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".

Modern cloth nappies

In my newly impoverished suburban mum existence, the obvious "green" things to do are the ones that also save you money - and luckily that's most "green" stuff, right?

First up, cloth nappies.(Yeah, this is strictly for the parents out there, so I'll stick everything in one giant post.)

To me, whether it's better to use cloth or disposable nappies depends on whether you can dry them on the washing line.

Environmental impact
Zerowaste NZ has a good roundup of the information about environmental impact of cloth vs. disposable nappies - essentially, cloth is better if you can line dry and use low temperatures to wash.

Costs and savings
If you compare the total costs of disposables and cloth nappies, the cloth ones are almost certainly quite a bit cheaper - though of course how much you save depends on exactly what all the costs are. Again, if you have to use a dryer that adds a lot to the cost of cloth. We use disposable nappy liners, which also adds to the cost (many are around 5c each) and the environmental impact, but for me is a good compromise as it makes dealing with the dirty nappies faster and way less icky.*


Laundering
So, is washing cloth nappies as yucky and difficult as it sounds? Not really, actually. Most of the poo gets thrown away on the liner. A few times a day a bit escapes onto the cloth and needs to be rinsed off - a little bit yuck but not too bad. All the dirty ones go into a dry pail (no soaking needed these days) and I just wash them in cold water every other day, about half a load each time. (I really didn't believe that this would work - wouldn't it stink etc? But it's fine.) Any stains get bleached out in the sun if you put them on the line, so there's no need to Napisan. So, it's mostly just a question of hanging out 20-odd items every couple of days. I can do that. Plus there is something wonderfully satisfying about a nice pile of freshly washed nappies all ready to go. 

Nappy types
It's hard to get your head around all the different kinds. (I found The Nappy Lady,  The Nappy Network  and the Snazzipants website useful sources. I didn't manage to go myself, but I reckon going to one of The Nappy Lady's workshops would be brilliant, so you could see the various nappies firsthand.)

I bought the newborn size of a few of the most promising-sounding types secondhand on TradeMe, so I could try them out before committing. That was a pretty good approach. It's when you start using them that you quickly notice the pros and cons and develop preferences.

Some are more absorbent but slower to dry. Some are a bit slower or more fiddly to put on - and, yeah, that does make a difference when you're changing nappies ten times a day. But suffice to say that THEY ALL WORK FINE.

My review
My favourites are Snazzipants fitted nappies with a Bummis whisper wrap cover. The velcro makes them as easy to put on as a disposable, and laundry tabs keep the velcro from sticking to other things and getting fluffed over in the wash. Poo-splosions sometimes escape the nappy itself, but the separate cover usually provides good containment and prevents mess getting on baby's clothes. They are nice and absorbent - the one disadvantage is that they are quite slow to dry, sometimes not even drying after a full day in the sun.

BabyFirst two-part nappies are really handy as they dry superfast - within a few hours on the washing line. However, I bought the second size of these and they still don't fit my approx 7.5-8kg baby too well - maybe they'll fit better when he's crawling and changed shape a bit. The dome fasteners are fine, but not as easy to use or adjust the fit as velcro.

Flat or prefold nappies with a Snappi were brilliant for a tiny baby as you can get them to fit snugly - I was able to use these from the first few days. I used them with a waterproof Bummis whisper wrap cover on top. However, now I find them a bit fiddly and harder to keep securely on an active older baby.

The Itti Bitti Tutto one-size-fits-all snap-in-two seemed like a great idea, but I found it unnecessarily complicated in practice. It has a bunch of absorbent pads that dome together in different combinations for different levels of absorbency - but who can really predict how much a baby will pee?


In conclusion
We've used disposable nappies exclusively for a few days one or twice (e.g., on holiday) and, man, does it create a crazy amount of waste, as well as chewing through the money. I really hate it and much prefer my cloth nappies.  

* I've recently discovered rinsing out and reusing the liners if they are just wet. Works fine!