When raising children, life is full of compromises.
From negotiating to get the best behaviour to getting your child to eat the right things, nothing seems simple. This starts right at the beginning, with your newborn boy or girl.
So what has this got to do with nappies?
There are many pros and cons about disposable nappies and reusable nappies. There’s a lot of talk about the pros and cons of both kinds of nappies and all the variations of them too. Most of the discussions centre on the environmental aspect of reusable nappies. The main argument being that disposable nappies lead to a massive amount of non-recyclable waste. This is simply dumped into landfill.
If you think about the sheer amount of nappies your baby will go through before training pants and pull-ups. Multiply that by the the number of nappies changed for every other baby in the country, and the number runs into thousands, or tens of thousands. This is a worry when we think about the impact that this amount of waste causes to the environment.
Environmental Concerns
When this is considered, reusable nappies do come out as obvious choice when it comes to an eco-friendly alternative. However, there is an argument that claims that the amount of detergents used for washing reusable nappies might also be equally damaging. Brands such as Swaddlebees and Bumgenius, who make cotton nappies, might refute this, as they advise the use of non-bio washing powders that have been made to be less harmful to the environment and to baby’s sensitive skin.
The other question is one of cost, and to many parents, this is going to be perhaps the decider over the right nappies to use. When buying a lot of reusable nappies, the initial costs might seem high. In fact, you might spend well over £200 to get a good set of cotton nappies to get started. Disposable nappies are, in comparison, cheaper than this initial spend. However, over time, the costs of disposables can mount up, over taking the cost of real nappies.
The truth is, there are arguments for an against, which are valid. Even the idea that reusable nappies are harder to change and more cumbersome than disposables are a thing of the past, as time-saving clips and fastenings have now been designed to make life easier.
So what’s the answer?
What nappies should be in your bag? Well, for my baby, I have both. I don’t feel like I’m letting down the planet by using disposables now and again. Nor do I think I’m throwing away perfectly good money. For regular, every day changing, I use cotton nappies. That’s the standard, but sometimes you need to do things in a hurry. Or occasionally when my parents look after my baby, I don’t mind if they use the disposables I’ve provided.
It’s all about balance.
I don’t want to waste more time going through the pros and cons of the right nappy any more. I have a daughter to raise!