What's the Half-Life of a Diaper?

When I was in nursing school, we learned a lot about the half-life of many medications in our pharmacology courses. Basically, the duration of action of a drug is known as its half life. This is the period of time required for the concentration or amount of drug in the body to be reduced by one-half. So, if the half life of a certain medicine, like Tylenol, is 4 hours, it means there is only half as much medicine in your body 4 hours after you take it as there is when you first take it.

So yesterday I got to thinking about the "duration of action" of diapers, and what the half-life of a diaper really amounts to.  It's not exactly the perfect analogy, but it made me think I really should have bought stock in diapers. Take last night as a prime example. When Alli got out of the bath, we put on baby lotion, baby powder and a fresh Pampers diaper... then literally 30 seconds later... we heard the sound of an explosion. We opened up that lovely clean diaper we had just put on, and there's a huge mess. So, onto a fresh new diaper. Really?! I mean that diaper from post-bath lasted, what, 30 seconds? How much do you think an individual diaper costs, and how can something so valuable only last 30 seconds? I'm so amazed by it. I guess I shouldn't be, but wow... the girl can go through some diapers.

It's a good thing we had such amazing friends & family at our baby showers and have only had to buy one pack of diapers so far in over three months. We still haven't had to buy any formula since she's been exclusively breast fed as well, so, she gets more headbands and cute pink outfits since we are saving a little money here & there. Lucky girl. :o)