All about … *gasp* … POOP!

All about … *gasp* … POOP!

I originally going to talk about the different kinds of diapers next, but the issue of washing the diapers was brought up so I will talk about that next.

The first thing people always ask when I tell them I am doing cloth diapering is “Ew, you are actually going to put POOP into your washing machine?!” Ok it doesn’t always come out quite like that, but you get the point. I’ll admit, it is a legitimate question. I will honestly tell you that it was the biggest thing  I had to overcome as well. I had all the misconceptions that most people have who do not cloth diaper. All I could picture was someone putting big clumps of poopy diapers into their washing machine and it bouncing around! Haha, what a sight that would be! But that picture is completely wrong. You put no more poop in your washing machine than you would from just normal baby clothes that get pooped on. Does that make sense?  When a baby wears a disposable diaper they have many many more blowouts (aka poop coming out the sides, top and/or back of the diaper) than babies who cloth diaper. Babies get poop on themselves; it’s a fact of life. So in some way, shape, or form you will be putting “poop” into your washing machine when you have a child.

I have taken pictures to make it easier to show the cleaning/washing process that (I) use. I put that (I) use because not everyone does it the same and there are different factors that come into play. Adelaide is exclusively breast fed (EBF) and not formula fed; that does make a difference. Also, once a baby starts solid food and their poo starts to become more solid as well you typically have to change/alter how you wash your diapers a bit because the poop is different then. A baby that is EBF has very watery/runny poops that are water soluble so they do not require any previous rinsing off, unless you so desire – but I do not. So this is a EBF poopy diaper. Gross I know lol.

This is my wetbag inside of a metal trashcan. This is where all the diapers are kept from the time they are taken off baby until it’s time to wash. They are essential to have! It is just a big plastic bag that typically has a draw sting closure. I also have miniature sized wetbags that I keep in my diaper bag that are cotton on the outside and plastic inside to hold the moisture and smell when I am out and about.

This is my washer and dryer. I have a Whirlpool Duet Sport He frontloader. See the big blue bag on top of the washer – that is the wetbag. The type of washer/dryer you have will also effect how you wash the diapers.

Diapers come in two different types of closures, snaps and velcro. If you use velcro then you have to make sure to put the sticky tabs down properly so that they do not stick to other diapers and mess them up. Obviously you do not have to do anything to the snap diapers.

Velcro diapers will all come with some form of “laundry” tab. This diaper has it in the middle of the back. See the square with the X on it? That is the laundry tap.

Take one velcro tab and put it down

Then take the other tap and put it ontop of the first. This will hold them in place so that they don’t stick to anything during washing.

Because I have an HE washer I have to do a pre-rinse cycle to get the diapers soaking wet. HE washers use less water in their wash cycle so when you stick something that is made to soak up liquid inside it there can be an issue. If you pre-rinse the diapers, and they get completely soaked, then when it comes time to use a wash cycle it will work better. My pre-rinse is 25 min long, with no detergent, on cold.

Once the diapers are all wet then you do a regular wash cycle. I chose to do a heavy duty, hot cycle for mine. It is 71 minutes, bringing my whole wash to just over 90 minutes. Also, I mentioned before that I use mostly all natural household cleaners, that is also true with my laundry detergent. You do not have to use a “special” detergent, although they are out there. Just an ALL or Tide free and clear will work perfectly. Typically just one scoop is enough.

I prefer to line dry my diapers for a couple reasons. 1 – It cuts back on using the electricity of my dryer aka more ecofriendly and cost effective. 2 – The sun is a natural bleacher. Plus I think its kind of fun (strange I know). Obviously you do not have to line dry your diapers; they will be just fine in the dryer. I have also been told that line drying can make your diapers last longer as well because they are not being subject to the high heats over and over.

My diapers are on the line as I type this J As soon as they are done I will try to do a before and after of a couple diapers that had slight yellowish staining from the poop. It never ceases to amaze me how white they all come out after sunning them.

When A is older and starts eating more baby food I will use a diaper sprayer that is attached to my toilet to pre-clean the diapers before they go into the diaper pail. That is where the poop goes that people think you put into the washer – the toilet! After you take the diaper off you will just dump or spray the excess waste into the toilet, flush and then store until ready to wash. That is one of the main differences with EBF poop and baby food poop washing, the extra step of rinsing the diaper off. I can touch on that again in a few months when little A starts eating baby food. But here is a picture of the diaper sprayer that I have. When that time comes I might even do a video demo to show how it works ;)

Hope this didn’t end up being too long, but I wanted it to be detailed so that you can see exactly how the process goes. If you have any other washing questions, just ask!

