Everybody Poops

"I'd rather do away with foam cups and have hot coffee poured into
both hands and drink fast than do away with disposable diapers."
-Erma Bombeck

Yesterday I took Celie to Babies-R-Us to buy wipes and diapers, items that continually inspire guilt because I see the piles and piles of landfill-clogging waste we've created and I know I should pursue other options. But the choices just aren't that appealing. Cloth diapers wreak just as much environmental havoc because of chemicals needed for sanitization and who wants to deal with pins? The other extreme is a little-known grassroots movement I recently discovered at the bookstore called "undiapering" which promotes something close to how you might train a puppy: letting your infant pee and poop with no diaper at all, just covering your home in newspaper and encouraging the child to "hold it" over time. Seeing as all of the photos in the book were black and white from 1970, I figured this method wouldn’t work unless we moved to a commune where we'd have lots of friends around to help us clean up and repaper the floor.

GDiapers seem to be a happy medium and Mike and I have planned for some time to try this flushable option. It's advertised as totally biodegradable, yet for some reason I just can't bring myself to make the switch. Perhaps its because they're like maxipads for babies, in that you don't change the entire diaper. Instead, the baby wears a special pantycover that holds a removable liner that you have to flush using a "swirl-stick" once its in the toilet. I think I'm dreading that first major poop that doesn't remain neatly within the very thin liner but instead oozes all the way up her back into the very expensive panty and I find myself in the bathroom having to swirl, wipe and wash a dirty baby, out of clean covers and overwhelmed by the mess.

My friend Elizabeth gave us GDiaper refills as a gift when Celie was born which makes me feel all the worse that we haven't broken them out. Today I admitted this to Elizabeth which led to a great conversation about poop; specifically, the reasons why some kids resist potty-training and why, at a certain age, we begin to feel modesty--even shame--about going to the bathroom. Elizabeth suggested that children resist giving up the diaper because it's the first phase of losing one’s innocence and a certain level of caretaking. I’d never thought of it this way and doing so makes me both sad and relieved. Sad, because I think of that journey—losing one’s innocence—and know that throughout Celie’s life she will experience many phases of this, some of which will be very painful. Relieved, because I know we can assure in other ways. Our caregiving will never end, only shift. Hopefully this will make for a seamless potty-training transition, but I wouldn’t be surprised if not. For all the crying Celie has done over the last few weeks, there’s nothing that can shut her up with a smile on her face quite like a good diaper change. She simply loves having her butt rubbed.