Review: Alva reusable nappies

Warning: unless you are currently invested in the nitty gritty of parenting a baby, or have a extraordinary interest in eco-products, absolutely skip this post! It is about nappies. The pre-baby me would have skipped it for sure! 😬

At least 1000 nappies per year per baby, apparently. That’s how many you get through. And I know that nappies are classically one of the things that parents-to-be dread the most about their upcoming offspring, but it wasn’t until we were a couple of weeks in and emptying the nappy bin practically every other day that it really started to get to me.

So. Much. Plastic.

So when you’re breastfeeding you don’t need to use contraception, right?

Short answer: WRONG. It’s not an effective contraceptive; use something else

Long answer: It’s quite interesting actually! In a food-scarce tribal setting (such as when humans were evolving) breastfeeding uses up much of the female’s fat resources, which essentially puts her body into a starvation state where it does not ovulate. From an evolutionary point of view this is helpful as it allows all her resources to be channelled into her existing dependent offspring. In this setting mothers often breastfed for 2-3 years until spontaneous weaning – when the baby no longer needs her as much, it’s time for a new baby (for greatest reproductive fitness, which is what evolution is all about). So breastfeeding IS a natural contraception in a “natural” setting…but we do not live in a natural setting.

We live in a world of flapjack. 🙌 We can sate our hunger and therefore our bodies are not in a starvation state (though it sometimes might feel like they are!). Therefore ovulation technically can resume at any point, and you would only know about it 2 weeks later when your period arrived.

Use something else! 👍