Benifits and Reasons to Cloth Diaper

There are many benefits and reasons for wanting to cloth diaper. I will give you some basic number, but Ill try not to bore you with too many. There are three main reasons that people choose to cloth – Environmental/Health factor, Cost factor, and Cute factor! For me it was a little bit of all of them.

Let’s start with the Environmental issue. Did you know that it takes 200 to 500 years for a disposal diaper to decompose in a landfill? One baby can produce over 2000lbs of waste a year, that’s a lot of poop! When I heard that I could not believe it! Our country is becoming all about preserving the world and cloth diapering is definitely one step in doing that. For Luke and me, we have slowly been changing our lifestyle over the last few years to eating mostly organic, recycling regularly and even using eco-friendly household product. Cloth diapering just became another step in all of that for our family.

Another part that goes with the environmental issue, is the Health factors as well. When I started learning more about cloth, I also started learning more about disposable diapers. There are so many chemicals, dyes and bleaches added to our babies disposable diapers! Have you ever looked at diaper box or bag? There is no ingredients list … hmmm.  Dyes, sodium polyacrylate (the super absorbent gel), and dioxin, which is a by-product of bleaching paper, are just some things found in disposable diapers.  Sodium polyacrylate, which has been linked in the past to toxic shock syndrome and allergic reactions, is no longer allowed in Tampons but is still used in disposable diapers. This is why babies get rashes and even burns from disposable. When using a cloth diaper, you know exactly what is going against your little babes skin!

 

Now onto one of the most convincing reasons to cloth, Cost Factor! Have you ever sat down and added up how much it costs you to diaper your child from birth to potty training? Disposable diaper estimates run between $60 to $80 a month depending on the brand of choice. That is between $750-$960 a year for diapering one child! Depending how long your child takes to potty train, it can seriously add up. Say your child doesn’t potty train until they are 3 years old, that means that you are spending anywhere from $2250 to $2880 in disposable diapers, ultimately money being thrown away.

I know one of the biggest things that scare/turn people off to Cloth diapering is the start up cost, but you have to look at it as an investment! It typically costs between $500 to $800 to cloth one child for their entire diaper life and almost all cloth diapers can be reused over and over for each child. You do not have to spend all of it at once if you do not want to. I knew from the beginning of my pregnancy that I wanted to cloth, so I would buy a little here and there to acquire my whole stash. I am closer to the $800 range because I went a little crazy at times ;) I have more diapers than most people say you need. (over 60 total) lol. This includes my newborn stash and my normal stash. There is about 30 in each.
Here is a good site that I found that talks about the costs of cloth vs disposable a bit more

http://cashmoneylife.com/cloth-diapers-vs-disposable-diapers/

Lastly, and yes this is an actual reason why people cloth diaper, Cute Factor! Have you seen some of the diapers out there?! ADORABLE! I definitely have been sucked into this one. I have diapers with owls, flowers, patterns and even a custom made one. Also, they come in every color under the sun. It is so much fun to match diapers with outfits or just admire a little fluff bum with no other clothes on J  - See what I mean!!

There is not just one of these factors that really made me want to cloth, it was a bit of all of them combined. It just really made sense for us to do it and thankfully Luke fully agreed once we started looking into it together. He is 110% on board with my cloth diapering adventure.

Let the fun begin!

I am a little late getting this started. I wanted to try and start as soon as we got home from the hospital and started cloth diapering. Obviously it didn’t go quite as planned. This is where I want to share all my cloth diapering experience, the good, the bad, and down right gross! Yes, all diapering is gross in some way.  Through out this whole thing, let me know if you have any questions, either on here or Facebook. I really want to educate people on the whole process and it can become a bit overwhelming. I know that I have several friends who are interested and intrigued by cloth diapering and I want to clear up a lot of the misconceptions. This definitely is not the way your grandmother cloth diapered!

Some of the things I plan to start with are:

Benefits of cloth

Types of diapers – and there are A LOT

Washing/drying/caring for diapers

My daily experiences :)

Bare with me, I plan to start it up in the next few days. Hope you enjoy reading/learning about the cloth diapering experience as much as I enjoy sharing about it! God Bless.