Not Your Average Granola

Before Kayla was ever born, I was worried about her impact on Mother Earth. Having read a lot about the worrisome environmental impact of disposable diapers and cloth diapers alike, I essentially educated myself into a dark pit of dispair regarding the effect that the birth of my daughter would have upon our planet. Neither option, cloth or disposable, seemed particularly Earth friendly and once Kayla was born and I saw the mind-boggling number of diapers she could go through in one 24 hour period, I was not only further disturbed by the number of disposables we were putting into the trash each week, but also 100% convinced that there was no way I was going to be able to go cloth. Not only was I not willing to buy the 1,000 cloth diapers I would have needed just to keep up with her newborn mess, but I also could no longer believe that cloth was more Earth friendly based on the amount of water and electricity that would go into washing diapers alone each day. Add to that the realization that if poopy diapers go into the washing machine then some fecal matter must get left behind, meaning that when I then use said washing maching for all of our clothes, sheets and towels, they must get a small amount of said fecal matter swooshed around with them as well and you have a big old "Hell No" from Erin on the cloth diaper issue.

So what is a new mama to do?

Well, this week I finally decided to give the seemingly best solution out there a try. The diapers are called gDiapers and they are purported to be the new "hybrid" diaper.



They are essentially cloth diapers that are outfitted with plastic internal liners. Inside that liner, you then place a flushable/compostable pad that traps all the excrement. When you change the diaper, you simply remove the pad, ideally leaving both the plastic liner and cloth diaper clean, tear it apart and flush it down the toilet. Brilliant, right? And it was. The first dozen times we used them, Kayla peed, we whipped off the still clean diaper, disposed of the magical flushable pad and VOILA! A perfect, Earth-friendly solution. And then the pooh came...

Yesterday, for the first time, Kayla managed to launch a mega pooh while wearing the gDiaper. Now, in all fairness, the gDiaper held up well. There was a TINY bit of poop on the cloth portion, a little bit more on the plastic liner, but for the most part nearly all the pooh was contained on the flushable pad. GREAT SUCCESS! Or so I thought, until I realized that I was going to have to remove that pad, tear off its sides and flush it. Now, if you have ever seen newborn poop, it isn't exactly one manageable piece. It is wet. It is pervasive. It is disgusting. Needless to say, trying to pick up a pad soaked in it...not easy.

There are things a mother does of which she would never previously have believed herself capable. One of those things, my friends, is bare-hand disposal of a pooh-pad. That's right, in the name of saving the Earth, I took that pooh covered pad in hand, walked it over to the bathroom and then, as gingerly as I could, I ripped off its edges and tried to shake out the inner core (which has to be separated and swizzled in the toilet bowl before it dissolves enough to be flushed). Let me just say that 1) Ripping off the edges without touching the pooh...not possible and 2)Shaking out the inner core when there is heavy pooh atop the outer liner...near impossible. Essentially, gDiaper, your ickiness quotient, when dealing with pooh rather than pee, is out of this world. And now I don't know what to do. Do I stick with the gDiapers, accepting that my fingers will be doomed to years of humiliating BM-cleaning servitude or do I call it a day and go back to only using disposables, saving myself a few gagging sessions and probably thousands of dollars in hand-sanitizing soaps? Don't get me wrong...I expected to touch some pooh as a mom - it is in the basic job description, certainly. But this...this is a little different because it is not just accidental pooh touching, it is focused, concentrated pooh handling by the end of each diaper emptying session and that...that is just a whole other level...