Rock, paper, plastic?

I have been playing a game with myself to see how many cloth diapers I can use in a day. See, its tempting because we are doing that "foot in each camp" of cloth diapering most of the time but Seventh Generation Disposable diapering when its inconvenient.

It is amazing how I can redefine inconvenient.

At night Wren sleeps with a disposable diaper because he pees too much to get good results with the cloth ones from the diaper service plus he gets diaper rash when he's left too long steeping in pee. But when does night begin? I start to put him in disposables about 7pm but last night he only really settled for the night after midnight! (note how I cunningly gave you a clue as to the daily sleep saga without making the whole post about sleep).

Also, he wears disposable diapers when we are going somewhere that it might be difficult to change him and then carry about lots of wet cloth - a doctors appointment for me, the grocery store. However, the pediatrician visit was a cloth-diapering expedition because they have lots of space to change him.

Argh, I am driving myself nuts. I think I should just stand firm and do cloth 100% except nights like we did with Frost. Wren wasn't going to get cloth diapering at all, actually. With Frost we had the cloth diapers lined up in the nursery before he was even born but Wren's diapering was an afterthought - our first impulse was the Pampers product we were given at the hospital in a blantant attempt to win our loyalties. Josh was impressed. As he said "we never had a blowout". By contrast I have regular blow-throughs (legs mainly) in my cloth expeditions so I seem to need to wash the covers daily.

But then I felt sad. You know, Frost being the poster-child for the attentive parent and Wren being all second-hand clothing and expediency. So, I signed up for Loving Diapering 202 and here we go again.

Actually, I also went on a shopping trip fraught with consumer danger - visiting the U-Village Hana Anderson store. Despite the sale discount the new outfit I bought to prove my love cost about half our weekly grocery bill. I know that if I knitted Wren something out of recycled yarn (as was done for Frost) it would mean more but I really enjoyed dressing him up as a pretty green-and-blue Swedish frog.

Anyway, the impulse for this post was putting out a plastic bag chunky with soiled disposable diapers and I must now resume my house cleaning. Next time I do groceries I must remember to ask for plastic.