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Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

I just had a kid 2 months ago, and 12 changes a day doesn't seem all that unreasonable for a newborn. At our one-month checkup he was averaging 9 pees & 5 poops per day - several of the poops were doubled-up where he also peed, so a dozen per day is about right. It's dropped a bit since, but instances where a single changing results in multiple diapers used (eg. he shits the table right as I'm getting the new diaper on, or he pees all over the table including the diaper that's waiting to be put on) have somewhat made up for that.

Unit cost of a diaper is about $0.25-0.30 when bought in bulk (even with your example), so $1000/year = ~3200-4000 diapers = ~10 changes/day. Change your assumptions on diaper use and everything else lines up.

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10 a day may be right for the first month or so, but it doesn't make sense to extrapolate that out for a year.

> or he pees all over the table including the diaper that's waiting to be put on)

Now, that's just you being n00b :-). Source: father of 3.5 years old and 4 month old kids. And yes, I also think 12 is too many. 8-9 diapers a day was max for a newborn, now 4 months later it's around 6-7.

12 doesn't seem that strange to me. That's every 2 hours on average. 8 a day is every 3 hours like clockwork to keep a fresh/dry diaper on. Add in the unexpected poops that don't land on 3-hour boundaries and it's not hard to do 12. It seems like the upper end of normal but not an outlier.

It's pretty common for newborns to be on a highly regular 3 hours schedule for diaper changes. Happened with all three of our kids. Like clockwork, basically.

I’m going to disagree that this is common. Newborn schedules in general are not super predictable. I don’t know anyone who has described their newborn’s schedule as “clockwork”.

Babies don't read books about how babies are supposed to behave they just do what they do, be it 2 hours, 3 hours or some baby unique interval.

I had the the same issue with my now 5 month old, I'd guess most first time parents do.

This is one of the reasons why I am happy with Kraamzorg [1]. I learned from them that if you got a boy the first thing you do when you change a boy's diaper is put something on their penis (such as a burp cloth) so that they can't pee you in the face (or on the carpet/wall/door or w/e). I remembered that even though we don't have a boy; we had a girl about 2 months ago. :-)

FWIW, we're changing diapers roughly every 3-4 hours. I can pretty much put my clock on it (a blue strip shows if she's pee'd). Every 2 hours is overkill. The strip wouldn't be full blue yet.

There's also (washable) cloth diapers which are better for the environment and wallet though they're also an investment. We're planning on switching to them, but it is too early for now.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraamzorg

That blue strip on newborn diapers must be generating billions of revenue.

Newborns pee so little and diapers absorb so much that one diaper would be enough for the whole day. But with the strip, people switch them every few hours :)

A whole day? Until poo? Last night I last changed our little one at around 1 AM and my partner changed her diaper at around 8 AM. Suffice to say, she was completely wet.

If you rely exclusively on the blue stripe you're gonna develop a skin rash. I would love to see the data on your one diaper a day newborn test.

What makes it too early for cloth for you? They come in all kinds of sizes!

Cloth diapers do cost a little bit more effort whereas the first months with a newborn are rather hectic. More so for 2 parents with ASD. So we've opted to consider going for it later on, when its less hectic. Also, in the beginning a newborn will grow quickly out of clothes. Almost everything she wears right now is too large. But the diapers (some of which were free with a "box") fit her very well.

> I learned from them that if you got a boy the first thing you do when you change a boy's diaper is put something on their penis (such as a burp cloth) so that they can't pee you in the face (or on the carpet/wall/door or w/e)

We do this - we've got 20 or so cut-up facecloths we use for this purpose. They are usually the limiting factor on how quickly we do laundry. It's not uncommon to go through 3/day; it's like having a set of cloth diapers we use just for diaper changes. Plus, he's gotten pretty good at avoiding the cloth and pissing out the bottom, or choosing that moment right when I take the cloth off and put the diaper on to unload, or shitting all over his penis (!!) so that I have to clean that first and getting me in the face while I'm bent over him with a wet-wipe.

Someday he's going to win a lot of pissing contests.

This seems like a classic case of annecdotal evidence being extrapolated into general truth.

Two kids from an identical environment and sharing the same ancestors are hardly a significant sample.

Read anything about child milestones, and you'll see a great degree in variability in the value.

6-7 diaper daily changes. Normal. 8-10 diaper daily changes. Normal.

Not everyone has the ability to buy in bulk. They are considerably more expensive buying them 12 at a time at a corner store.

