Cloth Diapering, the unconvincing convince
by Andi Lutz
When I decided I wanted to do cloth diapers I pretty much knew it would never happen because my husband is very stubborn and would never agree to it. Since he has to live in the house with me and the baby then I have to take his wishes in to account also. It was a big fat no, I didn’t even bother to discuss it with him. I know him all too well, he complains almost every day that he has to clean the litterbox now that I’m pregnant. And he checks with me all the time to make sure I am taking that duty over once our little angel is born. On the other hand, we do have 4 big dogs and 3 cats that are all indoor animals so there is always something coming out of one end or the other of these 7, adding another pooper doesn’t change things much. But I guess the poo jobs are all mine, is man just weaker when it comes to that?
Getting my husband to change his habits for the better of the environment is a very hard thing to do, he is resistant to change. We live out in the country and our trash doesn’t do recycling. Separating and putting our plastic, paper, and glass out by the curb, like most people do, would not help anything. The trash man would just throw it in the truck with all the other garbage for the landfill. This killed me to be throwing away so much when I knew it could be recycled. I did a little research and found that our county had a recycling facility. I started collecting the recycling instead of throwing it away. Then approached my husband with it and showed him how much we were throwing away that could be recycled, which was a disturbing amount. I decided not to give up and try again if he resisted, after all we had to collect everything, sort it all, put it in the car, drive 11 miles to the recycling facility and dump it all into separate bins. I was ready for the debate, looking back I don’t recall much of one but I know there was one. I kept collecting and hoping for the best. And now years later, if he has to go into town and I can’t go with him he will sometimes take the recycling on his own. We’ve got it down to a system and it’s easy. That’s the way cloth diapering should be, I already researched it, figured out an easy way to do it, and see all the benefits of it. But it’s a little bit different than remembering not to throw out the junk mail, which he still does.
With us being the last in our families to have babies our moms went a little nuts with buying things the moment they found out. One huge package that arrived turned out to be two dozen cloth diapers from my mom. I was so excited, and I don’t know how she knew I wanted to cloth diaper because I don’t remember discussing it with anyone. I called her up to thank her and asked her how she knew and she said that I seemed like the type of person who would want to do it. I take that as a compliment, and thank you very much mom.
Now, to the hubby, I was chewing my finger nails off thinking of all the things I would say to convince him to keep dirty diapers in our house and wash them in the same washer that his clothes go in. But I was so excited and happy to show him the cute diapers that my mom got us and I guess it showed on my face because he didn’t respond like I thought he would. Sure, there was a disgusted look and some resistance but there was not an absolute no. From then on our plan was that we were cloth diapering, and it hasn’t changed since. Thanks mom, for the gift and doing the “dirty work.”
& Baby Makes 3