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I come from a cloth diaper tradition. That’s what my mom put me in. I toilet-trained relatively fast (not something that frequently comes up in polite conversation, granted). But when you’re a parent, you’d be surprised at the topics that emerge over the dinner table, at the kid’s basketball game, on the way to the grandparents’.

This week, it was poop and what to do with the inevitability of it. We like to call it the great diaper debate in our household.

I started our baby out on disposables due to the newborn blow-out phenomenon (NBOP).  New babies are big-time crappers. It’s seedy, it’s bizarrely colored, it’s near liquid and it’s darn near inescapable. The newborn blow-out makes its presence less known when the kid ceases to be a newborn and their digestive track begins to mature, which I would estimate occurs around month four or so.

Cloth diapers aren’t always the best adversary for the NBOP due to the aforementioned consistency of the NBOP’s contents. Disposables are better at wicking away moisture instantaneously and keeping your newborn as comfortable as possible--something that is invaluable in those first 3 months when baby is a bit fussy and wants to return to the nice warm place he used to inhabit. A cold wet cloth diaper was a recipe for disaster in our home during the first 3 months so I found myself facing down the inevitability of a disposable ally for a short time.

In facing the NBOP, we chose Seventh Generation disposables due to their use of chlorine-free materials that lessen the impact of the disposable on the environment. Seventh Generation is a great alternative to Pampers without the harsh chemicals that can upset a baby’s skin, not to mention leach back into the water table.

However, a disposable is still a disposable.

Experts estimate that disposable diapers are the third-largest contributor to landfills in the US, with a decomposition rate of about 500 years due to their plastic ingredients. Add to that the fact that most of them are thrown away with fecal matter still in them (a no-no by EPA standards) and you’re dealing with both short- and long-term waste issues.

You can see how we’d be eager to move toward another alternative. However, given the wash requirements of cloth diapers and their subsequent water and detergent needs, it’s not much better. Who wants their washing machine full of baby poop anyway? A reliable diaper service can be a welcome relief (send the diapers out to an industrial launderer and save on water resources) but it is a bit pricey in our town. And a cloth diaper finds it difficult to sustain a newborn’s waste requirements without staining everything within bum’s reach—you’re faced with the conundrum we found… the great diaper debate.

We’ve recently made the switch to G diapers, which we see as a workable solution. Halfway between a cloth diaper and a disposable, G diapers have a cloth outer-pant that holds a disposable liner that can be flushed down the john. Believe it or not, G diapers make it possible for poop to go where poop belongs—not in the landfill or in the washing machine—but in the toilet!

Plus the outer G pants come in delightful little designs that are always encouraging to our design-friendly household. Spike (our son) has a collection of about six different pants that he can toss messages to his caregiver regarding his current mood. On days when he’s feeling a bit lethargic he goes with blue; on days when he’s a bit gregarious, he’s in stripes; on days he’s feeling a bit rocker-ish, like his dad, he goes with black.

G diapers are durable, flexible to allow for movement, and fun. If you’ve got a little girl, you can even get a G pant with goofy ruffles on it. We also appreciate the fact that our money is going to a sustainable organization that supports nonprofits like Healthy Child, Healthy World and the My Best Birth website.

If you’ve got a little one, or if you are looking for a unique shower gift, our family highly recommends them. That’s the straight poop (pun obviously intended).

Updated 10/3/10; originally posted 8/9/09.

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