Test driving the gDiaper and Seventh Generation

I've written about my choice to go green on the choice of diaper since I will soon have two in diapers. My eldest (almost 16 months) is assisting me in these test drives. We tried Seventh Generation and found that it was easy to use, but Seventh Generation does not hold as much as Huggies. This is a good thing, because I routinely change diapers every 4 hours. Others change diapers every 5-6 hours, waiting for the diaper to be completely full. The Seventh Generation diaper looks better (I never liked the cartoon characters on my son's bottom) and I feel better knowing that I am using chlorine free diapers on my son's eczema-prone skin. The cost of Seventh Generation, when using a coupon, is the same as Huggies and Pampers.

The gDiaper is a whole other story. It is a hybrid between a cloth diaper & disposable. I've used the diaper for two days. The pros: it is environmentally friendly, the cloth is better against my son's skin, and he looks adorable in them. The cons: they are more costly, they require more time to change, and every time my son has had a bowel movement, it leaked into the snap-in liner. It is easy to clean off and they are machine washable, but if both gDiaper snap-in liners are soiled (which is what happened to me when my son had bowel movements back to back), then you have only one snap-in liner for each gDiaper. The other con is that the gDiaper does take much more time than a disposable diaper.

Using the gDiaper is more personal choice. If I was a stay at home mom with one child in diapers, then I would use the gDiaper. But that is not the case. My husband and I work full-time. When maternity leave is done and I have to return to work, both our children will be in daycare full-time. Our daycare will required us to have our children is disposable diapers. Plus I will have two children in diapers (a newborn and a toddler that are 16 months apart). Having to change two children in gDiapers and then flush the inserts will take a lot more effort.

What my husband and I have discussed is having our eldest use the gDiaper when he is home and starting to potty train. I've noticed that when my son is in the gDiaper, he notices his dirty diaper. When he is in the Huggies, he would go on and play without giving me a sign that he is wet or dirty. We plan to start potty training when our son is 2 years old. We are not fully switching to the gDiaper because disposable diapers are very convenient. But if we use the gDiaper at home, it still makes a huge difference in how many disposables our children will be using. For a family that is slowly going green, this is a great compromise!