Grow In Style, an “organic diaper cake company,” would like to offer one of our readers this Organic 3 Tier Fall Fantasy Diaper Cake, made of forty size 1 Nature BabyCare diapers–a $39.00 value!  While we here at The Green Baby Guide love cloth, it’s nice to have a disposable diaper that’s greener than conventional brands.  Nature BabyCare diapers don’t use chlorine bleach and are free from oil based plastic.  Read a review of them on Baby Cheapskate.

Here’s some information Grow In Style gave us about Nature BabyCare diapers and their company:

About Nature BabyCare Disposable Diapers

Nature BabyCare Diapers are one of the two leading Eco Friendly Disposable Diaper Brands available to today’s market.  They are soft, breathable, chlorine free, and made with natural based material for natural protection.  There are absolutely no oil based plastics used in the making of the diapers, so no toxins come in touch with the delicate baby skin. Nature BabyCare went an extra step with the packaging which is based on 100% natural, renewable material providing an all around eco friendly product.

About Grow In Style

GrowInStyle.com takes pride in being one of the few companies that creates Eco Friendly Organic Diaper Cakes.  We believe that natural and 100% organic baby products are the only kind that children should encounter. We carefully select the best baby products for the rapidly developing infant. Our Diaper Cakes include all 100% organic and natural products such as Organic Onesies, Organic stroller blankets and receiving blankets, natural and BPA free teethers, natural rubber pacifiers, organic toys and natural baby creams. GrowInStyle Diaper Cakes are constructed with the purest and safest ingredients available today.

Would you like to win this fall-themed diaper cake from Grow In Style?  It would be the perfect gift to give an expecting mom at a green baby shower–or even at a conventional shower.  Or hey, maybe you want this diaper cake all to yourself!  Just post a comment with your opinion on “greener” disposables or your desire to win forty diapers fashioned into a cake, and you’ll be entered to win.  I’ll pick a winner next Friday!

When I started potty training Audrey, I wasn’t planning on buying disposable Pull-ups or even cloth training pants.  I just took her out of diapers and put her into underwear.  This actually worked, for the most part.  But then Audrey’s daycare provider said she was on board with potty training, but that Audrey would need to wear training pants.  I guess she wasn’t up for my “just wear underwear” technique, which admittedly results in a puddle here and there. 

So I looked around.  Our big grocery store carried Gerber training pants, but they didn’t carry them in Audrey’s size–ever.  I stopped by a drug store, which had disposable training pants, but no cloth ones.  Then I popped into two children’s consignment stores and came out empty handed.  Who knew cloth training pants were such a rare commodity?

Finally I remembered a Hannah Anderson gift certificate I’d had since Audrey’s birth.  They have a store downtown, so I ventured out there and bought a set of three adorable little training pants for $28.50—cheaper than Imse Vimse training pants, which cost about $12 each.  (By comparison, a jumbo pack of 88 Pull-ups costs over $30.00.) 

The Hannah Anderson pants are made from 100% organic cotton and don’t have a plastic layer.  In other words, they are not water proof, which is just what I wanted.  A child in these training pants will feel wetness and won’t be tempted to treat them as a diaper.  (At least this has been our experience.)  They’re also absorbent enough to prevent those pesky puddles, so they definitely work for me. 

Audrey is potty trained now, and I never needed to buy more training pants or a pack of Pull-ups.  I can personally attest to the fact that a life without Pull-ups is possible!  Although she didn’t need training pants for very long, she still wears them and thinks of them as regular underwear, so I consider it money well spent. 

For more great Works for Me Wednesday tips, head on over to Rocks in My Dryer––and please join us for our Thrifty Green Thursday carnival this week!

We had so many deserving entries in our giveaway that I found myself wanting to buy everyone a Dirty Duds bag or sew a dozen by hand.  Since I’m not remotely wealthy, or skilled in sewing, I wrote Bumkins instead and begged for more prizes.  They awarded us with something all our readers can use! 

Just enter the coupon code 5off08 and get $5.00 off any purchase with a $50.00 minimum when ordering online at www.bumkins.com. The coupon is good on all merchandise so you can use it buy diapers, bibs and other baby gear as well. 

And here is our winning entry from April at Enchanted Dandelions.  

“In May of 2007, my younger brother graduated from Marine boot camp. The ceremony was to be held in South Carolina at Parris Island, about an 8 hour drive from our home in Virginia. Since I wanted to be there for this special moment in my brother’s life, I made arrangements to drive down there with my little ones and spend the weekend in a hotel.

As the kids were only 10 months old and just-turned-2 years old at the time, I had a lot of packing to do. Plenty of snacks and toys for the car ride? Check. Blankies, loveys, and dollies? Check. Matching patriotic outfits? Check. Diapers? Hmm, I had a decision to make. I could spend $20 and buy a couple packs of disposables for the trip. That would have been easiest. However, I’m stubborn, and decided to stick with our usual bumwear of prefolds and covers.

I packed our entire diaper stash into a collapsible laundry basket. I also took along a couple heavy-duty trash bags for dirty diapers, a box of baking soda and a bunch of grocery bags to keep in my diaper bag.

