I clearly remember pinning down my youngest sister with my elbow while she screamed, wriggled and kicked away my carefully origamied terry nappy. She swears you can still see where I accidentally impaled her with safety pins to this day, and I didn’t do it on purpose no matter what she says. Some years on, real nappies don’t use pins and it’s almost impossible to scar someone for life with Velcro. These days you don’t even have to wash them yourself. In civilised 21st century Bristol there are people who swap dirty nappies for clean. I call them the poo fairies and they don’t cost as much as you would expect.
A prefold is a pad made from layers of cotton that folds into a waterproof outer cover, known as a wrap. Babies grow so quickly that you can hire the first two sizes of wraps and there are several types to fit different bums. Because the wraps fasten with Velcro you can bodge the nappy onto a wriggling baby and adjust it as many times as the baby will put up with. It’s simple to open up one side to check if it really was a poo or just the loudest fart ever. The wraps are the only thing you need to wash big poos go down the loo, or in the compost bin and the prefold goes into a bag in a bin that comes with the service. When I go out I just take a plastic bag to stick the dirties in until I get home.
Ordinary disposables they cost around 13p a nappy, the nappy service is 16p a nappy, 21p if you include wrap hire. The cost to the environment of ordinary disposables is well documented, according to the Women’s Environmental Network they have ‘over two and a half times the impact of service washed nappies’. Eco friendly disposables work out at about 20p a nappy but are either bleached or contain gel and are not 100% biodegradable, also none of them are made locally so you can add poo miles onto their ecological impact. Also, real nappies are supposed to be better for babies hips and may make it easier to potty train as the child is very aware of a soggy real nappy and wants to get out of it, instead of languishing in disposable dry gel oblivion. Real nappies are not as time consuming as you might think. I have secretly raced other mothers changing their babies with disposables and won.
Copyright Lisa Cole 2005, http://www.lactivist.co.uk
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