Nine reasons why cloth diapers are inferior (and one why they're better)

Today I'm veering away from my usual topic to discuss something much on my mind and daily routine these days: Baby stuff. At the end of the month, my wife and I have decided to to stop the diaper service we'd been using since Joel was born Oct. 1. It's not necessarily a permanent move; we're going to try a month of all disposable diapers and see how we feel about it.

The change is at my urging. We both wanted to pursue cloth diapering, a decision we made early in the pregnancy. We met with an excellent diaper service here in Indianapolis and signed up for three months of service. (For those who don't know what a diaper service does -- I didn't before -- they collect the dirty cloth diapers and deliver clean ones, so you don't have to wash them yourself or even buy diapers. You essentially rent them.)

But after three months, my opinion has evolved. Some of the benefits of cloth diapers have turned out not to be such a great improvement over disposable as hyped. And many, many downsides we didn't consider have cropped up.

So I thought I'd enumerate the reasons why I think cloth diapers aren't all they're cracked up to be.

You will be changing diapers ... a lot -- You'll often hear in commercials for disposable diapers a buzzword about "whisking" away wetness. Well, this is not just claptrap. Modern disposables have been engineered like an astronaut suit. Despite being thin and light, they can absorb a lot of urine. And they can do so without the baby feeling wet.

Not cloth diapers. As soon as a baby goes, he'll know it .. and so will you. The cotton diaper absorbs the pee, but holds it against his skin. No "whisking" of anything. The irritation the baby feels, and thus changings, are much more frequent than with a disposable.

The difference is even more pronounced if your child does not fall into "average" categories. Joel is an exceptionally large baby -- approaching 11 pounds at birth, and 19 pounds at three months old -- and as a result he goes a lot more. In a disposable he can often go several hours between changes. Whereas with cloth, it is not unusual for me to do six changes in less than an hour. (This is not an exaggeration.)

It's obviously a hassle for the parents, but more importantly I don't think it's good for the baby's mental and physical well-being to be constantly crying because he's wet and uncomfortable.

Leakage -- No matter how you fold your diapers -- and there are reams of Web sites with different methods, which we've studied -- cloth diapers leak more. We're mostly talking about feces here. Since cloth diapers are held essentially flat against baby's bottom, #2 has a tendency to squirt out the sides or back of the diaper (and on a couple of memorable occasions, out the front top). This dirties the diaper cover and probably whatever clothes baby was wearing, too. Disposables leak solid material, too, but in our experience much less often.

Clothes don't fit -- Normal baby clothes are difficult or impossible to fit around cloth diapers, which are much poofier than disposables -- I sometimes jokingly call Joel "M.C. Hammer" whenever he's got some onesie or sleeper stretched around his large, protruding pelvis.

It may not sound like a big deal, but unless you want to shell out for specialty clothing or knit your own, expect your kid to either look silly much of the time, or just not fit into most stuff.

Car seats, strollers, high chairs, swings, etc. don't fit, either -- Most child-restraint devices either attach to a seat belt that comes up between baby's legs, or has a solid post that fits snugly against his groin. Those extra few inches of diaper cloth can make it quite an ordeal to get baby to fit into car seats, high chairs, strollers, swings, and so forth. And these are high-ticket items where there isn't an alternative available. Not to mention the child's safety could be compromised by not fitting properly in his restraint seat.

Travel is restricted -- Traveling with a baby is never easy, but at least with disposable diapers you can pop one on him and throw away the old one. Not cloth -- you have to take all those large, bulky diapers and covers with you. And you have to hang onto the dirty ones until you get where you're going. And then you have to find someplace to wash them. Sound like fun?

Daycare is usually a no-cloth zone -- You'll find that few daycare operations will mess around with cloth diapers. Good luck finding one that will agree to use the cloth diapers and covers you provide, and save the smelly dirty ones for you to take home. Ditto for babysitters, friends, etc. who might watch baby short-term now and again.

