Adventures in diapering

Disposable: My waist is almost as trim as Sock Monkey's.

Cloth: My butt looks huge in this diaper.

OK, today I'm going to write about something all of us do, but I do more often than most people: evacuating waste. (Fair warning: If you're eating lunch or are squeamish about this sort of thing, you might want to direct your browser elsewhere.)

My parents started me out on disposable diapers, thanks in part to a large donation from the Lillis family, whose son Max came into the world at nearly 10 pounds. The Lillises couldn't use newborn size diapers, so I was the beneficiary. I also have a fairly large stack of Size 1 diapers waiting for me. I go through about 8 to 12 a day right now.

With the newborn disposables -- or 'sposies, as the cool kids call them -- running low, my parents began to phase in cloth diapers this week.

My dad wasn't so keen on the disposables after a while. They are easy to slip on and off, but a couple things made him unhappy. In some instances, the Pampers (and, yes, only the Pampers) burst out the top and spilled these little gel pieces all over the place. The absorbent gel bits are supposedly harmless, but they are a pain in the rear to clean up at 2 a.m., and I hate having them all over me. My parents think they solved it by positioning me a different way in the diaper, though it may also be a sign that I'm now too big for newborn size.

This load of laundry is dry ... for me to poop on.

Cloth hasn't been a cure-all, but my parents prefer them for now. There is no gel to clean up, and it seems a little easier to clean the poop off my bottom. There is less garbage. And after stocking up this week on a couple dozen cloth diapers, hopefully my parents won't have to buy disposables for some time.

The downsides are that cloth diapers don't travel as well. There are greater consequences for blowouts. (That's slang for what happens when the diaper cover doesn't contain a spill; like BP, I lack a foolproof blowout preventer.) They are trickier to install. Also, cloth requires more laundry since my parents don't have a diaper service.

My parents are not religious about cloth, so they are still using disposables at night and when we go out. We'll see how it goes and report back in a week or two.