South Africa - part 2: Just a Short Anecdote

I was pleasantly surprised to see this sign in the Two Oceans Aquarium in Capetown:

"Dads, change your baby's nappy here."  How likely would you be to see a sign like that in your country?  In France, unlikely.  In Canada, maybe.

In some places where we travel, the nappy-changing room is at least a separate room from both the men's and women's washrooms.   This is acceptable.

In other places, the baby-changing station has been placed in the women's washroom.  The person who made the decision to put it there was highly presumptuous, not to mention sexist.  Who says that it has to be me who changes the Bambino's diapers when we're en route?

This museum has gone the other way and pointed out dads in particular.  My brother would object and call this social engineering.  I say that changing stations in women's washrooms are already their own form of social engineering.  A little reverse social engineering never hurt anyone.

Traveling with Cloth Diapers

I use cloth diapers whenever I can.  I'm even using them during our one-month vacation in Paris.  But here's the thing: I just don't think I can travel with cloth diapers - not exclusively anyway.   Jennifer Margulis has written a blog entry on traveling with cloth diapers and has described how to make it work but I'm not wholly convinced.  For one thing, I fear the diapers may take up too much space - they're much bulkier than disposable diapers. Margulis suggests bringing prefolds but 20 prefolds take up a lot of space in a suitcase and here's the thing: that number is not going down so you are not going to gain more space in your luggage as the days go by.  Then there's the fact that you have to carry around the smelly, dirty diapers, at least until you have access to laundry facilities.  Ick.  And then you have to use of an afternoon or more of your trip doing laundry.  Plus I don't use the dryer to dry my cloth diapers so I would also need a rack or line to hang the wet diapers out to dry and ideally some clothes pins, too.

On the other hand, having used cloth for more than a year now, I cringe at the sight of disposables.  I hate their feel and their smell.  And they are so NOT cute on baby (it's IMPORTANT!).

So I have been looking for a compromise.  As G-diapers contain Super Absorbent Polymer (SAP), I don't consider them a compromise.  I might as well buy Pampers as far as I'm concerned.   Same goes for Gro-Via - their eco-friendly disposable inserts contained SAP the last time I checked.

I have recently discovered the Hamac.  It's a French-made hybrid diaper.  On the outside is super thin, impermeable microfiber.  On the inside, you choose either (1) an absorbent hemp and cotton washable insert or (2) a disposable insert.  The disposable insert is made of paper - no plastic and NO SAP.  It's basically like a giant maxi-pad.  The bambino went through two of the disposable inserts on an outing today and they worked okay - no leaks and they seemed to fit well.  I need to use the Hamac more on the Bambino to see if it really will work for a two week vacation in the south of France, though.

Cloth versus disposable around the world

Back in Canada when I was growing up, lots of parents used a cloth diaper service for their baby. Every week, you handed the truck driver your bag of dirty diapers and in exchange, you received a bag full of folded clean ones, all ready for your little one to sully.

When I was pregnant with the Bambina in France five years ago, I said to the Frenchman, "so I guess we'll just sign up for a cloth diaper service, n'est-ce pas?."

When it was clear that he didn't know what on earth I was talking about, I said "you know, the truck comes by every week and you hand over your dirty diapers and you get clean ones."

The Frenchman wondered at this point if I was not from another planet rather than just another country. "Zees does not exeest in France," he said. And he promptly went out to buy a jumbo pack of size 2 Pampers in preparation for the arrival of our daughter.

And at the time, he was right. Diaper delivery services didn't exist in France. So, imagine my surprise when I checked out the May 2009 edition of Parents magazine (purchased in Madagascar in August!) to find .... an article on cloth diapers! Not only do cloth diapers and diaper services now exist in France, they are actually becoming... dare I say it , trendy??

Of course, just as parents in the West are starting to consider cloth diapering as a serious option once again, arguments against using them are rearing their ugly head. In 2005, a study carried out by an advisory board to the UK Environment Agency concluded that cloth diapers had equal the impact of disposable nappies. I still don't believe it. The study assumed that you would be washing your nappies every day in 90 degree celcius water on the mega-long cycle and putting them in the dryer for drying.

Which brings me to the next point (for which I would like to thank Green Living Tips) - When you use cloth nappies, you can control how much you damage the earth - you can wash them every two or three nights only, you can wash them at 40 degrees celcius (totally sufficient), you can buy your cloth diapers used (why not? They're even more absorbant than the new ones), you can use hemp or bamboo nappies instead of the environmentally less friendly cotton ones, and you can dry them in the sun - the best natural disinfectant going.

You don't have these options when you use disposables.

Here in Madagascar and the rest of the developing world, avoiding disposable nappy use is even more important, for a few reasons:

1) Disposable diapers are expensive here.

2) You can only buy disposable diapers in packages of about 30, making it difficult to stock up. That's not an assuring situation when you consider that stores run out of stock quickly here. If you run out, you won't necessarily find more when you need them (or you might at least have to hit a few shops to find them). Also bear in mind that in the event of another coup d'état, you may not be able to shop at all for a few weeks...

3) Discarded disposible diapers contain human waste. Human waste that sits in landfills (especially landfills in developing countries) can contaminate the local drinking water with harmful bacteria and viruses causing intestinal illnesses, polio and hepatitis.

All that being said, I do put my baby in a disposable diaper whenever we are travelling and as his final diaper before he goes to sleep at night.