Mom, I can't move! -- Joel had never flipped over on his own until we were visiting my parents for Christmas and were using all disposable diapers for the trip (for reasons listed above). We put him on his stomach, and all of a sudden he pushed himself over onto his back, several times in a row! We were amazed and pleased, and tried to repeat the feat upon returning home. Guess what -- those big, puffy pantaloons make it impossible for him to do it. Flipping over (back to front and front to back) is a major developmental milestone, and I think the cloth diapers hinder this process. I would expect similar problems with sitting up, crawling, standing, etc.

Dirty diapers = yechh -- Whether you're washing them yourself or have a diaper service, those nasty, stinky dirty cloths add up quickly. We haven't attempted to wash our own, but I can only imagine the drudgery of having to rinse out the poo, transfer them in and out of the washer and dryer, and folding them up. With our heavy-wetting baby, we'd have to do a load of wash every day, I should think.

Diaper service makes things much, much easier -- clean diapers arrive, neatly stacked and folded, once a week like magic. And the cost isn't bad: We pay $80 a month for 100 diapers per week. But, they only come once a week. What to do with those multiple bags of dirty cloth diapers? We didn't want them in the house -- even in the basement, we figure the smell would seep out. And there are curious pets about. So you've got to find someplace where the elements won't get at them.

In our case, we ended up putting them out on the front porch. That's where the diaper service collects them anyway. And we figure it's better than the garage. But it probably hasn't done too much for our image with neighbors, mailman and delivery services (which come back pretty much daily because of my work).

Cost savings are not that huge (if they exist at all) -- This is just a cursory calculation of the cost of disposable vs. cloth diapers. Your results may vary. But I'll just say if you think you're going to be pocketing thousands of extra dollars during the course of infancy, you'll be disappointed.

As I said, the diaper service costs $80 a month. But you have to purchase the diaper covers yourself. And you'll need to buy more every time the child graduates to the next size. (Joel is already onto the third size, which goes up to 35 pounds.) We've already invested about $200 in covers -- which we get to keep, even after they're too small.

If you're a member of a wholesaler chain like Costco or Sam's, disposables can be bought in bulk pretty cheap. I did a price check, and 228 Huggies (size 3) at Costco is $50, or just under 22 cents apiece.

But you have to factor in that you'll be doing fewer changes with disposable than cloth. My estimate is we only do 60 percent as many changes. So our heavy-wetting boy who goes through 15-18 cloth diapers a day will need nine to 11 disposables. By my calculation, that means we'll spend somewhere between $60 and $72 a month on disposables.

So even without factoring in the cost of the covers, it's actually less expensive to go disposable. Even if I'm wrong and we use disposables at a 1:1 ratio as cloth, the savings is quite minimal.

If you're hardcore and decide to eschew a service to wash the diapers yourself, you've still got to buy them -- and again, you're obligated to buy a whole new batch every time baby goes up a size. And then you've got to figure in the water, detergent and electricity to wash them, not to mention all the extra time you'll spend.

The only way I can see cloth being a major savings over disposable is if you have multiple children in a row and re-use them.

Environmental impact -- This, as far as I can see, is the one area where cloth diapers are have an unmitigated advantage. The impact on our environment to landfill all those disposable diapers is huge, no denying. But even if you're using cloth exclusively and every other baby in the neighborhood has their butt swaddled in disposables, your individual effort will not make a significant impact on the collective result.

I'm not anti-cloth diaper. For the right family and the right baby, I think they can be a good option. We may go back to cloth ourselves in the future, at least partially. But I wanted to lay out some of our real-world experiences so others can know exactly what they're getting into.

P.S. I changed Joel's cloth diaper seven times while I wrote this blog post.

Reeling Backward: "My Favorite Wife" (1940)

I admit I did not much care for "My Favorite Wife," and it may not even be the movie's fault.

I read the description of the plot -- a woman is shipwrecked on an island for seven years and returns home to find her husband remarried -- and thought this 1940 screwball comedy starring Irene Dunne and Cary Grant would be more of a dramatic film along the lines of "Cast Away" with Tom Hanks. How neat to see the gender roles reversed, I thought, with the woman persevering to survive and the man having emotionally moved on.

Alas, it's more of a slamming-door farce than anything even remotely serious. Grant and Dunne are a likable pair, making cooing eyes and sniping at each other lovingly. But it's one of those movies whose entire plot rests on the conceit of people not being able to tell the unpleasant truth. One uncomfortable moment and the entire situation is resolved, but no, our protagonists must continue the charade on and on -- otherwise there wouldn't be a movie.

