As a new parent, you will change a lot of diapers. I’ve seen estimates as high as two to three thousand in your baby’s first year alone! Given the sheer volume, diapering is an area where you can have a lot of impact with your choices. The first decision most parents make is whether to use disposable or cloth diapers, unless you’re trying something like elimination communication. I don’t think diaperering has to be a binary choice. With both my kids we used disposable diapers during the first bleary-eyed month, until we got our new parent feet under us. Then we chose to primarily use a local cloth diaper service. Baby Diaper Service provided us with cloth diapers and a diaper pail, then picked up the dirty diapers and left a bag of clean diapers each week. Kanga Care Rumparooz aplix diaper covers worked well for us. We did use disposable diapers overnight, and on long car trips or when traveling. 7th Generation Sensitive Protection disposable diapers were my favorite. (They are the first diaper to be USDA Certified Biobased 30%, which means that 30% of the materials used are from renewable plant sources. It’s still a non-biodegradable disposable diaper, unfortunately). Taking a hybrid approach to diapering was pragmatic and still has allowed us to limit the amount of landfill waste our little ones are generating.

When I was pregnant with our first, my mom shared this recipe for homemade baby wipes. We modified it slightly – it worked better for us with only 1 tablespoon of liquid baby bath soap (we use Honest unscented baby shampoo and body wash) and 2 tablespoons of olive oil. The wipes  are very fast to make, gentle on baby’s skin, save you a lot of money, and are biodegradable – unlike commercial wipes. They have been fantastic and I share the recipe with everyone I know who is bringing a baby home.

There are recipes out there for homemade diaper rash cream. I haven’t tried to DIY this and instead just use Weleda Calendula diaper cream. It’s gentle, effective and usually comes in a metal tube so helps limit our single-use plastic consumption.