Mommy’s Groove

Even from my sterile corporate outpost during my pregnancy, cloth diapers were an easy decision, it seemed to me.

I could not imagine tossing thousands of disposable diapers into the land – it always reminded me of that hilarious line from comedian Sandra Shamas in Wisecracks about using tampons with plastic applicators, “Why would you want a monument to your period to live well into the next century?”. Clearly the legacy part was an argument I was open to receiving.

The convenience argument in favour of disposable diapers didn’t fizz on me particularly, perhaps because of the self-flogging nature of my Scottish Protestant heritage – why chose the easy option when there is one which involves honest and dirty work?

I read all the material about the overuse of fresh water in washing cloth diapers, ably outlined again with current thinking in this month’s Mothering magazine in A Quiet Place. Although I can’t say I was confident that I would be using less fresh water, I knew I’d do the labour of soaking and rinsing in cold water and washing in warm with the help of washing soda and a mild detergent. I reasoned that that was doing my part for the environment – more than I could say for any choice to use manufactured plastic and chemical disposables. 

But honestly, it was the whispered idea, still years ahead of any hint of realization, that cloth diapers might toilet train my child earlier, which loured me. That was the carrot in the whole thing for me. Sure I felt quietly smug about my perceived environmental choice, but really it was the idea that it – the messy business I knew I was about to be responsible for – would end a little earlier when my perceptive child would opt for a dry bottom.

Kate was a dream. Her timing to choose Dora underpants over diapers was a bit miscued in my view but her independence was admirable (believe me, when Michael was barely 3 months old and she just 2, I was not the one championing repeated trips to the toilet every 7 minutes).  To help cement her early interest I ponied up the famed underpants and the mini-marshmallows in units of 5 (3 it turned out was not adequate compensation for the doing the job). Going with her natural inclination worked out (and for what it’s worth, so far I don’t seem to be left with a child who expects she’ll be rewarded for performance!).

Michael on the other hand is proving that famous turn of phrase, “they’ll do it when they’re ready”. Seeing that my window with the cooperative stage was ending after his 2nd birthday, I borrowed a book about a boy using the potty, and bought cloth training pants. I opted to avoid the marshmallow route to avoid 2 kids strung out on sugar. His first 3 months on the program were admirable, as long as he was being reminded.  When we travelled I didn’t pee alone for 2 weeks straight for his diligence.

But my interest in being the Bladder Beeper has waned and having abandoned the cloth trainers weeks earlier for the regularity of their saturation, I am squirmy about the use of disposable pull-ups as a training aid. I can see them as Michael’s Monument and wobble on the fence of the ends-justifying-the-means.

After weeks of watching his liberated bottom choose it’s commode of choice inside and out of the house, encouraging with words, reading inspiring stories and shelving my disappointment with every “don’t give up yet!” – I have returned to my old standby. He’s back in cloth diapers while I wait for him to throw off the shackles of his damp imprisonment.

Perhaps I should have offered the marshmallows at the start…? 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 5th, 2006 at 10:49 am and is filed under Consumerism, Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.