My love affair with eco-friendly diapers

ClothDiaper

When my baby was yet to be born, I had bought plenty of cloth nappies – the traditional cotton langots. Disposable diapers were never an option – the thought of the stiffness, stickiness and unbreathable nature of the plastic material used, the rashes they could cause to my baby, and the damage to environment (a disposable diaper takes almost 500 years to decompose and degrade) – would make me cringe. I knew that I needed eco-friendly diapers that were good for my baby too.

Out came my baby, and I got into the routine of nappy washing. Initially I was doing it happily, but within a month it became a chore – as the number of nappies to be washed daily increased to more than 50 a day! And if I missed washing them for even one day, I’d run short of nappies the next day! Just keeping up with the washing routine was a never ending hassle!

Advertisement

Traditional nappies were not working out for me, and I was still not ready for disposables.  In this desperation situation, my research on Babycentre led to me to an advanced version of eco friendly cloth diapers – the Reusable Cloth Diapers. Everything I read seemed very positive, and I had to try it out.

The Initial cost seemed high at Rs. 800-1000 for 1 diaper, but because I was convinced that disposable diapers were not my thing, I bought my first pair of cloth diapers online. My baby was two months old that time, and I got these one size diapers fitting him just about fine.

What happened next can best be described as – love at first use!

  • They were super soft and super absorbent – unlike nappy/langots which don’t absorb or like disposables that do, but are so unbreathable. The diaper lasted three hours easily.
  • Easy to use and maintain – After use, just wash the diaper and insert in machine/hand wash with a baby friendly detergent.
  • The prints were damn cute – It was summer time. I let my baby free in those diapers, and he could flaunt his cute cloth diapered bums!
  • No rashes at all – Early on, my baby was diagnosed of Skin Eczema. So I had to take utmost care of his skin, his clothes and the toiletries being used on him. Eco-friendly cloth diapers were a boon those days!
  • Cost effective – It was so much more cost effective going forward, if I continued using the same diapers for long time.
  • Eco-Friendly – I wasn’t throwing away 10 diapers every day, and polluting the environment.

My baby is now two years old, and I’ve used lots of cloth diapers during this time, of various brands.

 

I would really urge all moms to give cloth diapers a try. Compared to last year, prices are lowers with diapers available at Rs. 400-500. It may sound high initially, but actually you don’t need more than 12-15 diapers to sail you through the entire phase. So total investment is hardly around Rs.10,000. This is far lesser than the amount of money being spent on disposables. I got friends who spend almost Rs. 2000 a month on disposable diapers – that is like almost Rs. 50,000 for two years.

Cloth diapers are available quite readily today. You can buy them on Amazon or try Chuddy Buddy, a Gurgaon based brand that I bought mine from.

Try it out for yourself, and If you like it – spread the word about cloth diapering :)

Share your views

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *