I hadn’t forgotten you!

Sorry people! Life seems to have got in the way of blogging about nappies recently. So much so that I couldn’t even remember where I’d posted my blog, or under what name. But, by trial and error, I’ve found it again.

Happy new year, for starters. It’s been a busy one here, because my new gym (www.LFW1.co.uk) is now off the ground. We’re even opening a new beauty treatment room at the beginning of March.

I’d like to say a bit thank you to Molly Dilnot for her fantastic publicity about nappies at http://dulwichonview.org.uk/2009/02/06/cloth-nappies/. It was a great article. Lets hope lots of London parents take up the opportunity to try cloth nappies for free by using the RNFL subsidies available. £40 is not to be sniffed at in this day and age.

From a business point of view, The Nappy Lady is also now stocking the Tots Bots multipacks, now that we are much happier with the performance of their recently improved wraps. Do look on www.thenappylady.co.uk for more details.

Anyway, that’s all for now, folks. I’ll try to get back here a bit more often.

Morag

www.thenappylady.co.uk

For the booklovers amongst us

Yes, I count myself as a huge fan of books, of all shapes, sizes and themes. And my older son (9) is as well. As yet, the younger one, now 8, prefers to stick to Captain Underpants and the Beano, but we’ll grow that love of reading in him somehow….

Anyway, as part of my campaign to encourage people to think of the festive season as something other than the obligatory dismal trudge through town looking for gifts that people don’t want (but you can afford) or gifts that people do want but which you can’t afford, I thought I’d mention the second hand book trade.

No, I don’t mean dusty little shops staffed by dubious men wearing pince-nez glasses and probably living with their 85 year old mothers. I mean modern second hand book buying and selling.

Guess where you’ll find it? Yep, quite right, here on the internet. Of course, there are sites for all the main book sellers like Waterstones etc. But my personal favourite is www.greenmetropolis.com. On Greenmetropolis, you sell your books for £3 including postage and you buy your books for £3.75 including postage. There’s the possibility to add more postage if the book is larger than a standard sized paperback.

But if you read and sell on your books, each one costs only 75p, in effect. What a fabulously economical way to help booklovers without felling more trees!

Personally, I find this site great for finding little gems that I would never think of buying new and that would never been on Offer of the Week at the local bookstore. I bought a fascinating read called The Riddle of the Titanic (eventually fascinating – got to admit, the first 30 pages nearly killed me with boredom), replaced my lost copy of Making Love, tried out a David Sedaris book etc etc. 

And you can also make out a wish list for a book you might be interested in, which is not in stock at the moment. So I have flagged Mary Roach’s book Bonk for when it becomes available – they will e-mail me when it comes in. I’ve already forgotten why I thought this sounded like a book I wanted to read, so there is no way I would ever find it, if I had not added it to my wish list.

Most recently, they have added a forum facility, and I believe you can even buy GreenMetropolis gift vouchers.

Anyway, that’s my tip for today on getting hold of interesting books at sensible prices, and moving your own books on when you no longer want them.

www.thenappylady.co.uk

Even a three year old can do it!

Parents often tell me they think they can’t manage the complexities of folding terry squares.

I’d point out two things -

Firstly, even your mother could do it, despite probably having much less education than you.

Secondly, as you’ll see from this link, even a three year old can do it  (although I’m sure we all wished we had babies as compliant as Eddie’s dolly!).

www.thenappylady.co.uk

Food waste and global warming

I was talking with my friend today, who is the Waste Reduction Officer in Kent, and I learned some surprising facts.

Now, I know that “manmade global warming” is not necessarily accepted as fact around the world. Some people believe it is happening, but is caused by cyclical factors outside man’s influence. Others don’t even believe it is happening, but believe the figures to be massaged to support a scare industry.

I work on the basis that it is happening, but whether it is all due to man’s influence is debatable. It could just be coincidence that it appears to have accelerated during the most scientifically progressive age of mankind, the 20th century onwards. Essentially, if it is happening, mankind needs to look at how we can reduce the impact of global warming.

