I don’t expect everyone to use cloth diapers and make their own baby food at home. It’s not reasonable to expect. But they need to know that it is possible, and not as much of an inconvenience as they think. I AM a bit of a freak, but really the way I am diapering and feeding Oran is the only way I could imagine doing it. When it comes down to it, those disposables and the canned food give me the creeps. It’s become one of the few lines I won’t cross in becoming a parent—buying all of that crap they sell in the baby aisle for whatever price they please.

The way it happened for me was a natural evolution into natural parenting. Looking in from the outside, having kids always seemed inherently so wasteful. The plastic diapers, plastic toys, plastic everything. Just because I was bringing a little person into the world—I did not see this as my right to create more waste. A lot more waste, when you consider that you will change about 6,000 diapers all total before a baby is potty trained. I thought about this a lot as a pregnant woman, probably way too much! But then I had a breakthrough: it didn’t have to be that way.  I am so glad– finding the options available out there was such a relief. I could raise this little person and not ever touch one of those plastic things. Okay, never say never, but I was going to give these  funky cloth diapers a shot in my laundry. You can’t go wrong. Cloth diapers actually save you quite a deal of dough if you do it right and the moms who sell these are more than willing to show you the ropes.

By my generous calculations, 6,000 diapers equals about 60 packs of disposables (100 diapers per pack) in a child’s diaper days. Depending on what store you buy them from and the deal you get, each pack could cost from $20-$30. That equals a cost of at least $1,200 to $1,800 over 2-3 years.

Let’s look at cloth. Whether you choose prefolds and covers or all-in-one diapers, or a mix, the cost of 12-20 diapers averages from $240 to $500.

In this economy cloth diaper cash goes a long way! It goes even further in my mind—I have peace of mind because I am not throwing piles of poopy plastic into a gigundo trash can every week for the garbage man to pick up and take to the dump. This is one place where I feel one person CAN make a real difference.

Making Oran’s baby food from scratch was not really something I planned to do. But when I saw that other infants were starting on solids and the pediatrician asked whether we were… I got to thinking. With the food sensitivities I have to gluten, I have learned how packaged foods can be dangerous and I’ve learned how much better I feel whenever I eat fresh and skip boxed. How could I not want the very best nutrition for my little guy? It is where all health begins. I know for a fact that anything I make for him will be 10 times fresher and more alive than anything out of a jar. Plus it comes back down to waste. How many of those teeny tiny little jars does a mother go through? One friend gave me a storage lazy susan built exclusively for these tiny baby food jars. It probably held 40 or 50 of them. This got me thinking. Then I looked at the prices. Earth’s Best Organic Baby food: $0.75 per jar. Gerbers: $0.55 per jar.

But in the end it was my own relationship with food and how it had evolved over the past 5 years that convinced me to make his food, because I want to know exactly what he is taking in and its nutritional value. As I started blending and making little frozen food cubes, it was actually fun! The simplest of foods are really the most nutritious and I take pride in making sweet potatoes and oatmeal at just the right baby consistency.

Funny, you think certain things are conveniences, but they turn out to be a real pain in the end. Think of having to run out to the store and lug around big boxes of diapers, and zillions of tiny glass jars. Then, every time you run out you feel like you’re screwed. On the other hand, the more natural methods that seem like they would be such an incovenience actually turn out making parenting more fun. You feel so much better about your choices because you can take control of your baby’s care and do things that will enhance their health, give them a head start. Not the way Pampers or Gerbers would have your baby lined up in some kind of assembly line!

Lastly, I think these sort of choices will help to set the stage for other parenting choices as Oran grows.