Greening my baby

Ruby does not have any choice but she also does not care as long as she gets food, sleep and a clean diaper on a regular basis. Babies are so simple, but they can be a huge garbage producer. Diapers, change mats, nursing pads, wet wipes, formula and baby food packaged in small portions to stay fresh are just the beginning of a disposable life. Ruby wears mostly second hand clothing, her crib, sled, change table, most toys, bathtub, high chair, bed sheets are all second hand, too. Her room's decoration I made myself from recycling.A towel covers the change table, wash cloths clean her bottom and I use cotton wipes as nursing pads. Ruby eats organic produce, grains and oats, organic yoghurt. Sometimes cooking baby food seems a lot of work but it's worth it and since we've got a manual food processor even Dave helps because he likes to crank the handle around chopping up carrots & Co.            
Here's something I really love in Canada that we don't have in Germany: I-have-it-outgrown-sales, garage sales, second hand store like Goodwill, Salvation Army and Value Village, as well as Once-upon-a-child and several independent consignment stores. The way to go, treasure hunting at its best. We still ended up buying new car seats and a stroller. 
The worst about her simple, easy to wash and dry cloth diapers are the plastic pants that cover them up. For the next baby I'll get nice fabric diaper covers. Ruby wears disposable diapers only when we go out for more than two hours. I dread carrying the dirty cloth diapers around. Actually, lots of public change rooms do not have a toilet so it's difficult to dispose of certain diaper contents. Browsing www.grassrootsstore.com which has tons of eco-friendly products I found a wet diaper bag that is "designed and constructed to be durable and absolutely leak resistant". Hey, I was given one of those before Ruby was born but did not quite know what to do with it. I guess it's time to dig it out. 
I found something else on that website that I once thought about. What did women do before disposable menstrual pads were invented? They most likely used cloth. It's the same as with babies but nobody talks about it! But imagine my husband's face which I think represents a lot of people in their thinking: Yuck baby poop; yuck, blood -while I'm more like 'it's just baby poop, it's just blood'. Those are natural products after all. I think we've lost the connection to our very own bodies. Using disposable, non-recyclable products to catch and contain these biodegradable substances is contra-productive because they likely prevent the substances from decomposing while our landfills fill up quickly. That's yuck!