And here are a few things I have learned in recent weeks. Firstly, in the Kent area at least, stopping wasted food going to landfill slows global warming to the same extent as taking off 1 car in 5 off the roads. One in five! And so much food thrown away has never even come out of its packaging; it was simply not got to before it went off (I’m as guilty of this as anyone) – we’re not talking about the scraps left on a plate after eating, but a huge proportion of totally unused food.

Secondly, another major contributor to global warming is farts from cows. It’s second only to the wasted food. If we all became vegetarian and less dependent on cows for milk (and, to be honest, that would be the necessary corollary, as we have to eat a lot of beef to keep cow numbers under control, given that they have to have a calf each year in order to keep the milk supply going), we’d cut global warming quite significantly. Of course, we would also destroy the beef and dairy industries, which just goes to show how one “good” action has ramifications all over the place.

Thirdly, degradable plastic bags are not a good thing, on balance, because of the carbon dioxide (I believe) they create. Using them reduces landfill, arguably, but increases global warming. Which of these is worse, bearing in mind that plastic bags take up a tiny proportion of landfill in volume terms?

I mean, we could take the view that the landfill won’t matter, anyway, when we are all swimming in sewage because of higher sea levels, caused by global warming.

Tricky issues, all of them. If only it were easier to make both ethical and environmentally sound decisions.

www.thenappylady.co.uk

Why there’s no money in cloth nappies

I’ve pondered long and hard on whether to post on this subject. As a nappy retailer, it seems churlish to complain about work at home mums (WAHMs) who start internet shops selling cloth nappies in competition with us.

Seriously, I am pleased that the internet makes it possible to bring a specialist niche product like this to the mainstream. However, by the same token, it also prevents the market from growing properly, so that nappies stay a niche product until such time as they are taken up by the big retailers (who will then put us all out of business!).

The typical WAHM is a mum who used cloth nappies for her own child and believes in them as a Cause. She wants to bring them to the public at the best price possible, and is not motivated primarily by profit. Sometimes, I think such WAHMs believe us larger retailers to be sitting on our yachts in the Bahamas from our nappy profits (oh, I wish!). Anyway, such a mum transforms herself into a WAHM by setting up a website for a few pounds. It doesn’t matter to her whether she sells 10 nappies a week or 100, and whether she makes £10 profit or £100 profit. She’s doing it for the benefit of others, not for the money.

But in doing so, she undercuts all the larger nappy retailers, who – unlike her – have fixed costs like rent, staff salaries, commission to agents etc to pay. Yes, we get a larger margin on our goods than she does, because our volume is much higher. But the difference is not as much as you might imagine. A friend of mine with a background in retail on the high street is shocked by how small our typical margins are.

Our typical shopper is financially promiscuous by nature, because that is what the internet comparison sites have taught her. She will decide what she wants to buy. She will then load her basket at a number of different online retailers, to compare the different offers available, and will then proceed to order from the one which comes out the cheapest.

If this business were all about widgets, I’d have no problem with that. After all, the greatest efficiencies are rewarded, leading to business growth. 

But this is not about widgets. It is about a specialist market which relies heavily on giving good advice. That’s what www.thenappylady.co.uk does best, after all. I can’t tell you how heartbreaking it is for our advisors to put so much effort into giving advice, only for their advisee to save about £5 on a £250 purchase by going elsewhere. Her advisor receives no money if the advisee does not buy from us, because she earns her income based on commission.

So, our prices are constantly undercut, people buy elsewhere, and eventually we will be unable to provide the free advice service – we can only do that if we sell a certain volume of products. And this does not affect just The Nappy Lady, but every other cloth nappy seller in the market. 

Eventually, this forces the market back into tiny WAHM niches once more, as we all decide that in fact it is not possible to carry on making no money at all. At this moment in time, The Nappy Lady basically exists for philanthropic reasons, and every friend who is not a cloth nappy user is bemused as to why I still do it.

Well, of course, that’s because I too believe in it as a Cause, just like the WAHMs in competition with us. But at some point – and this may come sooner rather than later, given the current economic climate – I will have to say “enough.”

And the trouble is, the small WAHMs price so aggressively that they bring down the market price and so are unable to grow their micro business into a larger business like TNL, to take our place. So if we larger players go out of the market, that leaves a gap. And all those WAHMs who make lovely, individual nappies will also find they lose their market, as it is the mid range retailers that promote them. Back to a limited range of niche products.

