Smash hit

Supplying online advisers and retailers are the boutique nappy producers — all of whom started out as frustrated mothers sitting at their kitchen tables with a bit oftowelling and a map of their baby's bottom in their heads.

Fiona King is the founder of the Scottish nappy company Tots Bots. Her nappies - dear little things, in the fluffiest towelling, that fit babies beautifully - are almost cult items in the nappy world. Among nappy addicts, it is one of the brand names guaranteed to raise the heart beat. To put it in fashion terms, Tots Bots would be the Marni of nappies.

"I couldn't believe it when I made them," says King, "how neat they looked compared with terry squares, which are so big coming down their legs. Then my friends saw them and said, these are great, will you make some for us? So I bought a roll of fabric and they sort of ran away with me."

Now King and her partner work full time in the business and employ six people.

Other names to drop in real nappy circles are Ella's House - eco-friendly hemp nappies in funky prints, also started by a mother in Scotland - and Nappy Nation, an ingenious design that dries as easily as a terry square, invented by two mothers in Kingston-upon-Thames and now patented.

This mothers-are-doing-it-for-themselves sense of empowerment is passed on from the cottage-industry manufacturer to the mum who buys their nappies. It is a pleasant change from feeling cynically targeted by big business, which is the case when you receive a "Bounty pack" from hospital staff while still on the maternity ward.

Hospitals are paid to distribute these marketing sample bags, which contain disposable nappies and other baby items made by multinational companies, to women just hours after giving birth. To receive these products in the medical environment is a powerful - and, I believe, unethical - endorsement. (I refused mine on principle and, as a result, missed out on my child-allowance application form as well.)
Cloth-nappy mothers today feel as breast-feeding campaigners must have 20 years ago - that we are making a stand against the exploitation of parental care, which puts corporate profit before a baby's best interests.

In another parallel with the breast-feeding movement - and a high proportion of clothie mothers are breast-feeders - the extra effort involved with using cloth nappies, the fundamental earthiness of washing off the wees and poos, can give you a feeling of being a "more-than" mum, of being willing to do just a little more for the wellbeing of your child.

Dr Elizabeth Mapstone, a family psychologist practising in Cornwall and mother of three adult offspring, says that this is a natural part of the mothering instinct.

"There is a widespread need when you are a mother to feel that you are doing the right thing," she says. "As a new mother you will want to do what really seems the best for your child and contributing to the wellbeing of society as a whole. Put those two together and you will have the enthusiasm to use the cloth nappies that I hated when I had babies."

But then, of course, had Mapstone had Tots Bots or Ella's House nappies to use, she may well have felt differently. It's not often you get to be an eco-warrior and a fashion victim at the same time.

Maggie Alderson