Hand-me-down baby

Before he even got a foot out of the womb our baby started treading lightly, thanks to the tradition of The Great New Zealand Pass On. As soon as the news got out that we were pregnant, offers of hand-me-down baby stuff started coming in from friends and family. We've had almost everything given to us:


- a whole wardrobe of maternity clothes 
- pregnancy and baby books
- cot
- bassinet
- Portacot
- pram
- all-terrain buggy
- back pack
- baby bath
- bouncer
- baby gym
- nappy bag
- blankets
- muslins
- sleep bags
- toys
- oodles of baby clothes of different kinds and sizes

It's been amazing.


It probably helps that we have been laggards and had our baby after almost everyone we know has already  finished with having kids.

Now I'm keeping my eye out for the next baby coming up so I can take my turn in the Great Pass On. It's nice to think that all these things we only used for a few months can have yet another burst of life.

Reuseable baby wipes

Another part of the nappy equation is the wipes you use. I use washable baby wipes - partly for eco reasons and partly because it means exposing the baby to fewer additives. (The Waterwipes website has a long and fairly sobering list of ingredients in baby wipes that are potential skin irritants.)

Wendyl Nissen at Green Goddess has a recipe for deluxe DIY baby wipes involving witchhazel and rosewater. I was keen to try her recipe when I first had the baby but could only find the ingredients in ethanol with preservatives, which seemed to defeat the purpose! (In her latest book, Mother's Little Helper, Wendyl recommends sourcing the witchhazel from health shops and food-grade rosewater from Indian or Middle Eastern food shops, not the chemists'.)

I wound up just using plain water, which seems to work fine. At first I used paper towels, but they were hard to peel apart when wet and tended to tear. My partner's bright idea was to use thin kitchen wipes cut into sections instead (Wendyl suggests using Chux cloths). I wet and squeeze out the wipes and layer them in a re-purposed plastic takeaway container ready for use:

There's no need for any preservative because I just make them up fresh every day or two so they don't get a chance to go musty. Used ones just get tossed in the nappy bucket to get washed and line dried with everything else.

Now the baby is beyond the newborn stage I use a combination of disposable wipes and these ones - disposable wipes for cleaning up poo and these for when baby is just wet and not dirty.* (Yeah, I'm a little wimpy about poo!) It's another compromise - my partner prefers to use the disposable wipes, and who am I to discourage him from changing nappies? - but I save at least half a dozen wipes a day so I reckon it's worth it.

I really like it when I change a wet nappy and don't have to throw a single thing away. 

*Or, as my partner would say, "there's just a fart's worth of poo".