At the other end of the scale, we have the players like Amazon putting pressure on as well, now that they are beginning to stock cloth nappies (yes, you’re just about to go and see what bargains you can pick up, now you know that, aren’t you?!). 

That’s all well and good, bringing cloth to the mainstream. Excellent. But we have been here before, with prefolds dominating the market – because it is all down to how good your marketing to the Big Boys is.

The net result is that only one or two brands make it into the mainstream, and one thing neither Amazon nor Mothercare are interested in is advice. They will happily beat the pants off us on price and on turnaround, but they won’t bother with the service we offer. When I first got into washable nappies, prefolds and Kushies dominated the market, and the waste of money for people who bought them and then had a horrendous time  with them, so reverting to disposables, was huge.

That’s not a situation I want to see happen again.

But it will, as fickle consumers will continue to use us (and other nappy retailers) for their advice, and then buy elsewhere to save a few pounds.

Eventually, the availability of unbiased and knowledgeable advice will simply dry up, as mothers move on from nappies and back into the world of paid work. Who can blame them, if they constantly do the work but don’t get paid for it? (Some mums seem to believe we are some sort of Nappy Offtel and even tell us proudly how they have saved a couple of quid by buying elsewhere – well thanks for that, ladies!).

I’m sorry if this all sounds like one big whinge. My point is that – as all of the midsize and larger retailers know – this is a very fragile market that could easily collapse under the pressure from both small and large sellers. Ultimately, the people who will suffer will be the parents who want the advice. All to save a few pounds.

And people like Money Saving Expert don’t help, trying to encourage people to write in for a sample of paper liners. Whilst I like a bargain as much as the next person, this kind of freebie-loading is having a terribly detrimental effect on our behaviour as consumers. I mean, seriously, what is the point in contacting us just so you can get 10 free individual liners? The point of the sample is to help you choose between different  liners, not simply to get you something for nothing.

Anyway, that’s why there will never be any money in cloth nappies, and I’m sorry to give such a gloomy prognostication. If you are thinking of buying cloth nappies, can I urge you to buy from the business which gave you advice, even if it costs a fiver or so more? It is only fair to the agent who is helping you, and in the context of a purchase of £250, it really isn’t much. If you honestly don’t think her advice is worth a fiver, well that’s your choice. But in our experience, our advisees rate their advisor’s help very highly indeed and would be horrified to realise she is not being paid if they don’t buy from us.

Now, I’ve got to dash – I have a meeting on my yacht in a few hours.

www.thenappylady.co.uk

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…

One of the many joys of being a Nappy Lady advisor is the buzz you feel at someone else’s excitement that they are about to have a baby. A very close bond is formed between many advisors and their advisees as a result.

Although often well outside our remit, we all get asked about breast feeding, potty training, discipline, composting, recycling etc etc. One of our most successful advisors is in fact not a young mum at all, but is a granny. One of the reasons she is so popular, I believe, is because she is effectively a surrogate mother for some of her advisees, on all sorts of parenting topics. 

And of course we learn from our co-advisors as well. If I’m asked about environmental issues, I know it’s Maggie I need to talk to. Though if it comes to composting or raising chickens, there are a number of possibilities (chicken raising seems to be a secondary Nappy Lady passion!).

Of course, we’re also among the first to hear when our advisees have had their babies, and we’re always so pleased to hear about every success. Very often, the full birth story is passed on to us, sometimes to be added to the birth stories on the site. We’re all for spreading the joy of childbirth, to counteract the stories of birthing misery that so many mums seem to like to pass on to the newly pregnant. Having a baby is a natural thing, not a medical emergency!

That’s among the best stuff about being a Nappy Lady advisor. We love to feel part of the community of mums, helping them as they start out on a path we’ve all been lost on before.

Amongst the worst, though, is the dark side of advising, when we feel so helpless. 

When mums-to-be get pregnant, filling in one of our advice questionnaires is often one of the first pregnancy decisions they make. We do, however, try to discourage them from doing it too early. When it’s your first time pregnant, you don’t realise that in fact a large proportion of pregnancies miscarry before 12 weeks. You may know it rationally, but appreciating it emotionally as well is something entirely different.