Nowadays we would call this the purview of a low-rent TV sitcom. Watching it play out 70 years earlier with top-flight stars doesn't make it any more palatable.

The film was actually based on a tragic poem by Lord Tennyson, "Enoch Arden," from which Grant's character takes his name. It's directed by Garson Kanin from a screenplay by Leo McCarey, which actually got an Oscar nomination, if you can believe it. "Wife" also got Academy nods for musical score and art direction.

The story opens with Nick Arden (Grant), who's an attorney, appearing in court to have his wife Ellen (Dunne) declared legally dead after being lost at sea seven years earlier. Moments after the cantankerous old judge (Granville Bates) rules her dead, Nick has him preside over his marriage to Bianca, an uncouth woman played by Gail Patrick, who actually bears a striking resemblance to Dunne.

The biggest hole in the story is why Nick wants to marry Bianca. She has no real affinity with his two children, Nick's mother doesn't care for her, and even he later admits he never really loved her. It's never made clear why he's in such a hurry to get hitched, and the movie suffers for it.

Hours after Nick is remarried, Ellen is dropped off at their home by a truck driver. Dressed in sailor's garb, we're expected to believe that she was picked up off the island by a Portuguese merchant ship, and somehow she made her way from the Pacific Rim to Los Angeles without ever thinking of writing a letter, sending a telegram or making a phone call.

Long story short, Ellen trails Nick and Bianca to their honeymoon and presents herself to Nick just in time to foil the consummation of his nuptials. They resolve to tell Bianca that his first wife is alive and well ... eventually.

As I say, events keep transpiring to prevent Nick from blurbling out those words. At one point Bianca even hires a psychologist to diagnose why Nick seems so uninterested in his new bride, and there's a goofy scene where the doc comes across Nick posing with some of Ellen's clothes. The subtext, of course, being that he's homosexual.

To add to the mix, it turns out Ellen was not alone on the island all those years, but had a fellow castaway, Stephen Burkett. Although they remained chaste, Nick is understandably suspicious -- especially when he tracks Burkett down and discovers him to be a tall, handsome athlete played by Randolph Scott. (After observing him do an acrobatic leap into a country club swimming pool, and woman asks Nick if the diver is Johnny Weismuller, best known for playing Tarzan.)

The rest of the movie is a blase mix of suspicion, one-upmanship between Nick and Burkett and pretend feuding between Nick and Ellen, with their eventual reconciliation never in doubt.

My biggest regret about seeing "My Favorite Wife" is that we never see Ellen (and Burkett) on the island. She just shows up rescued, and without even the benefit of a suntan. Maybe I'd have liked it more if the film wasn't so different from my expectations ... but I expect not. It's a mid-century comedy star vehicle, and not a very good one.

1.5 stars out of four

Review: "I Love You Phillip Morris"

"I Love You Phillip Morris" is Jim Carrey's Big Gay Comedy.

Or maybe it's a drama; sometimes it's hard to tell. The studio is pushing it hard for Oscar nominations, so somebody wants it to be taken seriously. But the most important thing you need to know about this movie is that it's gay -- really, really gay!

Carrey, as serial con man Steven Russell, tells us so in his honey-dipped narration, flashing that big Cheshire grin: "Did I forget to mention that I'm gay? Gay, gay, gay, gay, gay!"

The story of Steven Russell, a real guy who repeatedly broke out of prison under the most audacious circumstances, would have made a compelling movie -- especially since, according to the book by Steven McVicker, he did it all out of love for Phillip Morris, another inmate played by Ewan McGregor.

But Carrey and McGregor don't play their romance straight (pun intended.) It's a jokey, flirty pile of wink-wink to let the audience know these two heterosexual actors are pretending to be in love just to get a laugh. Other than a few smooches, even their sex is shunted off-screen or just out of frame.

Co-writers/directors John Requa and Glenn Ficarra treat the material as absurdist comedy. Steven is a former police officer with a Bible-thumping wife (Leslie Mann) who secretly sports around with other men. After a near-fatal car accident, he resolves to stop telling lies and live as his true self.

After moving to Miami and picking up some boy-toy arm candy (Rodrigo Santoro), Steven has an epiphany: Being gay is really, really expensive! To keep his boyfriend decked out in finery and fun times, he turns to insurance fraud and winds up in prison.

There he meets Phillip, a timid twink (Google it) who needs protection. Convincing him that they're soul mates, Steven arranges for them to share the same cell, and later even poses as Phillip's attorney to get him sprung early.

Steven's biggest con is getting hired as the CFO of a large company, where he proceeds to embezzle money to keep himself and Phillip in luxurious style. Curiously, Steven does not actually steal from the company's coffers, but discovers an ingenious way to earn interest on their holdings, adding to their bottom line -- and keeping half for himself.

The film's main entertainment value is in watching all the crazy schemes Steven comes up with to get out of jail. He impersonates a judge phoning the court clerk to get his bail lowered, and even uses felt markers to dye his prison uniform green so he resembles a doctor, and simply walks past the guards.

Steven's M.O. is to be openly contemptuous of those he's fooling -- and it's also the same for the filmmakers. To them, it's the corporate honchos and church-going wives and gullible corrections employees who are the suckers deserving of mockery, not the criminal who outwits them.

The exception, of course, being Phillip, who is Steven's one true love -- until, that is, a sudden flashback near the end that casts his affection for Phillip into doubt.

The moral is supposed to be that Steven Russell tells so many lies, he loses sight of the person inside. But really, the people "I Love You Phillip Morris" is most putting one over on is the audience.

2.5 stars out of four

Video review: "Dinner for Schmucks"

 Steve Carell gives an off-kilter, weird performance in "Dinner for Schmucks." As Barry, an IRS agent whose social skills appear to have stopped developing around third grade, Carell creates a character that we do not believe could really live and breathe in the real world. But it's such a pitifully funny creation, we go along with the gag.

Barry's hobby -- his only passion in life, really -- is stuffing dead mice and placing them in diorama poses, what he calls "mousterpieces." When he runs into Tim (Paul Rudd), he's soon made the patsy in a nasty game run by Tim's boss: Each man has to invite the most pathetic loser they can find to a dinner party. The guy who brings the most laughable guest wins.

A remake of a French comedy, "Dinner for Schmucks" doesn't contain joke-a-minute laughs. But when a scene hits high gear, it's as funny as anything I saw in 2010. Zach Galifianakis has a hilarious turn as Barry's boss, who's a dork himself but just enough less of a dork than Barry to convince him that he can control Barry's mind.

Lucy Punch also has a great walk-on scene as a sexual stalker who tries to put the moves on Barry, but he's too much of a moron to realize he's being seduced.
"Dinner for Schmucks" contains a full course of mirth.

Video features are a bit light, but worth a look.

On the DVD version, there are deleted scenes, a gag reel -- dubbed "Schmuck Ups" -- and a feature on the Biggest Schmucks in the World.

In addition, the Blu-ray edition contains a featurette on "The Man Behind the Mousterpieces," another called "Meet the Winners" and a spoof of LeBron James' "The Decision" press conference starring Carell and Rudd.

Movie: 3 stars out of four
Extras: 2.5 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "Hiroshima mon amour" (1959)

"Hiroshima mon amour" helped kick off the French New Wave in 1959. It's interesting that filmmaker Alain Resnais has often been identified as part of that movement, when he'd already been making movies for more than a decade before that while Truffaut, Goddard and the gang were off pretending to be film critics.

(I say "pretend" because they've more or less acknowledged that they were just trying to get attention to launch their own filmmaking careers.)

It's the story -- perhaps "story" is not the right word, Resnais often being less concerned with coherent narrative than evocative imagery and ideas -- of two people: A Frenchwoman named Elle (though we never hear her name) played by Emmanuelle Riva and a Japanese architect named Liu (Eiji Okada). As the film opens they have just had a one-night stand ... or so she thinks. He feels a powerful pull toward her, which she at first disavows but eventually comes to acknowledge.

Alas, she's an actress shooting an anti-war movie in Hiroshima, and the next day she is scheduled to fly back to Paris. They spend the next 36 hours or so in a running conversion about love, death, the bombing of that city, and forgetfulness.

