Monday, 28 July 2008

Poo

Having posted my smug "babies don’t cost much" post, I have started to look at the price of nappies. WOW, that hurts! To make things fun and with a nod to the landfill site issue, we thought it would be good to go down the reusable road so I thought I would have a quick google see which is best and get some. Not really so easy though is it? Do you want a nappy made out of bamboo, or out of goose feathers; do you want it attached to the baby with zips, velcro, poppers, a nail gun, string..and the cost of them – let me just mention that again – this is not a choice you can afford to get wrong.

I am one for experimenting; I will happily try different types of most things, but excuse me if I don’t feel to excited about picking a type that is poorly-fitting and results in me and my furniture getting covered in baby poo. It's also all very well saying "oh, we will try samples from different places", but that can mean lots of costs to different places. After the baby is actually born I will need to have a nappy there and then. If possible, I would like to have worked out how to operate it, so that, when it comes to putting nappies on the baby, instead of looking confused, bemused and generally incompetent I will have the appearance of a skilled competent (and rather dashing) father who makes mothers of other babies catch their breath as they wish that their husbands / life partners / significant others were such a master nappy putter-onners themselves.

What I don’t want is to be looking confused, befudled and slightly dumbfounded as I try and work out which way up the baby goes and how to get baby poo of my white shirt.

HELP! Please note – I do not want to be told that lots of good brands are out there etc, I want solid advice on “this is the best one, get it and your life will be better”! I can then get hold of some before baby is born and practice putting them on to a soft toy whilst wearing a blind fold.

Yours as ever

The Broken Man.

10 comments:

Kate said...

I haven't used them, but my friends use something called G-Diapers. That seems to be the most common over here. There are also brands of disposables that have less chemicals and are more easily broken down in the landfills. Seventh Generation is one brand. Of course, I'm in the States, so this could all be useless. You might have better choices in the UK. Either way, you'll probably get covered in poop at some point. It's a right of passage! :)

Wanda said...

There is always that thing we called a "cloth diaper" You used it, you soaked it, your washed and bleached it, you hung it on the clothes line to dry it, folded it, and started all over again!!

Were those the good old days...what I used on my four...but that was years ago.

Robert said...

Man your posts put a smile on my face Broken Man. My only observation is that no matter what kind of nappy you end up with, baby poo leaking out is as inevitable as death and taxes! Good luck.

arwen_tiw said...

We use terries/muslins mostly, with Nature Baby covers (which I will swear by and are much cheaper than the much touted and no better in my experience Motherease). www.thenappylady.co.uk has instructions for folding the things.

If you do want pre-made shaped nappies to avoid the folding, get Tots Bots Bamboozles, because they stay soft, dry fast, are easy to use, and fit well for a long while.

We also love onesize stuffables - Wonderoo is the brand of choice. Neither of the above are great for the first eight weeks though, so we have some mini covers from Cotton Bottoms (stocked in Boots and John Lewis stores). They're not the best covers for babies past newborn though, see above for recommendation.

And as for poo, we've had more leaks in sposies!

www.kittykins.co.uk
www.babykind.co.uk

Anonymous said...

We're planning to use cloth for our next as well, and leaning heavily towards the BumGenius - it looks like in Europe you can get them through a company called BGnappies: http://www.bgnappies.com/
Here's the BumGenius website: http://www.bumgenius.com/retailers.php
That link brings you straight to places you can buy.

The G-Diapers are also supposed to be good. http://www.gdiapers.com/
They are neither cloth nor disposable though - they are a kind of cross-breed that use small flushable inserts. An interesting idea to be sure.

Barbara Martin said...

This will be dating me, but I used plain cotton cloth diapers. Certainly you end up washing them every day, but overall I think this would cut the cost of commercially made ones. Besides, do you really know what kind of chemicals are in those commercially made diapers? Just a thought.

TeacherMommy said...

I love cloth diapers so much I'm probably a little obsessed lol. Go with pocket diapers! They are so awesome we switched to them even though we started out with plain prefolds and covers - which suck.

My favorite brand so far is Hugga Buns - they are a cheaper alternative to, and in fact a much better diaper overall than the more common Fuzzi Bunz so don't even bother with those unless you can't get hugga buns where you live. They'd be my 2nd choice.

Silly names I know. Just google it and they should come right up. I don't know if they ship to the UK or not, but I'm sure someone must!

I have quite a few "one size fits all" diapers but so far can't reccomend any of them except Whamies, which a lot of people don't like because of the hooks - sissies lol. To me the hooks are awesome because my baby likes to take her diaper off and scatter it's contents every chance she gets - and with these she can't!

Go to diaperpin.com and check out the reviews and sales. That's what I do!

And buy in bulk! You always get a discount.

TeacherMommy said...

Oh wait there is one site that lets you try all the different kinds of cloth diapers for a really small price then send back what you don't like...I'd do that or look for one that has a money back guarantee.

daysease said...

I do not know which diapers are available in England, but I do have a suggestion to help you be a bit more prepared... try putting the smallest size diaper, not premie, on a doll about the average size of a newborn baby. get the feel that way, so that when the actual time comes you will have an idea what to do. and... I have no problem with regular disposable diapers. for the first month or so, Pampers newborns were what i used, then i had to experiment with others to see what worked best for my children individually. depended on the form of their bums, along with the quality of the diaper itself. take it easy, you will grow into fatherhood just fine.

The Broken Man said...

Thank you all so much! I will let you know what we go for!