inside the middle, waterproof liner, instead of being stuffed in and out. This means two things: no pulling poopy diapers apart, and, usually, the other two layers of the diaper can be reused. With most other cloth diapers, you're using a whole new entire diaper every time. This takes up space, makes for more laundry (I have only 8 gPants, and 18 cloth liners, instead of having to buy 18 of each). But the best part of this is that you can go "disposable" without double crossing the environment. The disposables are a little bit more costly than a regular diaper--maybe 8 cents or so--but since I'm using cloth except for when we travel, it's still a huge, huge cost savings.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will tell you that the cloth inserts tend to make the outer layers a bit damp-feeling if they don't get changed every three hours or so. Not that they leak--Simon calls it "breathing." They are also supposed to get more and more absorbent with washing, so that may go away. The disposable inserts are literally just as good, as absorbent and as long-wearing as regular disposable diapers. AND I've never had the explosive baby-now-needs-a-bath thing happen with them, if you know what I mean.

Finally, the cost. I've spent about $300 getting this whole thing set up, including waterproof bags for nursery and diaper bag, 8 sets of gPants, 18 cloth inserts, a "case" of 180 disposable inserts, and the right laundry detergent. I could have done it a little more cheaply if I had done it in bulk right from the beginning, but I wanted to make sure I liked them before getting a ton! You can even get a Starter Pack at Whole Foods, with two gPants and two middle liners. Then you get a pack of disposable inserts (WF doesn't sell the cloth inserts).

So there you go. My thoughts and my story. Let me know what you think if you try them!