I can't say as I really enjoyed myself watching "Hiroshima mon amour" -- as with Resnais' more recent work, I find his style deliberately off-putting; the thought of entertaining an audience seems repugnant to him -- but I respect the film for its audacious storytelling. Marguerite Duras earned an Oscar nomination for her screenplay.

One of the things Resnais does that is truly groundbreaking is the many mini-flashbacks he inserts into a scene, so you can visualize what a character is talking or thinking about. Like when Elle discusses her period of madness while a young girl living in Nevers, the view slips from the streets of Hiroshima where she's walking to the stony maze of that French town. It sounds so simple, and has since come to become a staple of the language of cinema. But in 1959, it was truly revolutionary.

The sexuality depicted, while not overt, is still notable. The opening shot is of a man and woman's naked limbs intertwined, and there are numerous shots of Riva and Okada canoodling in bed, cavorting in the shower, etc. While the camera is carefully framed to avoid showing anything that would've gotten the film banned, it's quite brazen by Hollywood standards of the time.

Roughly speaking, the first half of the film is about the horror of the Hiroshima bombing, and the second half is about Elle's estrangement from her hometown community after falling in love with a German soldier during the war. In both cases, the other person expresses sympathy and understanding of the tragedy, while the one relating the tale rebutts and rebukes them, saying they couldn't possibly relate.

"You are not endowed with memory," Liu tells her when Elle expresses grief over the bombing.

The first sequence is gripping in its depictions of the damage done to Hiroshima, the city and the people. Employing newsreel footage, Resnais lays bare the terrible burns, deformities and destruction wrought upon Hiroshima in a way that must have been new and shocking to American audiences at the time. Interestingly, the film never mentions that it was the United States that dropped the bomb, or that similar destruction befell Nagasaki. I wonder if this film contributed to the fact that whenever the use of atomic/nuclear weapons is brought up, it is invariably Hiroshima that is evoked and not Nagasaki.

For me the key moment of the film is when Liu asks Elle what she thought when she first heard of the bombing of Hiroshima. He was off fighting in the war, while his entire family perished. He's astonished to realize that most of the world celebrated the destruction of Hiroshima, since it marked the end of the war.

In her, far less compelling section, Elle talks about the loss of her German lover and how the entire town ostracized her. Her hair was shorn off and her own parents locked her in the basement, where she went mad. Her primary regret is not the pain or the abandonment by her family, but the slow, gradual yet inexorable loss of the memory of her first love. In her narration, Elle tells Liu she knows she is destined to repeat this loss with him.

Impressive but not engaging, "Hiroshima mon amour" is a memorable film about forgetting.

3 stars out of four

Video review: "The American"

"The American" falls uneasily into the thriller category, but its real thrills happen in between the gunfire.

George Clooney plays Jack -- that's his name, at least some of the time -- a veteran assassin for hire. His last job went bad, some unknown forces are after him, and he's hiding out in a remote Italian village while he waits for more work.

Jack is exacting, meticulous and careful. He does not relish his work but takes pride in doing it well. He has learned through harsh lessons that personal connections are not worth the risk.

But he's getting older, his handler needles him that he's lost his edge, and two denizens of the village end up holding a strong pull for him: The friendship of a kindly priest, and the affections of the local prostitute.

Clooney gives one of his best performances, but it's a severely understated one that shows up mostly in his eyes and a tightening of his jaw. Audiences who have reliably turned out to see the actor in most everything he does largely stayed away this time.

It's their loss: "The American" is a spare, tightly-wound film whose attributes are not immediately obvious. This is less the story of a man who kills for a living, than what that life has extracted from his soul.

Video features are modest in scope, but what there is, is decent.

There are several deleted scenes totaling five minutes. They mostly serve to ratchet up Jack's paranoia.

An 11-minute making-of documentary is fairly standard stuff, though the part about shooting in Italy is enlightening. Everything is much more "informal," one producer says -- which apparently is code for long coffee breaks.

A feature-length commentary track by director Anton Corbijn, a veteran photographer who turned to film late in life, is a bit on the dry side. Could've been much more interesting if they had paired Clooney with him.

