Two in Nappies

It was something I had always said I wouldn't do. Two babies in nappies at once. But with a surprise baby and a two year old who is petrified of the toilet/potty, we had very little choice.

When I started out with cloth nappies a big part was saving money. Charlotte was past the newborn stage though, so the frequency of changes had reduced somewhat – I had forgotten how many nappies a new baby can use in one day (or in the space of five minutes).

Enter Emma, at two weeks old and up to fifteen nappy changes a day. Our nappy stash is getting its money's worth. In fact I have had to run to the store room to grab about ten more nappies just to top us up to keep up with her.

Emma is the kind of baby you could go through three nappies in the one attempt to change her. Our nappy pale is full at the end of each day with almost 20 nappies (usually about 17-20).

So when my husband said to me earlier today "You wont believe what's full, AGAIN" I knew instantly he meant the nappy bucket, which it seemed like we had only just washed. I jokingly offered to switch to disposables: "Are you kidding, we'd be broke if we were buying nappies!"

So I thought I'd work out what we are really saving. A good box of nappies is about $33 at the supermarket. For a new born that's about 30c a nappy. In the walker box it's 52c a nappy. At 6 walkers and 12 newborns that's $6.68 a day in nappies.

Then there are disposable wipes. A pack is about $5 with 80-100 wipes in it. At best its 5c a wipe and probably using anywhere from 2-5 wipes at a time. Lets say 10c a change, 20 changes a day. Add another $2 in savings by using our minky cloth wipes (which are better for our girls with sensitive skin and eczema).

Each week we are roughly saving $60.76. Annually that is $3159.  In after-tax income, that's a lot out of the family budget. In reality our nappy use will drop off once Emme is past the newborn stage. But we will still use up to 8-10 nappies a day until she is a year old.

I'm sure a lot of people will try to argue this away with the comments about electricity usage in our washing machine and water usage. Yes there are costs involved there. But they are closer to the cost of 1-2 disposable nappies a day. Furthermore, our savings in dollar value does not reflect the saving to the community by not dumping the several kilo's a day of nappies into landfill nor the environmental impact of the factories producing them.

And, honestly, the washing isn't a huge chore either. It's the simple kind of washing that you reach for first whenever you a few different piles to work through. We usually throw the nappy pale straight into the machine with an extra rinse cycle. When they're done, we drape them straight onto a clotheshorse and take them out into the sun.

And one more thing – we have not had any poop leaks from our cloth nappies. In the hospital we had to use the disposables and they leaked all the time. Disposable nappies just do not seem to hold any volume of runny mess from a newborn. The cloth nappies seem to give greater coverage and hold onto it. Well, at least I know our Baby Bare cloth nappies do!