That’s something else we have a lot of experience of on the team. I’ve only had one miscarriage myself, but we have advisors who have had a number of miscarriages, one after the other. We know what it feels like, physically and emotionally, and if we could protect our advisees from it, we really would. It is so hard to try to keep someone’s expectations manageable, without frightening them.

Hence why we suggest you don’t ask us for advice until you are at least 12 weeks pregnant, and preferably more. Even then, it is not a given that all will go to plan, and we have had to experience (second hand, for the most part) the huge trauma of late miscarriages, stillbirths and neo natal death. Thankfully, these are all very rare nowadays, but they do still happen, sadly.

This, therefore, is the dark side of advising. Every time you connect with your advisee as a person and go through the joy of pregnancy, childbirth and child-raising with them, you also have to go through the bad stuff with them, if and when it happens. We as a team grieve when it happens, because it feels like it has happened to all of us.

It’s a high emotional price to pay for doing your job, but it’s a price worth paying. Especially when we get sent those pictures of adorable little newborns to drool over. No wonder half the team are permanently broody! Maybe that’s why they are all into chicken-rearing, as some form of displacement activity??!

www.thenappylady.co.uk

Molly Dilnot holds forth on newborn nappies

Molly is one of our advisors, and is in a great position to talk about nappies on newborns, given that she had Charlotte Eliza just about a month ago. I should also point out that she is a pretty glam London mother, not the hippy type at all, which is enormously reassuring to the people she does demos for. This is her story… 

No one could ever claim that being a Nappy Lady advisor is an every day kind of job, and this becomes even more apparent when you find yourself doubly excited at the birth of your new baby because, on top of the joy of adding to your family, you get to conduct nappy trials!  

Our first daughter Olivia was 6 months old when I joined the Nappy Lady team so it is fantastic to be able to try out all the nappies in my demo kit on a newborn.  It is product research and parenting all in one and gives a whole new meaning to multi-tasking.  My poor husband has mentioned that every nappy he picks up seems to be different, but despite that he’s been managing just fine, not bad going considering we used the same 18 Bumbles on Olivia from birth to potty training. 

All the nappies I have been using have one thing in common, they are easy to use and way more reliable than a disposable…yes, even terry squares which may sound daunting, but believe me I have had worse struggles with my Pashmina!  

Due to some rather lax parenting – I am coping with a 4 year old as well after all – Charlotte has worn the same nappy for up to 5 hours during the day and we have only ever had 1 leak (which was down to some dodgy experimental folding of a muslin square).  At night she is already going 12 hours without a change – or a leak.  

If you are not a cloth nappy user you are probably thinking that I obviously have a ‘non explosive’ baby…believe me, nothing is further from the truth, Charlotte has gained over 2lbs since birth – she eats a LOT, and that makes for plenty of very wet and soiled nappies.  It is simply that cloth nappies really are that good.  Sometimes when it comes to nappy change time I shake my head in wonder at how such a small baby can produce quite so much….well….poo.  

But however bad the nappy situation is the combination of cloth nappy and waterproof wrap over the top stands up to the challenge, and that is why I really do love my cloth nappies.  I wish I could show all those new parents who are dealing with dreadful leaks and soiled clothing how much easier it could be.  

I can’t imagine having to change an outfit for any reason other than wanting to make sure I get some wear out of all Charlotte’s clothes before she outgrows them.  Sadly one thing I have learnt over the years is that I can’t change the world, I can only help those who want to be helped.

At the moment my nappy of choice is a Bimble with a small Motherease Air Flow or Rikki wrap over the top.  The Rikkis are the better fit overall as the Air Flows are loose around the legs – but impressively still do the job.  Terry Squares and Muslins are easier to use than I expected, and if I were on a tight budget or had very limited drying facilities then they would be my first choice, but overall I prefer a shaped nappy and find the elasticated legs help with containment and result in fewer soiled wraps when Charlotte does her ‘worst’.

Ah, but what about bulk I hear the cynics amongst you say. Well both Bimbles and muslins are really slim fitting – so much so that people don’t actually realise I am using cloth nappies.  I am just starting to use some bigger nappies, many of which can be used from around 8lbs.  Personally it is only now that Charlotte is approaching 10lbs that I feel happy with the fit, and whilst I could have used them sooner they would certainly have been bulkier, and frankly I didn’t bother because I didn’t need to. 