Extras are the same for Blu-ray and DVD editions.

Movie: 3.5 stars out of four
Extras: 2.5 stars

Reeling Backward: "Woman of the Year" (1942)

The first of nine screen pairings of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy was the least of them -- of those I've seen, anyway. "Woman of the Year" is a farcical comedy more than a romance. It's notable that it's most remembered for an extended skit at the very end of the movie where Hepburn's egghead character makes a total mess trying to make breakfast, with toast shooting across the room and waffle batter blurping out of the griddle.

The lovey stuff is pretty forgettable.

Interestingly, the Spencer/Hepburn romances stick in the mind as middle-aged or even Golden Years couples -- most notably with 1949's "Adam's Rib" and "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" in 1967. Even in 1942 they were no longer whippersnappers: He was 42 and she 35. The enduring aspect of their nine films together was the depiction of mature love rather than the hotter, more single-minded flame of youthful passion.

She plays Tess Harding, a globe-trotting journalist who specializes in international relations -- think Thomas Friedman meets David Ignatius. He is Sam Craig, star sports columnist. They both write for the same newspaper, the New York Chronicle, but they've never met. When he overhears her on the radio dismissing baseball as a waste of time, he writes a screed denouncing her for being out of touch with the common man. She returns fire with a dismissive column of her own. Eventually the publisher invites them up to the penthouse to get them to kiss and make nice.

This they do with such ardor that they're soon an item. It's in the mold of cinematic romances of that time, in which they're in love by the second date and he's proposing marriage by the fourth. But trouble looms when she's only willing to give a tiny slice of her life to the marriage, and he grows resentful.

Directed by the great George Stevens ("Shane," "Giant") from a screenplay by Ring Lardner Jr. and Michael Kanin -- which won the Oscar that year --"Woman of the Year" is only really interesting as an examination of early, half-hearted feminism. Tess is so consumed by her work that she's never even really thought of marriage and children. Her role model is her aunt Ellen (Fay Bainter), who's won every sort of civic award under the sun, but isn't truly happy because she's never been married. Aunt Ellen has her eye on Fay's own father (Minor Watson), who's been making unrequited moony eyes at her for 15 years since Tess' mother died.

The basic gist of all this interplay is that a woman can be brilliant, accomplished, acclaimed and successful, but she's not truly a woman unless she gives herself to a man.

There's a disturbing sequence toward the middle-end where Tess suddenly adopts a Greek refugee boy named Chris -- a lot of Chrises in Greece, are there? Maybe it's short for Christos -- who does not even speak English. Sam rejects the notion of adopting a child quite sternly, and eventually sneaks him out of the house and gives him back to the refugee home when Tess is away getting her Woman of the Year award. Then Sam packs his stuff and leaves.

The interesting thing here is that Sam is behaving in the classic female mode of this kind of movie -- rather than explaining to his spouse what is wrong, he simply acts more and more annoyed and hurt, expecting her to guess what is wrong with their relationship.

The sexual byplay between the stars is fairly overt, despite the era. I liked some of Hepburn's more kittenish mannerisms, such as purring "Huh-wo, daddy" at Sam when he comes home from work. Before they get married there's a bit where she brings him up to her apartment for a nightcap, and it's made pretty clear that she's enticing him, an overture he refuses because he respects her so darn much.

There's also another long comedy sequence built around a gaggle of interlopers intruding on their wedding night, until everyone finally gets the idea that they desperately want to have sex and depart.

Also worthy of note is Tess' secretary, Gerald (Dan Tobin), who acts as her gatekeeper and manservant. He's clearly supposed to be homosexual, which movies of the time broadcast through sartorial choices -- Gerald is never without a sweater-vest -- and a sing-songy speaking style. Gerald is repeatedly dismissive of Sam while he's courting Tess, and continues the unctuous manner after they're married.

The last line in the movie is after having reconciled, Gerald shows up with a bottle of champagne that Tess is supposed to use to launch a boat. Sam beckons Gerald out back, we hear a crash, and Sam returns with the broken bottle: "I just launched Gerald."

Another in a line of disappointing classics for me, "Woman of the Year" is more a captive of its time than a truly watershed film.

2.5 stars out of four