I kind of can't handle inequity, no matter how trivial the issue might seem.

Jack's diaper rash returned on Tuesday. We decided to put him back in disposables for the week, so that we could use some diaper creme on him. (You can use diaper creme with cloth diapers, but only if you line them with something that gets washed separately or eventually tossed, and that was too complicated for us to ask our daycare to do.) Cloth diapers themselves don't add too much to our day (just some laundry), but they do complicate our drop offs and pick ups. The complication became all the more apparent this week, when we were using disposables. Let me explain...

Our daycare was totally on board with our wish to do cloth diapers and glass bottles.We supplied our daycare with a diaper pail. We also bought a wet bag to go in the pail (the wet bag is totally waterproof). On a personal level, they've been great about the cloth diapers, however, on the first day we left Jack at the JCC, they informed us that there were some tricky CT State Regulations we needed to comply with:

"(9) Disposable diapers shall be discarded in a covered receptacle immediately after

diapering.

(10) When cloth diapers or training pants are used, a plan for their use and care shall be submitted to and approved by the department prior to implementation of the plan. This plan shall include, but not necessarily be limited to, these procedures: placing soiled clothing and diapers in a sealed air tight container, removing soiled clothing and diapers from the child day care center or group day care home daily, and cleaning and sanitizing the container daily"

This means that the disposable diaper container is left in place every day, and the liner is removed and thrown away, yet the cloth diaper container must be cleaned and sanitized every day. The daycare center isn't about to do this for us, and thus the only solution was for us to take responsibility for it.

Ie, not only do we take the bag of diapers with us every day... we have to take the damn pail, too. (Which we obviously don't clean and sanitize every day, because, come on people, the diapers are in a waterproof bag.)

I just fail to see why a disposable diaper pail needs no sanitation while a cloth diaper pail needs sanitation. I mean, the disposable diapers are dirty, too!

It's a huge pain. Dealing with the plastic diaper pail creates an entire extra round trip to the car for every drop off and pick up. That's like +3 minutes, twice per day, about 250 days a year... 25 hours of our lives. A day. An entire day, wasted, taking the diaper pail out of the car and putting it back into the car (because if you think that pail ever goes anywhere except the back of our Jetta wagon, think again). Using disposables this past week really made clear how much time we've been wasting with the stupid diaper pail, and, as you know, I don't like wasting time.

Now, the whole part about submitting a written plan for how they will put on and take off the cloth diapers? That's just funny. Before there were "cloth diapers", there were simply "diapers". Diapers were all cloth. This does not need to be so complicated. They're cloth. They get poopy. You put them in the bin and the parents take the bin home. Repeat.

I can just see the protest sign now: "Equal bins for equal poo!"