Taking Care of Baby, Sustainably

It’s an obvious fact, often quoted to nervous parents-to-be in order to reduce their fears about childbearing: people have been giving birth for millions of years.

How complicated can it be? But in an age of synthetic diapers, highly regulated hospital births, and plastic teething rings, today’s parents are having to chart a new course, one that serves the best interests of both the infant and the planet onto which he or she has been born.

Baileys Harbor residents Bob Bultman and Jesse Farley are among Door County’s new parents trying to navigate the complex waters of sustainable parenthood. The two have a long history of sustainable living and environmental activism (Bob has been coordinator of the Door County Invasive Species Team for over two years). But since their son, Wyatt, was born Dec. 9, Bob and Jesse are seeing issues of sustainability in a broader context.

Bob and Jesse are concerned with reducing the amount of physical waste produced by bringing a new person into the world. They plan to use as many hand-me-down clothes and toys as possible, and have already done a lot of shopping at Sturgeon Bay’s branch of Once Upon a Child, which Jesse touts as a virtual supermarket of used children’s goods.

According to Bob, the average American baby produces 2.75 tons of waste in diapers alone. Not wanting to contribute to already-overflowing landfills, Bob and Jesse are using reusable diapers for Wyatt. They use a new clasp system called the Snappi to avoid the hassle of pins, and odor-resistant, machine-washable diaper bags when they’re on the road. They’re also practicing “elimination communication” with Wyatt, a practice relatively new to the United States (though common in other countries) in which parents try to read their babies’ nonverbal signals to get them to the toilet before even needing to use a diaper.

“We did our diaper research,” Jesse says, and is quick to point out that there are many options to suit families’ individual needs. “They’ve come out with cloth diaper options that aren’t the dinosaur options of back in our day, when there were rubber pants and that was that.”

Bob and Jesse see their decision to breastfeed as another part of their commitment to sustainability, as well as their decision to give birth to Wyatt in their home through the Appleton-based birthing center Birth Wise, which services all of Door County. Though the latter choice worried certain friends and family members, Bob and Jesse see homebirth as “a community-based way of having a baby” and therefore as another step toward sustainability.

Bob and Jesse believe community building and sustainability are two inextricably linked concepts. The new parents think about what is sustainable to their son being a good person.

“There’s Earth sustainability, there’s him being a great person when he gets bigger – many different angles,” Jesse says.