I feel like this is a problem the non-profits should tackle. The mother in the article does this, it seems she really is trying to work and not depend on charity/welfare. However, there is some financial literacy / access to capital / cashflow planning type issue going on that prevents her from planning properly (buying in bulk ahead of time). If the non-profit simply offered her affordable diapers (I imagine removing the retail markup alone saves a huge amount), a line of credit or something and helped her plan her diaper supply needs it seems like it could be a helpful service (maybe they do that, article only made it sound like they give away diapers to the poor)

I kinda think WIC and SNAP should just cover diapers like they do food. Kids need both.

Not everyone exhibits basic competency and planning ability, but that doesn't magically make other people responsible for setting up surrogates for them.

0.25 - 0.30 is not a bulk price. You can buy a pack of 29 on amazon all in for 0.27 per diaper.

Buying in bulk (200 pack or so) easily gets you at 0.16/diaper or below. And even lower if you look out for deals.

And assuming you need them now and don't have money for bulk buy, a 27 pack at walmart for off-brand is $5.41 at the moment. ( ~0.20/unit )

10 changes/day is a lot, even for a newborn. This number quickly drops to perhaps 4-6 per day, and continues to drop towards 1 year of life. As others have mentioned, it would not be uncommon to get to around 3 per day for a 1-3 year old. I also speak from experience with my own kids and would back that up as true.

Therefore, the cost of diapers is probably quite a bit less than $1000/year even in the worst case.

We've also invested in decent reusable cloth diapers. To buy "enough" of them so we aren't running out or doing laundry on a small set of them every few hours, we spent around $600 or $700 for a good bunch of them. These are reusable for years, and even across children. There's even a decent resale market for them if you can believe it. By far they are the cheapest means of diapering children, especially multiple children over time. However, the downside is quite an increased amount of laundry logistics. And, in some cases, it doesn't obviate the need for disposable diapers. For example, if you're going somewhere for the whole day, it might be easier to use disposables since you don't have to carry around soiled cloth diapers. Or if the kids visit other family... sometimes just simpler to rely on disposables.

Cloth diapers are fantastic, but they're a case of "Sam Vimes' Boots"[0]. Over the course of a year, they're a lot cheaper than disposable diapers, especially if you can get hand-me-downs from a friend or eg. a local parents group on Facebook. BUT, the initial outlay is still way too much for most working-class people, and they're really only practical if you have a washing machine at home. We ended up buying a used dryer when we had our first child, just because the diapers didn't dry fast enough on the line during the winter. The article mentions that a lot of coin laundries don't allow you to wash them there, and besides, you'd be at the laundromat at least once a day.

[0]: http://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/index.php/Sam_Vimes_Theory_...

I love what I have been calling the "five second diaper"!

>$0.25-0.30 when bought in bulk

Are these silken luxury diapers? I just bought diapers and they were $0.16/each for Costco brand and that's not on sale. A quick search on amazon shows 0.14 - 0.17 for any bulk buy of brand name diapers and that is not considering the cheaper rate you could get if you subscribe or the frequent coupons and deals that show up.

The only option I see for diapers in the 0.25-0.30 range are a small pack of 29 diapers shipped for $7.97

Google search for [diapers]. 128 Pampers for $35 from Google Shopping Express ($0.27/ct), 88 Pampers for $25 from Target ($0.28/ct), 144 Pampers for $31 from Walmart ($0.21/ct). Other brands do get a fair bit cheaper - 140 Huggies for $21 from Target ($0.13/ct), 256 Luvs for $27 from Target ($0.10/ct), and we just tried buying some store-brand Target diapers that are 40% of the cost of Pampers. We're fairly brand-loyal as diapers go, though, because we've found that the Huggies blow out a lot more than Pampers (at least on our kid, who is pretty thin) and the Targets aren't nearly as absorbent.

And diapers are just the tip of the iceberg in term of spending. /sigh

It was a huge relief to get the children weaned, and off the giant vats of Similac ... I feel that was probably even more expensive than the diapers.

Oh man, diapers pale in comparison to formula costs. My daughter gets changed ~8 times per day, but she eats up to 36oz of formula. That's about $1.76 in diapers and up to $6.79 worth of formula. Add in DI water (since we make it from powder) and the obscene cost of bottles, and it gets even worse.

What's wrong with tap water? Formula still costs a lot, obviously, but you generally don't need special water for mixing formula unless your kid has an immune disorder or you live somewhere with unsafe tap water.

Depending on where you live, maybe nothing, maybe a lot. For example many areas still have high PPB of lead in their tap water (even if below the EPA guidelines of 15 PPB, or the EU's 10 PPB since 2013, it can still be considered unsafe, just not economical to fix).