The weekend was absolutely amazing! Kids did great on the long car ride down. Touring the base was very interesting, as it was my first time on one. And of course, the reason for the trip, seeing my brother in his uniform was just awe-inspiring. I was SO proud of him!

Diaper-wise, things went smoothly as well. When we were out and about, I would put the dirty diapers in a grocery bag and shove it in the bottom of the stroller. At night, in the hotel, I rinsed out the poopy ones and left them to drip dry over the edge of the toilet. The next morning everything went into the trash bag with a liberal sprinkling of baking soda. (I made sure to put a note on the bag, just in case, so the housekeeper wouldn’t toss it away while we were gone).

Yes, it was a bit more work. But in the end, I am glad that I stuck to it. My brother was doing his part to protect our country… and I am doing my part in protecting the environment.”

Honorable mention goes to Kathleen at Katydid and Kid and Dorothy at Gabriel, Dorothy and William for their fabulous descriptions of those dirty diaper moments.  Thanks to everyone who participated and, as always, we’d love to hear more cloth diaper victory stories!

Diaper services are a great option for people who want to use cloth diapers without washing them themselves. The company will plunk sets of nice clean diapers outside your door and whisk away your bag of soiled ones on a regular basis.  They’ll usually allow you to specify the size of prefolds you need, and you’ll buy the covers yourself.   While prices vary across the nation, diaper services generally end up being cheaper than disposables but more expensive than home-laundered cloth diapers. 

Are they better for the environment, too?  With a diaper service, you’ll throw away far less garbage than disposable-users will.  There is the added environmental cost of the water used to wash the diapers and the fuel used to transport the diapers to your house–but keep in mind that there are fuel costs associated with driving packs of disposables from the factories to the stores as well.

We’re hoping some of our readers have used a diaper service so we can learn a bit more about them.   Please post a comment with your experiences!  How much did your service cost?  How convenient (or inconvenient) was this diapering method?  Would you recommend a diaper service to our readers?  Why or why not?  Thanks for your input!

When I first used cloth diapers with my tiny infant, I would switch to disposables every time we went to the grocery store or even on a walk down the street.  For some reason I couldn’t imagine handling a cloth diaper change in a public bathroom.

Then my yoga instructor told our class a story about using cloth diapers on a cross-continental flight with her young son and during her three-week family jaunt through Italy.  All of a sudden, going to the grocery store in cloth didn’t seem all that challenging. 

Since then, I’ve managed to do several cloth diaper changes on the grass at the park, in our car trunk, and on various living room floors. My most challenging cloth diaper adventure actually happened in a restroom when I was driving my six-month-old home from a trip to visit relatives.

Desperate for a spot to change him, I stopped at a fast food restaurant bathroom and once there—found that there was no diaper changing station.  So, I changed his cloth diapers in his car seat (and believe me, the contents were challenging!), and managed to get him back in clean, dry diapers without a hitch.  As I strode out of that A & W bathroom with my happy baby in my arms and the dirty diaper in my wet bag, I felt a new sense of cloth diaper confidence. 

Have you had any adventures with your baby in cloth?  Where did you go and how did you handle it?  Have you had any harrowing diaper changes that increased your confidence in cloth diapers on the go?  Do you hope that a dirty duds bag will help you make the switch from disposables to cloth?  Are you pregnant and wanting to find tools that will make cloth diapering easier for you?  Our winning entry will become a guest post on The Green Baby Guide and will win the author a brand new Bumkins Dirty Duds bag to further inspire cloth diaper confidence!  It’s a wet bag with an adorable print that easily stores dirty diapers when you’re out and about.  

To enter, just post a comment about your dirty diaper experience (or your hopes about having a heroic diaper change) by August 17^th.  We’ll notify you by email you if your comment is the winner and send you your own Dirty Duds bag.  Thanks for sharing your cloth diaper victories with us! 

We’re right in the middle of National Breastfeeding Week, and Bumkins is celebrating by giving away some cloth diapers!  We don’t usually advertise other people’s giveaways, but in this case, we’re making an exception.  It’s our chance to support two time-tested green ideas at once: breast feeding and cloth diapering.  Here are the details:

Bumkins is sponsoring a giveaway in honor of World Breast Feeding Week (August 1st-7th). In celebration of this wonderful cause, we will be giving away an All-in-One Cloth Diaper Bundle 3 pack, retail valued at $72.95, to one lucky winner. To enter all contestants have to do is sign up for an informative, educational cloth diapering newsletter.

Thanks to everyone who entered our giveaway for those delightful Bumkins pull-up pants.  The winners are Jillian and Frugal Babe.  Congratulations!

Recently we’ve had the opportunity to try some Bumkin’s products, including the pull-on nighttime training pants.  The great thing is that Bumkin’s products are all PVC-, phthalate-, BPA-, and vinyl-free. Before we ever received samples Joy used hand-me-down Bumkins bibs and loved them.  She later bought a Bumkin’s Dirty Duds bag and reviewed it here.  We’re pleased to report that they’ve fixed the issue with the bag’s drawstring closure.

