On diapers and cigarettes

I feel certain ways about diaper brands as I imagine people who smoke feel about cigarettes.

I'm a Huggies (tm) girl. I have been since Lena was very small. Other people gifted us diapers, I read reviews, goddammit. (What a waste of time. If only I knew. No diaper can contain the explosive...contents...of a breastfed newborn. To say the least.) Anyway, so what happens in this very impressionable time of exploring and discovering, you find a brand, and you stick with it. And for four loyal years, I have bought Huggies diapers. From size 1 to size 6 overnight absorbancy, I have bought Huggies diapers.

And then, one day, we ran out of diapers.

Usually I wait to buy diapers on the weekend at Target, but this was the middle of the week, so we went to the grocery store instead. (Because in true addict fashion, when we have discovered that we have run out of our preferred product, we will then stop at nothing to replenish.) But then, you can see where this is going, they didn't have my brand. But I had to have them, of course, so I bought a different brand. I don't want to name any names cough LUVS cough, and it was not a good feeling.

This brand is deodorized. It has this weird smell, so whenever I put Lena in one for the night she doesn't smell like Lena. She's not the fresh-out-of-the-bath clean smell, she's this artificial baby powder smell. Who is this impostor diapered child? Oh well. Only 48 more days of this.

But the funny thing is--she thinks to herself as she's reading to her daughter and silently cursing the misjudgment of the diaper stocks--I'm sure there are other people out there that are devoted to Pampers, or Luvs, or whatever. And diapers are one of those paradoxical products that are really all exactly the same (except for that horrid smell!) and people just get stuck on a brand they like. And I'm sure there is some mother out there who swears by Luvs and then when she forgets to buy diapers at her weekly Target trip, and instead has to go to her neighborhood grocery store and they only have Huggies, and she puts on on her child after the bath, and goes to tuck him or her in, I bet she's thinking to herself This does not smell like my child. 


And in conclusion, that is what I imagine being addicted to a tobacco product is like.