I wanted so much to love gDiapers. I really, really did.
When I was pregnant, my husband Jason did some research on cloth diapering. The fact that newborn babies soil diapers up to 10 times a day coupled with the fact that Jason does the laundry (I know, aren’t I lucky?!) made him not love the whole tree-hugging cloth diapering thing.
But then he told me about gDiapers. Hybrids. The insides are biodegradable and disposable. You could either flush them down the toilet or throw them in the trash or garden compost where they would break down in 50 – 150 days. The gDiaper shell gets washed only if and when they get dirty.
We were sold.
We began to stockpile the inserts the way new expectant parents collect Pampers. When I was in my third trimester I even vied for gDiapers’ limited “New Baby Bundle” along with thousands of other pregnant and hormonal, internet-savvy women.
Eventually, I accumulated everything needed to catch our newborn baby’s pee and poop while being kind to the earth at the same time.
Everything that is, but a plunger.
There is a whole procedure to flushing the insert of a gDiaper down a toilet. The decomposable fluff on the inside needs to be peeled away from its lining, dropped in the toilet, swished with the swish stick, flushed and THEN the lining can be disposed in the toilet.
I’ll give you the play-by play as I remember it when our use of gDiapers came to a head. (Erm, no pun intended.)
Mylo was just a couple of weeks old. He woke up for what was probably the third time in the middle of the night. He ate. He pooped. He peed on me while I was changing him. Jason ran to the bathroom with the dirty g in tow. I put a clean one on.
Jason returns and informs me that we have a problem. The toilet is clogged. Very clogged. Beyond plunger clogged. Of course I blame him for not following the flushing procedures. He swears up and down that he did. But it’s 1 in the morning. I’m a zombie. A zombie who now has no place to go potty.
Relief didn’t come until 9:00 Saturday morning. I don’t know what was funnier. The fact that we had to relieve ourselves in the bathtub during this sleep-deprived toilet debacle or Jason explaining to our Hungarian Super that he flushed a diaper down the toilet.
After that experience we had written off gDiaper’s until Mylo was out of the newborn phase. When he began pooping less (about 3 months) we reevaluated and decided we’d wait to give gDiapers a second chance when he was pooping solid (about 7 months).
Things were going pretty well until I flushed a dirty insert down the toilet and sure enough… it clogged! I submitted a repair request through my building’s website and when our Super came up with his snake-a-ma-jiggy-thing I was sure NOT to tell him that the culprit was a diaper. I wish I could have contained the news from my husband but alas, I couldn’t, and so guess who had the last laugh?
While I don’t think gDiapers are practical for newborn babies, now that our son is older, we do use them occasionally. But for all the love gDiapers bring mother earth, it bestows little love on this here mother.
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Have you used gDiapers, or any other hybrid or cloth diapering? Did you fail like us or are you an earthly success?
I have friends that have done cloth diapering, but they didn’t do the hybrid kind. Just the regular cloth kind. They love them and I have to admit that when (if) I do have kids I really want to give them a try. Yes, the “green” aspect is nice, but what I see is how over the life of a child (or even multiple children) cloth is significantly less many than disposable.
The hybrid kind seemed like more of a pain to me personally (All the work of cloth, but with the need to purchase liners like disposable diapers) but kudos to you for giving it a try!
(BTW, not sure who all I’ve had a chance to tell yet so I apologize if I have already told ya, but this is Kira formerly of “Grafting a Branch” blog, I moved to a new blog thus the new name…)
Hey Reedu, Kira here, sorry for the confusion! Just clarifying… This Avatar “Bleeding Tulip” is my new blog at http://pursuingparenthood.wordpress.com/
“Grafting a Branch” I am no longer putting new posts to, although I will not close it as it was a part of my IF journey. Sorry if I didn’t make sense! Blame it on the blonde…
Ahhh, the gDiaper. Great in theory, not so great in real life. At least, this was our experience, too. I remember the day that I proudly announced to my coworkers (one of whom is a nationally-renowned malacologist, who has dedicated his life’s work to protecting endangered mussel species) that I would be doing my part to help the environment by cloth diapering. The ones who already had kids laughed at me, and I think they took bets behind my back on how long it would last. 😉
We used disposables for the first few weeks, then we really did give it our best effort! The disposable inserts leaked like crazy, and the cloth inserts were really gross to change. They would get stuck inside the liner, and I would have to do this stretchy yoga/dance move thing where I kept one hand on the baby while simultaneously twisting and shaking the insert and reaching for the diaper pail. If I had it on video, I would totally be a YouTube sensation. It was that bad. (And I almost always ended up touching things that SHOULD NOT be touched.)
Maybe my kids just produce too much urine for that kind of system, because as they got bigger, they could pee out of a gDiaper in 5 minutes flat. My sister gave me her old cloth diapers, which I loved. (I think they may have been Kissaluvs.) We never made a conscious decision to stop using them – it just sort of happened. We took disposables with us on a trip to MC’s parents at Christmas, which was when our sleep problems got really bad. After that I was just too exhausted to switch back.
Your gDiapers story had me laughing out loud! Especially the part about the bathtub. Oh my…
Hey Jennifer! I’m glad to hear I am not alone about the gDiapers. Have you seen their Facebook page – 27,000 fans?! What the?! Alright but can we talk about that co-worker of yours? A nationally re-nowned malacologist? Endangered mussels species? Wowza’s! I just shared this with Jason and he said “That’s it, I’m going to tell people I am a malacologist from now on.”
Between having to pee in the bathtub and your Hungarian Super, I was laughing out loud.
I wanted to like the gDiapers as well but I had trouble with fitting them on my daughter, she would always leak, and she was always pulling at the cover.
I tried them with her not long after she turned a year old. Then I tried almost every kind of cloth diaper out there, including using prefolds with covers, and fell in love with bumGenius all in ones.
My little girl just turned 2 and my hubby and I haven’t been using the cloth diapers as often as we were. I’m hoping we start using them more often again. I love seeing my daughter’s cloth diapered bubble bum. 😉
Hi Elle! You know, I was always curious about bumGenius, I mean they do a heck of a lot more advertising then gDiapers does, but then I was scared it was pretty much the same. You make me want to look into it now! Going to check out your blog now… ~Ree
I wanted to like them as well *well, Eenie Eco the original Aussie version) but actually figured out cloth was much easier and we ended up going fulltime MCN (modern cloth nappies) – it can be so easy (even the washing) we have a planet wise wetbag (large) instead of a nappy pail that all the nappies go in and when washing is ready I just unzip the bag and tip everything into the washing machine then throw the bag in as well so I don’t have to touch anything.
Cloth nappying can be as easy to deal with as you want it to be – I know some really crazy people who go the full hog with cloth, some that use cloth but everything bar the nappy ends up in the bin and a million variations inbetween
You should re-look into modern cloth, my husband won’t put a disposable on bubs bum now and trust me if he can do it anyone can – he wore gloves the first time he changed our son!
We briefly tried gdiapers, also wanting to love them. But they were just a pain, and I was lazy, and made the decision to go to disposables. I have friends who cloth diaper and love it, but at this point, I don’t want to make the investment into another system, like bumgenius. I also really don’t like the idea of laundry. I already have a hard enough time getting our clothes through the laundry!
ICLW
Lucy, I could not agree with you more on making an investment into another system and not liking laundry. It is my least favorite chore which, luckily, my husband does 99% of the time!