Spock! A classic. My parents, when raising me in the '80s and '90s, had a copy of his book and tried their best to follow what it said. I still recall the cover with the smiling baby. An amusing anecdote my father now has retold many times over (as fathers do) is that despite Spock's best advice there was something that I refused to do. His friend, a psychologist, pointed out that while Spock's advice might be good, my father could not expect me to behave as described because I had not read the book.

Another thing that's interesting here to me is the two fingers below the diaper to avoid sticking the infant with the pin. Two fingers under the diaper is still standard enough guidance that we and others we know received it at the hospital when diapering our child, though the reason expressed was one of tightness. I wonder if perhaps the former is the origin and the latter is a backformation.

And finally, the environmental question. Since my wife and I are quite old[0], and I want us to have more than one child I have pushed our household to the extreme end of consumerism[1]. We live in a 2 story flat in San Francisco, and until recently we had a changing station downstairs and two upstairs, with a diaper pail by each.

Here I encountered the problem that plagues anyone who has many battery-powered appliances - what convenience you gain in use, you lose when it comes to replace batteries. The Diaper Genie tall can we have is a very effective device at keeping smells in, but multiple cans means the time between replacement is doubled - something which you are rapidly made aware of by your senses[2], when it's time to replace the bag. The convenience is still worth it.

I do have a friend with more children than us, who will probably continue to have more children than us, whose family uses cloth diapers. So it is not an impossible task, and for someone adequately concerned about the environment and appropriately disciplined, perhaps quite straightforward to do.

0: if you want to see what happens when you have a baby near 40, https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Pregnancy

1: my rationale was that by easing the difficulties of pregnancy, I might reduce any resistance my wife might have to having the next child.

2: "Pain, even agony, is no more than information before the senses, data fed to the computer of the mind. The lesson is simple: you have received the information, now act on it. Take control of the input and you shall become master of the output" - Chairman Shen-ji Yang.

Checking to see if you're able to fit two fingers underneath a dressing to make sure it's not too tight and won't cut off circulation is standard practice in health care; not just diapers.

Favorite memory of diaper genie was after the pail is full, and you slice off the captured diapers, was slinging the long sausage link like string of diapers into the apartment dumpster. Ah the memories

Thanks for the link! I've never seen this documented in a wiki format on the internet before, truly cool.

> plagues anyone who has many battery-powered appliances

costco sells these AA+AAA coast lithium ion batteries that are 1.5v and seem to have high capacity and long charge time.

Seems better than either duracell disposables or the nimh rechargables that I use.

FWIw I’ve had no problems with smells from our Ubbi Steel diaper pail which uses regular garbage bags. (Do use thicker bags though.)