Bumkin’s waterproof baby items come in several bright prints that kids will adore.  My daughter begged to wear the pull-on training pants to bed.  She’s potty training now but is never totally dry when she wakes up, so these worked well for her.  The only complaint I had is that they are just HUGE.  We had the medium size, which is the smallest size available for these pants.  They’re supposed to fit toddlers from 20-30 pounds.  Audrey weighs 23 pounds and was swimming in them.  Roscoe got a large and it’s gigantic for his 30-pound frame.   Bumkin’s website advertises “generous sizing,” but I think they went a little overboard.

Now for the giveaway! We have two pairs of these large pull-on pants to give away for some lucky parent.  According to the Bumkin’s website, the pants boast the following features:

• Made of Bumkins’ proprietary waterproof fabric
• Soft elastic at the waist and leg openings
• Perfect to cover fitted cloth diapers or over disposables as a swim diaper
• PVC, Phthalate & Vinyl Free.
• Made in the USA

We have a size large with pink and brown stripes (size large should fit a 30-40 pound child) and a size XL with blue and brown stripes (for a 35+ pound child).  Just post a comment below indicating which one you’d like before Tuesday and you’ll automatically be entered to win.

Joy and I both committed the same eco-sin as young mothers: we bleached our diapers.  Now, at the time we were ignorant of the evils of chlorine bleach.  They put it in pools and drinking water, so it can’t be so bad, right?  Well, it turns out to be an environmental toxin.  When you pour bleach down the drain, it mixes in with the rest of the waste water that then must be processed by your sewer system.  The cleaner we keep our water, the safer it is for everyone.

Not only is chlorine bleach bad for the environment, it’s extremely hard on diapers.  Joy found that hers quickly became frayed and worn.  When she switched to other cleaners with larger sized diapers, they lasted much longer.

Line-drying cloth diaper removes stains, naturally

We have since learned that there are better ways to deal with the stains on your cloth diapers: 

1. Stop worrying about stains.  You could simply try to live with stains.  I tried this but found myself incapable of it.  Keep reading!
2. Use Bac-Out, a natural stain-remover made by Ecover.  Joy diluted a bit of this in a spray bottle and treated dirty diapers before tossing them in her dry pail.  It greatly reduced stains and helped deodorize the diaper pail.
3. Set the diapers in the sun.  I didn’t have the opportunity to try this tip for a long time, as my baby was born in January and I had several months of constant rain.  One sunny day, I set my stained diapers out and the stains disappeared within hours.  It was actually amazing.  The stains did not just fade–they vanished!
4. If you none of the previous options work, you can purchase chlorine-free bleach from companies like Seventh Generation or Biokleen.

As an added bonus, these techniques will not only help the planet, they’ll keep your diapers lasting longer and be better for baby’s skin.

One of our readers wrote in to The Green Baby Guide asking us about flushable diapers.  Neither Joy nor I has ever used gDiapers, but we’re hoping our readers have.  Have you tried them out on your babies?  Why did you choose gDiapers over cloth diapers or regular disposables?  Did you love them?  Hate them?  Please post a comment and give us your honest opinions!

We started using cloth swim diapers last summer as we spent endless afternoons running through sprinklers or splashing in wading pools.  Now that Roscoe is extremely mobile, his cloth swim diaper is getting even more wear on a daily basis.

Even for families who feel overwhelmed by using cloth diapers full time, swim diapers are a great option. You just pull on the swim diaper, which is usually part of a little swimming suit, and plunk baby into the pool.  As long as they’re not soiled, you simply rinse them, wring them out, and hang them to dry when the swimming session ends.

Not only are cloth swim diapers easy to use, they are actually considered more sanitary than their disposable counterparts. Their sturdy elastic leg bands keep fecal matter more securely in the diaper than disposables.  My aquatic center requires that parents bring cloth swim diapers, buy them at the front desk, or go elsewhere. Rebecca has had similar experiences at swimming pools in different parts of the state.

If you aren’t motivated by the thought of diaper leakage, consider the mounds of soggy disposables that head to landfills on a regular basis.  Better yet, think of the economic advantages of a reusable swimsuit diaper.   A swim diaper suit at Target will run you less than ten dollars.  Instead of having to buy a swimsuit and then shell out over a dollar per disposable, you are all set for the entire season.  If you want to hunt for a used swim diaper, you’ll get an even better deal.

The one drawback that keeps some people out of cloth is the occasional poopy diaper.  With disposables you just chuck it in the trash and put a new one on.  What happens when an unexpected dirty diaper comes right in the middle of your wet afternoon and your baby is wearing cloth?  The simple solution for this is to have another cloth swim diaper as a backup.  I purchased both of our swim diapers for $3.99 on clearance at Target, making our total summer cost of swim diapers and two suits less than eight bucks total.  Not a bad deal! 

Of course, in our backyard, Roscoe wears his most favorite outfit of all––his birthday suit.  It doesn’t get much greener or thriftier than that!