by Linda Seed

Created on: July 17, 2008

When my oldest daughter was an infant, I tried all kinds of diapers, including Huggies, Luvs, Kirkland, and various store brands. But only one diaper prompted me to write to the manufacturer with a complaint. That diaper was Pampers Baby Dry. It seemed that every time my daughter wore a Baby Dry diaper, she was Baby Wet - wet pants, wet skirt, wet sheets, wet pajamas, wet car seat. The leaks were endless and frustrating. My letter to Pampers suggested that the diapers be renamed Pampers Leaky Butt or Pampers Soggy Rear. The letter I received in return suggested that perhaps I was not using the diapers correctly. That seems unlikely, as the other brands I tried - even the generics - kept her dry consistently. Was there some secret to using Pampers that the other diapers did not share? The Pampers representative did send me a coupon for free diapers, but by that time, I did not want them.

I had another incident with Pampers with my younger daughter. By the time she was born, I was an avowed non-Pampers user, but I had received several packages of Pampers Swaddlers at my baby shower, and of course I did not want to waste them. When my daughter was two days old, I noticed that her diaper developed a sweet smell when it was wet. Urine is not supposed to smell sweet, so I started to get concerned. Was she diabetic? Was there something wrong with my breast milk? The scent reminded me of pancakes. So I Googled the words "infant urine syrup smell," and I learned that my daughter almost certainly had Maple Syrup Urine Disease, a metabolic disorder that is devastating at best and fatal at worst. It often kills within the first few weeks of life. I panicked. I woke my husband at 1 a.m. to ask whether we should take her to the emergency room. I called Labor and Delivery asking for advice, and received none. And then I had a thought. I put some plain water on a clean Pampers diaper and sniffed. You guessed it - it was the scent of maple syrup. It's entirely beyond me why Pampers would scent their diapers in such a way as to make a new mother believe her child has a catastrophic medical condition. But that was it for me. No more Pampers.

My experience with Huggies has been blissfully uneventful. They're expensive, yes, but when I have used them I've suffered through very few leaks, and no middle-of-the-night medical worries. What more could a mother want from a diaper?

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