Living in the Gray: It's Hard to Have a Green Baby

See this cute baby? She's wearing disposable diapers. The cloth, washable nursing pads I bought to wear under my clothes are stacked neatly in a drawer somewhere, and I keep rushing back to Target to buy more of the single-use variety. We're finally going to try to use the pretty glass bottles I bought for her now that I'm back to work for real, but we've been using the plastic ones the NICU nurses gifted us for these first 3 months. A couple of her adorable outfits are made from organic cotton! Maybe 3 out of 100. And the organic cotton washable baby wipes I bought haven't been used yet either.

I guess you could say I had good intentions. I still have hope. When her diapers are less.... dramatic... we will use those washable wipes. When her little legs chunk up a bit more and she gains a few more pounds, we'll give cloth diapers another try. We rented the newborn size and she made so many messes, I figured we were breaking even on the Greeny Greatness by using a lot more water to do a lot more laundry. When my milk production gets a handle on itself, I'll brave the cotton nursing pads again. But not until I'm fairly confident I won't walk around looking like I've been hit by two well-aimed water balloons.

Her lotions and diaper creams and shampoos are all "natural" and fragrance/dye/petroleum/sulfate free. They weren't tested on animals. You could probably eat most of them. And a large percentage of our Baby Gear has been lent to us by amazing friends and family (especially Karlee - you ROCK!), so we didn't need to buy new, and will return items to the owners when Pia outgrows them. We've already handed down some of her newborn outfits to the next little baby.

I feel a sharp pang each time we haul a heavy, diaper-filled garbage bag out to the dumpster or tear open a new package of baby wipes. I've been wringing my hands about freezing and reheating breast milk in plastic of any kind. And I've wondered aloud whether all that non-organic cotton could really have any long term deleterious effects on our little MunchMunch (she chomps on her hands when she's hungry).

Somehow this new world of Mommahood has made me simultaneously MORE concerned about Creation Care and detoxification and motivated to keep everything green and simple and pure, and also LESS concerned. Or maybe I'm More Concerned but also So Tired I Don't Have Any Energy to Spare on Greenification. That could be. Maybe once Sweet P is sleeping for more than 3 hours at a stretch at night, I'll wake up one morning and purge all the disposables from our home and get to work on a big batch of homemade Butt Paste.

That may happen.

I did manage to whip up 2 gallons of Iced Coffee Concentrate this weekend:

Glass Jug, naturally. 

So there's hope. I can get around to fulfilling my Green Goals when I am motivated by crucial life-sustaining necessities. Like coffee.