Our original set of Bumbles plus accessories cost about £200. They have been washed and will be back in use as our main system soon, once I have finished experimenting.  On the accessories front my washable terry wipes (also out of storage) are absolutely fantastic.  When changing Charlotte I just run a couple under the warm tap and then use them to clean her up, no chemicals, and no startled baby suffering a cold wet wipe on her bottom!  When she is older I will soak the wipes in a home made solution of chamomile tea, olive oil and lavender essential oil.  

It is amazing to think that I will have saved over £600 in wet wipes alone over the course of two children.  There is something incredibly satisfying about this, I feel as if I am ‘beating the system’ somehow.  Whilst I am not aggressively anti disposable – in my demos I always say there is a time and a place for them, as there is for paper plates – I certainly have no desire to use them.

Charlotte is now just over 4 weeks old and I am really proud to be able to state the following statistics;

Number of disposables worn – 0

Number of cloth nappies in use -  6 Bimbles, 12 muslins and 3 Terry Squares, plus demo kit nappies for trial purposes!

Number of leaks – 1

Number of commercial Wet Wipes used – 0

Amount of nappy based rubbish produced – 0

 

Some may think I am mad to use cloth nappies. Frankly I think you’d be mad not to.

 

Molly Dilnot

Cloth Nappy Advisor, south east London

Let me introduce another Nappy Lady

There’s a whole team of Nappy Ladies out there, and many of them are amazing for different reasons. But Tania is one of those women who won’t even believe that she is in any way special.

Well, let me tell you, she is. And so is her husband Mike, who seems remarkably accepting of her zany ideas (he reminds me a lot of my late husband, in that way). They have seven children, from 15 years old downwards. Yes, seven. Apparently, they originally only planned to have two, but changed their minds at some point along the way.

And those kids are contributing members of the family. No waiting on hand and foot by Mum for them, oh no. And – if for no other reason – that makes Mike and Tania’s family pretty unusual by today’s standards.

Tania also bakes. She home educated one of their children when school wasn’t a good option. She grows vegetables in the garden (well, I think attempts to grow is a more accurate description). And she is one of my most successful Nappy Ladies – where she has the time to advise, I don’t know, but she does plenty of it.

In order to share the love they have and also to teach their children more about less fortunate children in the world, Tania and Mike have also adopted sponsored not one but two children abroad. And are paying for this by making adjustments to pocket money allowances, which their children are happy to do. These are kids that have been brought up to think of others, not themselves all the time.

If that weren’t enough, she also writes a blog, which I hope you’ll take a look at: www.largerfamilylife.com. I’m always astonished at what good writers so many of our Nappy Ladies are.

All this, and she is currently pregnant with child number 8. I’m worn out just reading about her life! Tania, trust me, you ARE amazing and an inspiration.

www.thenappylady.co.uk

Thinking about Christmas?

I know, I know, it’s November. But as I’m thinking about this for us, I feel obliged to mention it to my (three?) readers.

Over the last three years, we have eco-’d our Christmas. It is obscene to send and receive plastic tat presents that no-one really wants, when half the world is starving. Instead, I limit gifts to one each per child (they get more from grandparents etc, so please don’t think they are deprived!). In addition, we have a family budget of – say – £100, which we spend on things for the poor in other countries at Oxfam Unwrapped.

My boys love planning the spending of their budget – clean water, educational materials, a donkey? The choice is huge, and can reflect your own preferences in how you want to help the world.

Do something special today – slim down your Christmas waste and bulk up your help for those less fortunate, by enabling them to help themselves. I promise you, you’ll feel good about it.

www.thenappylady.co.uk

Can you believe it? Another baby!

I told you it was lucky that having a baby is good for The Nappy Lady’s business … because Sarah, another of the team, had a baby boy on 23 October. His name is Albern, he was another home waterbirth (I know, we’re so unoriginal here!) and he has the distinction of actually being born on his due date.

So there you go, Nappy Lady babies are like buses – none for ages, and then two come along one after the other. It’s lucky their mums have already got their nappies sorted!

www.thenappylady.co.uk