you mean THAT is in my baby's diaper??

I am currently an advisor for my church and work with the Young Women, girls ages 12-18.  Last night for a combined Young Women/Young Men activity we had a Materials, Science, and Engineering scientist (he is a member of our ward) who just graduated with his masters from the University of Utah come and show us some cool demonstrations and experiments.  One of the things that I thought was very interesting was when he put just a spoonful of sodium polyacrylate (a fine powder) into a container and asked how many spoonfuls of water we thought it would take to dissolve the powder.  Many guesses were thrown out there from as little as 4 spoonfuls to 20.  He began putting spoonful after spoonful of water into the powder and finally poured the container clear full of liquid.  Check out the video below to see what happened.

The powder never dissolved, only kept expanding!  Then the scientist asked, "What do you think this material would be used for?"  Someone shouted out in question, "Diapers?" and he said, "YES!"  Then my sister-in-law followed up that answer with, "Not if you use cloth diapers!" That made me wanna shout out an "Amen, sister!"  That made me feel good knowing that I don't even have to deal with that stuff.  I remember a few times while using disposables with my first child of those gel, urine-soaked crystals coming out of the diaper and being on his skin.  Yuck.  It made me wonder just how much a disposable diaper could hold until the paper outer of a disposable diaper would just begin to rip.  Apparently, sodium polyacrylate can absorb up to 200-300 times its weight in liquid!  The sad thing is that some babies are left in those diapers until they are just about to rip due to the expense of disposable diapers.  That cannot be healthy.

Cloth diapers have many, many benefits.  While I began using them solely for financial reasons, I have continually come across more and more benefits to using cloth over disposables.  Another demonstration I have come across lately that I found interesting was comparing the breathability of PUL in cloth diapers (the waterproof layer) to that of disposable diapers.  This was demonstrated by the maker of Oeko Popo diapers:

And the winner is?

Just a few tidbits of information that I found interesting and thought I would pass along :)

Happy Cloth Diapering!

-Brit