crunchy mama?

Reading all about babies and baby health and baby gear and baby development has been a huge distraction from pharmacology and pathology. After all - when given a choice between picking out a stroller (do I want it in Spice or Sage?) and memorizing the names of anti-Tumor Necrosis Factor drugs and their toxicities - the former is so much more fun!

One of the divides I've been straddling is whether to go the green route or not. There's the smaller things: I think I'd like to make our own baby food (pureed carrots, bananas, and sweet potatoes are no match for our super-duper-Waring Pro blender!) And the bigger ones (I think I'd like to try for non-medicated labor & delivery).

But one of the decisions I waffle back and forth on is the cloth diaper issue. I like the idea of saving money, of not filling landfills with plastic pouches of poop, of reducing diaper rashes, and they are gosh darn cute! I've even done a lot of research and picked the brand I would like: FuzziBunz One Size! But the head and tail of it is - I'm going to be pretty darn busy with medical school, and the fewer laundry loads per week the better. And here's what I've started to wonder - is it hypocritical to push for cloth diapers, but not do cloth menstrual pads? Because I can't fathom doing cloth menstrual pads - the washing just sounds disgusting. And unsanitary. And I don't feel any qualms about buying disposables in bulk at Costco. For some reason, people don't seem to often extend the logic of cloth diapers to their own sanitary pads.

Medicine presents an interesting dilemma for those with crunchy/hippie/green tendencies. Since the germ theory caught on, there's a huge amount of waste that goes on in the name of sanitation and efficiency. Is there any good way around it?