Cloth diapers for the baby

Before the baby was born, we started thinking about cloth diapers. At AID, many volunteers had already tried them and posted their experiences at AID forums. There is also a wealth of information on-line.

The reasons for going for cloth diaper:

1. They save the landfill from the hazardous waste. We used some disposable diapers during the first 1 week and had to throw a bucketful of used diapers in the landfill each day. It was a pitiful sight.


2. Unlike what they seem, the disposable diapers are not made of cotton, but polyester and other petroleum extracts. Then they are filled with Sodium Polyacrylate, the magical super-absorbent chemical. Sodium Polyacrylate is rumored to be cancer causing. FDA as usual has stayed quiet.


3. Cloth diapers are cheaper even after including the cost of laundry costing about a 1/3 to 1/2 of disposable diapers. A baby uses on average about 5000 diapers.

Unfortunately, the age old cloth diaper is now available mostly on-line and not in the local stores. We narrowed down to two brands of pocket diapers: bumgenius and haute pockets. We got them at cottonbabies.com They are out-standing (absorbent, easy to wash, sturdy adjustable size and leak proof). For the wipes, my mother-in-law (Atha) stitched a bunch of four layered cloth wipes which were softer and more absorbent than the synthetic wipes. We haven't looked at disposable diapers or wipes since.

During the baby's first three weeks, we used small dual layered cloth diapers that Atha brought from India. They were not as easy as the fleece lined pocket diapers. They did not keep the baby's butt dry and had to be changed in less than an hour. The weather being cold at that time also made them uncomfortable for the baby. Although Atha was persistently changing the dual layered diapers every hour (sometimes 3 in an hour) and washing them, we decided to move to pocket diapers as soon as the baby's butt fit in them.

Vinegar and baking soda help in cleaning. Soiled diapers are washed in water and placed in diaper pail (a huge bucket). The diaper pail is filled with few tumblers of water mixed with baking soda. Baking soda removes odors and neutralizes the acid in urine. During the first rinse cycle, couple of table spoons of vinegar is added to neutralize the alkaline baking soda and also helps remove the stains and lint.

Adopting cloth diapers was made easy with a lot of support from my mother-in-law who makes sure that the right quantity of baking soda and vinegar is used. She also makes sure that diapers are washed, dried and ready for the baby every morning.

So, far this experiment seems successful, although it is too soon to judge.

Here is a very good article by Aravinda on cloth diapering.

Avoiding the elevator

For the past month and half, we have tried to avoid the elevator and take the stairs. Most elevators in high rise buildings have a counter weight and efficient electric design. So, a lot of energy is burnt as they go up compared to when they come down. The hydraulic elevators in most apartments are very inefficient power hogs. At the end of the day, a lot of energy could be saved and exercise gained by avoiding the elevator.

It was easy at home as it was only two flights of stairs from the apartment to garage. At work, it is a different story. Mayuri was able to manage well as her office is mostly on the 1st floor. My office is on 9th floor. For about 3 weeks, I avoided the elevator. That meant up and down 9 floors twice a day as I go home for lunch. It was great initially. I was feeling more energetic with all the work out I was getting.

After 3 weeks, my knees decided to give up. I think it was mostly the climbing down that hurt the knees. So, I started taking the elevator again at work. The plan is to take the stairs up and elevator down once the knees get back to normal in a couple of weeks. At the apartment, it is still the stairs.

After the knees returned back to normal, I started taking the stairs on the way up and elevator on the way down.

This experiment was mixed success.

Baby is almost two months now

Our baby started smiling, laughing, whining, cooing, responding to humans, eating more, sleeping almost 7 hours at night, playing in her gym and above all occasionally demanding us to carry her around. All this is normal development. But for first time parent, each development is new and exciting.

A few interesting things to report after observing our little one:

• It is very delightful to be a parent. It gets interesting after the 1st week when the baby has mostly adjusted to the outside world.


• Babies grow so fast. She put on over a pound every month.


• After the first few days, unable to bear seeing a bucketful of hazardous waste going to landfill each day, we switched to cloth diapers. More on that in another post.


• Mother's milk seems to provide lot of resistance in addition to the nourishment and satisfaction.


• Our baby loves being carried around in sling. She seems to fall sleep quickly in it. It maks it easy for us to carry her around when we go outside.


• Babies become all the more fun when they are about 5 weeks old. That is when they start responding, smiling and soon start cooing. Best of all, they are easy to handle(less delicate) after a month. Haven't started tossing her around yet.


• The Vivaldi "Four Seasons" music that we are using to soothe the baby has not caught up yet. She seems more calm when we make the humming sound. Vivaldi notes are probably not simple enough to soothe her compared to humming white noise.


• We are slacking on responding to phone calls and emails. I am occasionally slacking on AID tasks, sometimes causing frustrations to other volunteers.

Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh

I recently read the book on Ladakh "Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh" by Helena Norberg-Hodge. She illustrates the changes taking place in Ladakh over the past 30 years.

Some of the interesting observations from the book that I wanted to share:

Ladakh was once a completely self contained, sustainable and happy society in a harshest environment. But it is rapidly adopting an unsustainable model that is destroying their community and identity.

Industrial development, the western way:
"Most westerners have come to believe that ignorance, disease and constant drudgery were part of the pre-industrial societies and developing countries need to industrialize to get around them. The fact is, however that many, if not most of the problems of 3rd world are to a great extent the consequences of colonialism and misguided development.

We treat technological change as more natural than the changing weather, and seem locked in the belief that where ever scientific inventiveness goes, we must follow. But Ladakh has shown that this process exacerbates greed, competition and aggression while vastly increasing the potential for destruction. Development (western) causes artificial scarcity, which inevitably leads to greater competition, and puts pressure on people to conform to a standard western model that they simply cannot emulate. The resulting dissatisfaction and inferiority complex leads to more problems."

Buddhism as a way of life in Ladakh:
There is nothing that has independent existence. Everything is interdependent. We need to accept that and respect it.

As long as there is ignorance, there is a need for ritual. It is a ladder that may be discarded once we have attained a certain level of spiritual development.

Attitude to life and death seems to be based on an intuitive understanding of impermanence and a consequent lack of attachment. Rather than clinging to the idea of how things should be, they seem blessed with an ability to actively welcome things as they are. Even death is more readily accepted.

Future Sustainability:
Neglect of rural and agricultural economy has created destitution on a massive and unprecedented scale.

Economists and technological optimists assume that we will be able to invent our way out of any resource shortage, that science will somehow stretch the earth's bounty ad infinitum.

Human race would probably survive no matter what, but the question is how many will perish in the process and how many more will have to endure the suffering before perishing.

Quote: Why there is so much evil

Heard this interesting quote on NPR:
"We have so much trouble and suffering in this world, NOT because there are so many evil people, but because so many good people choose to ignore them instead of confronting them"

Nature as the Capitalist

I was reading about PointReturn, an experiment of D V Sridharan from GoodNewsIndia. There is an interesting observation about how capitalism has prevailed. Well worth sharing.

"In capitalism, there is an owner of capital -the capitalist- to whom the user of capital is in some way accountable. Either the capitalist gets a good return on his investment or he switches to another user of his capital. If there is willful default, he invokes powers in the system to punish the defaulter.

The capitalist arranges to provide our food, water, roads, heating or cooling, education, fitness and entertainment. We shall receive employment and wages with which we shall pay the capitalist for our needs. We shall be occupied, pre-occupied, entertained, retired, cared for and cremated.

When it comes to natural resources however, modern man has failed to develop an enforceable system."

We treat nature as an infinite resource. It isn't a surprise that per capita land for each person in India is only 1/3 acre. That makes nature all the more precious. The new idea being tried is: make the nature capitalist. Resources like water, energy and the means to grow food and materials. What we consume, we repay with interest, treating nature as the capitalist.

This idea is not new since several societies (Ladakhis in most recent times) have followed such a path till the modern civilization kicked them out of it. What makes it interesting is the modern context in which it is being implemented. It will be 2012 by the time D V Sridharan's experiment is done and that will show the world yet another way of sustainable living with almost no external inputs. Effective water harvesting, bio-fuel, food grains, solar power will lead to surplus of water, energy and food.

Timbaktu Collective is one such success story.

The Special Economic Zone or Death Zone

Several countries have tax free Special Economic Zone(SEZ) where goods are produced for direct export. India seems to have jumped on that idea and started implementing it without proper guidelines and regulations.

SEZs in India are flawed for several reasons. First, they involve forcible procurement of good agricultural land under the colonial Land Acquisition Act of 1894. The small landholders are discriminated. Second, it helps the rich businesses through undeserved tax breaks and other concessions at the expense of the public.

Third, they create fewer jobs than the people they displace. What about all the agricultural workers who have no land. Are they expected to end up in the city slums? Finally what about the neighbouring villages where land becomes unproductive due to water being sucked out by industries and the effluents being discharged into their environment?

There has been wide spread protest and lot of bloodshed due to police violence at the proposed SEZ sites, prominently Kalinganagar, Nandigram, Singur and Reliance SEZ in Raigad. Some of these SEZs don't even make sense: 960 acres in Singur to build a Tata car plant is ridiculous when Toyota is doing the same in 200 acres.

After so much bloodshed, the government decided to scrap the SEZs at Kalinganagar and Nandigram. What about the suffering that people displaced at other SEZs are enduring?

A clear policy is needed on the rehabilitation of displaced people before land is acquired. There should be proper review, which includes the affected people before approving a SEZ instead of a random shot at the idea.