The gDiapers Solves the Poopy Diaper Conundrum, Or Does It?
Although, initially I had opted for Organic Cloth Diapers; plans changed when I realized that I would have to wash them daily. Since I do not own a washer or a dryer; this posed a problem. I was still resistant to the idea of disposables, (after the umbilical cord came off that is) so I decided to try out the supposedly Eco-friendly gDiapers. Even Julia Roberts is a fan of them.
Marketing itself as the solution to the poopy diaper conundrum;(disposable diapers are filling up the landfills and cloth diapers uses lots of water) gdiaper is the hybrid of the two. It has the cotton outer pants, with nylon liner, and flushables made out of wood pulp and super absorbing gel (sodium polyacrylate). This is the part that made me weary. Although it’s supposed to be “safe for humans and environment” according to their website, this is the stuff that’s been taken out of tampons because of its link to Toxic Shock Syndrome.
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Further more, Breastfed babies might have a problem with this diaper. Daily (even several) blowouts are notorious in infants especially during the early weeks. Although the website claimed that poop would rarely get on the cotton pants, it happened with every single blow out. So I had the inserts, no clean pants. And I am not the only one who had this gdiaper problem. Although they recommend four, (and I had five) you would probably need about eight or nine. Each outer pants are $16.99 and comes in two sizes. So you would have to get more when your baby reached 14 lbs. It’s a hefty investment to make, and the inserts are $52 per case with 160 small flushables which would run you about over $100 a month. Disposables run about $50 to $80 and Cloth Diapers $25 to $60 per month. It is the most expensive diaper option.
The gdiapers are also very labor intensive. I had to clip on the nylon and then tuck in the inserts. It was too damn time consuming for a mother of a newborn. Ok, it’s obvious, I am not a huge fan of these gdiapers. But it does have it’s good points. To break it down
The Good
- Cotton Outer Pants are Adorable. Baby could wear it with a shirt in the summer and it would be an instant outfit.
- Chlorine Free
- Certified Cradle to Cradle
- The flushables are actually quite ingenious; it doesn’t stink up the house the way disposable and cotton will.
- It does flush down pretty well. Just remember to rip it apart and use the swisher stick.
- You can compost the wet diapers if you are concerned about water conservation.
- Customer service was very prompt in their response and very cordial. Unused inserts can be returned for refund or exchanged for a bigger size if outgrown.
The bad
- Do not like the gel that’s in the insert no matter how much they say “it’s safe” Phthalate and BPA were once considered safe too.
- Expensive
- Poop got on the Cotton pants everytime and had to be washed all the time.
- Too much effort with clipping in nylon and inserts
With these factors in mind, I decided to go with cloth and deal with the daily laundry. I am slowly transitioning into cloth Hemp and Cotton Blend Diapers) and Tushies Disposable Cholorine Free and Gel Free Diaper when convenience is needed. Although gdiapers were good in theory; It just didn’t work for me.
Sources:
I think the reason that the sodium polyacrylate was implicated in Toxic Shock Syndrome is b/c it was so absorbant that women weren’t changing their tampons frequently enough (some were going for a day or two!), and as such, it was adhering to the vaginal mucosa, causing tissue breakdown and an opportunity for bacterial growth. IMHO there isn’t much concern about TSS unless you don’t change your baby’s diaper but once a day and you don’t treat diaper rash. And by definition, the skin on baby’s bum is much less delicate than the vaginal mucosa.
Definitely a good aRticle to give a breakdown of the cost involved. I opted for these diapers for several reasons for my second child:
1. he has firm stools b/c he’s now on solids, even though he is only 6 months and still breastfeeding (my first child still has blowouts and he’s 2.5!)
2. I had some extra covers from the cloth diapers that I used early on but the pre-folds are now too small.
3. I have a neighbor who composts (we just moved and haven’t gotten there yet) who will put them in her heap. Our plumbing is a little delicate, so I haven’t flushed much…that said - I question the idea that it will break down when put in a land fill - no matter what you put into a land fill it won’t break down with out some kind of composting process going on - that’s why you can find newspapers that look like they came off the presses yesterday in the middle of a 50 year old landfill.
4. the covers are actually really great with cloth - I’ve used them with “Thirsties” doublers and with pre-folds and I think they contain things pretty well - just have to fold the ends “in” - I like them every bit as well as the cloth covers I’ve used - even a little better b/c you don’t have to wash the outer cover.
Thanks for your article! It’s great to read how differently people do things with cloth/dispos, etc.
I believe Kendra is right… the association with TSS and sodium polyacrylate was its super-absorbency leading to too infrequent changing of a woman’s tampon.
Assuming your baby doesn’t poop, the gel would stop absorbing urine a very long time before your baby would experience any ill effects from sitting in his/her own urine.
I had the same experience with blow outs and gdiapers. We don’t use them anymore.
I’m curious as to why you wash your cloth diapers daily? We only do diaper laundry once or twice a week. We have about 30 pocket diapers for our toddler and some prefolds for back up.
We’re going on 5 months of using g-Diaps pants with OG Cotton prefolds and rice liners. We only use the gDiap inserts once a month when the diaper bag runs low when we’re out and about.
We’ve had the same issue with blowouts but not everytime. Infact, less often than with our other pants thanks to the snap-in liner.
We do laundry every 3-5 days. It’s pretty low effort. We throw the whizzed-on rice liners in the washer and dryer with the prefolds.
It works well for us.
I do wish the gDiap legs and waist had more elasticity but we’re not using them for their intended purpose.
We have 6 pairs of pants and about 6 dozen prefolds (Laundry every other day was too much).
I have had great success with the Bumkin pants and gDiap liner… A hybrid of a hybrid.
I just wanted to say that we have been using the gdiapers and we love them. Every diaper method has its little challenges that the user has to get used to. We decided we would rather deal with snaps and inserts than washing the cloth ones and all that jazz. Also…the diaper service we attempted to use for our brief stint with cloth diapers claimed to be earth friendly, but must have used bleach in their laundry because every time we started to try them out again ( we gave it a month) the baby started getting a nasty rash within the day, and we were changing her frequently so it was not an issue of the diapers being on for too long.
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Have you ever heard of Elimination Communication? We started it when she was 3 weeks old by having her in cloth diapers most of the time but offering her opportunities to use a potty after naps and when we thought she might be signaling. Now at 10 months old my daughter often naps without diapers and is diaperless while she plays often too. It is completely non-punitive, and the babies learn from the beginning what a potty is for so potty training happens naturally and usually early. My daughter has no problem holding pee for a few minutes (so no rushing her to the potty), as she has never lost that ability by always going in diapers. There is lots of information about it, I really like this site: http://www.tribalbaby.org
Love your site by the way. Stumble got me here earlier today and I’ve been looking around ever since.
I could not agree with you more! I felt more wasteful when I used g diapers. And my son had rashes, which makes me think something is not ’safe’ or tested enough.
I got into gdiapers aftermy third turned one. I saw them at the grocery store and said why not? We are not supper earthy either. I did have a really hard time with my boy potty training it took almost a year and we still have issues. The Disposables are to absorbent. My third child is also a boy so we switched to these so he becomes aware of bowel movements early. They work great and we have only 2 liners we have been using for 3 months and just now are going to buy some more. We did start him on these when he has pure water for stool and they only leaked once. Yea, Gdiapers! I also love how you can put cloth inserts in if you need to! My huband even thinks they are awesome, it did take a little training on how to do it backwards and all. We all love them, try them when your child gets older and bowels are easier to predict if you have trouble with newborns.(also no one every tells you with a newborn you can go through 10 diapers in a 5 minute diaper change!:)