The staff at the birth hospital had advised us against the use of diapers till the baby is at least 3 months old. A few rather horrific photos of baby rash was projected on a screen to demonstrate just how inimical the use of diapers can be on an infant's skin. All parents present there were suitably traumatised by those photos to swear of diapers for life!
After birth, my baby and I spent 3 days in the hospital in the care of the excellent staff. That is where we learnt the use of cotton nappies with surgical grade cotton pads held together by gauze to line the nappy. As the baby peed, all we needed to do was replace the lining. But once back home, we realised that things were not to be so simple. First, a three day old baby pees and poops far less than her potential! Second, the cotton lining that we stuffed our bags with from the hospital depleted in less than 48 hours. The husband and I then decided to be enterprising and make those linings ourselves. We bought surgical cotton rolls and gauze, spread the cotton over a sheet of gauze and cut through to create little lining pads. Our home made lining pads looked like this:
This is a crude replica of what the staff at the hospital provided us with. Nor is it easy to cut the 20 odd liners that we required each day (surprisingly requires enormous strength). And to make matters worse, we realised that our handiwork was not enough to prevent the cotton nappy itself and the baby's clothes from getting wet. As a result, the baby's clothes had to be changed multiple times each day - not easy during winters. Additionally, our baby pees in tranches. As an active and alert mother, I would pounce on the baby's nappy and change it diligently only to realise that within seconds the fresh nappy has also been wet. I did see nappy liners in Mother Care stores in Delhi - however the prices were prohibitive so I never bothered with them, preferring the evening activity of cutting out cotton pads with my husband.
As the days wore on, the baby continued to pee several times through the day. We ran through the piles of cotton nappies at an alarming rate everyday.
We bought them by the dozens. But between the the time the soiled nappies found their way into the laundry basket and were dried in the weak Delhi winter sun (and also washing the new ones before use), we finally reached a day when we were down to just two fresh dry nappies to use. That day, when I was going for an errand I took two of my daughter's wet nappies and hung them out to dry on my car window to expedite the drying. Incidentally, that was also the day that I was going to visit a new pediatrician and I burst into his office with questions on how soon we could shift to diapers. I was quite taken aback when Dr. M, instead of rebuking me, smiled and coolly said that we could do that at anytime. He pooh poohed claims that use of diapers can cause rash. His point is, if parents are not diligent about keeping an eye out for pee pee and poo poo, then even cotton nappies can cause a rash. And he also advised the use of a diaper rash cream at each change of diaper.
I happily went ahead and bought the first pack of Pampers (for new born babies). It was OK but I decided to try out a few more. Next up was Mamy Poko. The pant style diapers were not to my liking - getting an infant to wriggle into those is a bit of a pain. Then I tried Himalayan (relatively cheaper) quickly followed by Huggies - both of these seemed to soak through and even leak. Effectively these need to be changed every two hours regularly. Given that by the second month my baby took to sleeping through the night - 7-8 hours at a stretch, this did not work for me. So I went back to Pampers (this time the 'active baby' series for small babies) and there has been no looking back since then! My baby sleeps about 8 hours at night and, although in the morning the diaper is full, there is never any leakage. Through the day I feed her about every 3 hours and that is also when I change her diaper. She also gets fidgety when she has soiled her diaper, so I am diligent about these signals and keep checking (and smelling her butt - still cant stick my finger into the diaper to check for poop!).
It has been 3 months of diaper use and it has been fairly good so far. Of course it does pain me to use this non-eco friendly solution, but in my defence, I am on my own with no nanny to help out or even a good washing machine with a powerful dryer. To ease my guilt, I quickly switched to eco friendly sanitary napkins, to even out the environment damage!
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