{"id":4442,"date":"2019-09-16T12:03:54","date_gmt":"2019-09-16T11:03:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gecco.org.uk\/blog\/?p=4442"},"modified":"2026-03-26T11:41:59","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T11:41:59","slug":"its-not-right-or-wrong-its-just-normal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gecco.org.uk\/blog\/2019\/09\/16\/its-not-right-or-wrong-its-just-normal\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s not right or wrong … it’s just normal"},"content":{"rendered":"

We love this article by Jane Shaw over at our sustainability partners Baba + Boo<\/h4>\n

In fact, if you're interested in Cloth Nappies you really need to bookmark their blog<\/a>, it's full of good stuff!<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

Normal is a very odd thing.\u00a0<\/h3>\n

A friend did me the honour of leaving her three month old in my care this week. Change time arrived\u2026 and I couldn\u2019t put her nappy on.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Seriously.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I work for a nappy business. I have three children, including a toddler in nappies. This should not have been weird.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But this teeny female, with her fragile, moving legs, in her odd little paper nappy that looked like it would rip if I was too rough - nope. I was so far out of my comfort zone that I asked my husband where I was going wrong. He remembered that you have to make sure the frilly bits aren\u2019t tucked in (eh?); after much staring and tweaking we eventually worked out I\u2019d got it too low at the back.<\/p>\n

Why was it all so weird and complicated? Because this isn\u2019t our normal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Normal does two things. Our own \u2018normal\u2019 becomes easy and straightforward - quite simply, we\u2019re practised at it and we\u2019re used to it. It\u2019s habit. The \u2018other\u2019 way is unknown, so it\u2019s harder and far more challenging.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The other thing about normal is that because it\u2019s familiar, we usually just accept it without questioning it. It\u2019s just the way things are. In the 80s, whoever considered that seat belts were pretty important? Or that equal rights based on sexual orientation might be a good idea? Or that single use plastic bags might not be so cool?\u00a0<\/p>\n

I drive an electric car, and recently borrowed a petrol car for a few days. For years and years, I have \u2018filled up\u2019 without thinking about it. Now? The idea of taking a fossil fuel and shoving it in a vehicle seemed ridiculous. I felt like I was guilty of the most absurd piece of single-use wastage imaginable. I was embarrassed to do it, and I wanted to stand on the pumps and shout \u201cThis is insane! Why are we doing this when there is a perfectly good alternative!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

My normal has changed. I see things differently, and now question what I previously didn\u2019t think twice about. (Including manual gears. What is that all about?)<\/p>\n

If you use single use nappies then \u2018normal\u2019 is putting poo in the bin. The idea of putting a dirty nappy in the washing machine is alien - so it can seem gross, absurd... just wrong.<\/p>\n

And yet parents who use reusable nappies have a different normal. They\u2019ll tell you that the idea of putting a stinky nappy in the bin seems grim. That you wouldn\u2019t put your own poo in the bin, so why would you put your child\u2019s waste in there? That the bin will smell, that it will attract flies, that the poo will be transported by some poor bin collector to be burnt, or to mummify in landfill.<\/p>\n

For a parent whose normal is reusables, putting poo in the bin can seem gross, absurd\u2026. just wrong.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

A lot of people are put off using reusable nappies because of \u2018what to do with the poo\u2019. But just like everything else, changing a reusable nappy quickly becomes your normal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Not right, not wrong...just normal.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":4453,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gecco.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gecco.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gecco.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gecco.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gecco.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4442"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gecco.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13755,"href":"https:\/\/gecco.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4442\/revisions\/13755"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gecco.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gecco.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gecco.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gecco.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}