I was going to write a post about woe-is-me, I hate being tired and pregnant, but then I started doing some research on diapers, and this is infinitely more fascinating.  Joe and I had the chance to see the movie “Babies,” starring…well, some babies (truth be told, it was kind of a boring movie even if the babies were cute).  In one scene, a naked Namibian baby poops on his mom’s knee, and she wipes it away with a corncob, and it dawned on me at that moment, “shit! I have to think about diapers.” I bet that Namibian baby won’t have diaper rash, but here in the U.S., we encase infant bums in multiple layers to catch that damn poop and hence, have to deal with the consequences of needing butt paste, changing tables and disposal systems for said human waste.

“You need a Diaper Genie,” someone told me, and I think I heard those words and wanted to die.  Mongolian babies don’t need Diaper Genies!  Apparently, this is a a foolproof disposal system that seals each dirty diaper in its own plastic bag so that it doesn’t stink up the whole house.  The tremendous amount of waste, human waste combined with plastic and paper waste, that disposable diapers generate is environmentally horrific.  So I looked into cloth diapers, but I can’t fathom washing all those diapers plus being a working resident and fellow.  And then I looked into local diaper services, but there aren’t many available nearby where we live.  One of my attendings swears by Gdiapers, which is a partially disposable/biodegradable system that you can flush down the toilet, which seems appealing, but I’m loathe to employ anything that requires a yuppie-hippy-dippy system.  Another friend says the most relatively economically efficient and somewhat environmentally friendly thing is just to get Seventh Generation diapers, but when you look into how these diapers still go into the landfill, I’m not sure if it has that much less of an environmental impact.

I think that despite the start-up costs, maybe Gdiapers strikes the best balance between efficiency (I don’t have to wash cloth diapers) and environmentally friendly (flushable inserts as opposed to plastic diapers that get chucked in the trash).  However, when Joe and I finally decided we’d like to try this, the company is telling us they are out of the newborn baby starter kit! Crap. Now that they are telling me I can’t have it, I want it!  Maybe I should move to Namibia or Mongolia where babies’ bums roam free?