Plus even ignoring heavy metal content, in some areas there might be micro-organisms in tap water (since it is sourced from a natural well or similar), so you'd need to be boiling tap water or risk making a newborn sick (even if your body could easily cope with similar water).

> Talk to your baby’s pediatrician and ask what kind of water you should use when mixing infant formula. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends boiling water to remove impurities and kill germs. While most municipal and public drinking water supplies are required to follow strict regulatory guidelines to be safe, pediatricians generally still suggest using boiled water to mix infant formula, at least for the first three or four months. Since there is no evidence that bottled water is safer than municipal water sources, the AAP says that while parents can use bottled water to mix formula, it needs to be boiled first. You can also use distilled water that has already been purified or ready-to-use formulas, which do not need to be mixed with water.

Meh, I’ll take a pass on that. Chlorinated tap water in developed nations should have no appreciable microbial content. If you’re concerned about lead, I can understand that. If your goal is sterile food and your baby is healthy, I don’t really get that. You’re presumably washing your baby’s bottles in tap water anyway.

https://www.cdc.gov/fluoridation/faqs/infant-formula.html

>Can I use flouridated tap water to mix formula? "Yes, you can use fluoridated water for preparing infant formula. However, if your child is only consuming infant formula mixed with fluoridated water, there may be an increased chance for mild dental fluorosis. To lessen this chance, parents can use low-fluoride bottled water some of the time to mix infant formula; these bottled waters are labeled as de-ionized, purified, demineralized, or distilled, and without any fluoride added after purification treatment. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires the label to indicate when fluoride is added."

Tap water through one of those pitcher filters is fine. It's super easy to spook new parents into buying stupid crap they don't need, out of fear.

So even if ten thousand of me said this a hundred thousand times, people would still buy the "special" bottled water with a picture of a baby on the label. You have to either just let them do it, or start bottling water and printing reassuring labels. They might wise up by the second or third kid.

In fact our Palo Alto pediatrician asked immediately if we use bottled water and said we should use tap water because of flouride and minerals that might not be in the water service water.

DI water? De-Ionized? The stuff marked "Not safe for human consumption: Lab Use Only" because of how dirty the ion exchange membranes get [among other things]?

Or were you trying to say 'distilled water'?

Outside the US, distilled water is often called deionized water. Same thing, different name.

It is not the same thing. Deionized water may contain neutral organic molecules, including viruses and bacteria, as it uses ion exchange resins pre-loaded with protons and hydroxides to remove all other anions and cations. Distilled water has been vaporized out of one container and recondensed into another, so contains nothing but water and molecules that form azeotropes with water.

Distilled water is deionized, but deionized has not necessarily been distilled.

In practice, however, both are overkill for baby formula.

Nobody's arguing that they're identical processes. My point is about the _labeling_ differences. Distilled water is often sold as deionized water in various parts of the world.

But there is literally zero additional printing cost for using the word that precisely matches the purification process. They even have the same number of letters in English. Why would anybody do that?

We managed to save about 50% off the cost of formula by making our own. A can of goat milk powder (Myenberg) costs ~ $10 and makes 3 quarts. Before 6 months we made sure the formula matched breast milk, using a spreadsheet--I'm working on a web app!--but let's say after 6 months it's fine to feed straight goat milk. Assuming a quart (32 fl oz) per day, that's about $3.33 per day, compared to $6/day for Enfamil ($27 for a tub that makes 18 cups).

triangle man hates particle formula they have a fight, triangle wins triangle man!

We buy kirkland brand formula (same as similac). Costs us about $1.67 per day for a 4 month old.

I hope you mean RO or some other purifying process. I wouldn't drink DI water.

We use kirkland brand formula from costco. It's repackaged Similac. Exactly the same thing and it is less than half the cost. It even comes in the same plastic containers. They just change the stickers. All the other off-brands are likely just as good as any brand name and usually just repackaged brand name stuff anyway.

Filtered water is fine unless you live in an area with lead problems.

And what obscene cost for bottles? We have exactly 4 bottles so far for our 4 month old and they were less than $5 each. And new nipples are about $2 each when we needed to change the flow.

My kid had to be on Similac Alimentum for like a year.

Now that’s a good racket.

Our kids were on formula as well. Between kid 1 and 2 we did buy a Baby Brezza (aka the Formula Keurig) which I'm mentioning here solely because it was such an unexpectedly positive help. It cut the process of mixing+warming+testing the formula down to just hitting a button (and likely saved my sanity).

Warming? Testing? We gave our 3 cold bottles premade a few hours before right out of the fridge. Thankfully they never complained, and made our lives a hell of a lot easier. I weep for the parents who need to do the whole warming thing... seems like a giant PIA

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