Cloth Diapering and Solid Foods

Back when The Fish was still EBF (exclusively breastfed), I mentioned that the rules for formula fed and solid fed babies are different than the rules of diapering an EBF baby.

Now that we've been feeding solids for nearly 4 months, I can weigh in on how our diaper routine has changed.

I have a little 1 gallon bucket that I keep beside his changing table. If he poops, the diaper along with all of the poopy cloth wipes go into the bucket until I get a minute to spray them out. Once they are rinsed, I dump them into his main pail. This system has worked fine for us. I will say that the sooner you get around to spraying the diaper, the less work it is. That probably goes without saying, but I just thought I'd throw that out there.

We have the Flo diaper sprayer. I haven't tried any of the other brands, but it does the job. I think it was about $50. There are cheaper brands out there and there are ways to make your own with a kitchen sprayer, but this one's spray power is pretty adjustable and it's easy enough to use.

The first time my husband installed it, the instructions that came with it left out some details that caused the sprayer to leak a little. We did a little googling and found what the problem was and haven't had any problems since. It comes with everything you need to install it (including the flexible line that connects the toilet to the water source), so you don't need to purchase anything else with this brand (aside from maybe a wrench of some sort). One "con" is that you have to shake the water out of the spray head before you put it away after each use or it will drip a nice little puddle on the bathroom floor. The second time my husband installed it (we just moved), he had it all put together in a jiffy, so it seems pretty easy once you overcome the questionable instructions. Totally worth the $50.

We are no longer on a septic system, but I still haven't tried the flushable diaper liners. I'm used to spraying his diapers anyway, so I just don't see the need. Plus, I think often enough he would...how can I put this...exceed the limits of the liner with the masterpieces he makes for me, and I would end up needing to spray parts of his diaper anyway. They are probably a great idea for people who travel with cloth diapers or people with babies who are less ambitious poopers.

Fun bonus! I don't know how this happened, but somehow blogger sees some of my pics as .gifs. Isn't this Harry Potter-esque?

The Demystified Diaper Dilemma

The funk came back. I thought it was a goner, but the funk came back...

I discussed my particular issues with my local diaper experts and they said they thought that my diapers just weren't getting enough water in the rinse to get all of the detergent out. When you don't get all of the detergent out, you get ammonia buildup in diapers = stink! This is a common problem with high efficiency washing machines. The usual "fix" is to throw a wet towel in with the diapers to add weight to the machine and trick it into adding more water.

I had tried doing that (along with nixing the "spin" in my prerinse cycle), but I was still having trouble.

Not only that, but some of my diapers have kind of yellowish brown patches on them that particularly seem to stink. And no, it's not poop. That was a little more mystifying than the smell. Not even the experts were sure of what that was. You can kind of see what I'm talking about on the diaper on the right.



I also picked up some Rockin Green detergent. It's maybe the most popular detergent amongst cloth diaper users because it rinses clean, is all natural, gentle, smells great, and it has cute little gimmicky scent names (Motley Clean, Smashing Watermelons, Barenaked Babies), etc. I thought that since my detergent wasn't rinsing out, maybe a more clean rinsing version would do better.



Then my washing machine died. Lovely, but it might be the best thing that has happened to my diaper routine because I think I've figured out the problem.

The machine wasn't letting enough water in. Even for an HE machine, it wasn't letting enough water in. And it was cutting off in the middle of the rinse cycle. Not only that, but when the repair guy came, he detached the hose that lets water into the machine to check the water pressure, and the clean water that was going into the machine was BROWN! (Umm...hello brown patches on diapers!) Ah the joys of well water! They are supposed to repair it today and I will be anxious to see what kind of difference it makes.

In the meantime we have been back in disposables and back to leaky nighttime ("12 hour"...yeah right!) diapers. Not only that, but I've had dirty diapers sitting in the pail for 3 days now and that is driving me absolutely nuts. I can't wait for it to be fixed!

Linked up here:

In Which I Conquer my Fear of Diaper Stripping

You may recall that I'm terrified of having to strip diapers. Well you know what happens when you announce something like that publicly? Yep. I had to strip diapers last week.

Apparently you're supposed to strip diapers from time to time to help get rid of any mineral/ammonia/detergent that has built up in the diapers over time. We were over five months in and I had never stripped them. It was a good run.

If you Google stripping diapers, you will see that there are a million different ways it can be done. What works for one person may yield dismal results for another person. There are many factors to consider when figuring out how best to strip your diapers. Do you have hard or soft water? A traditional or HE washing machine? Do your diapers smell funny straight out of the wash? Do they smell poopy/fishy/ammonia-y?

I mean they're diapers. A care routine shouldn't be this complicated.

I wasn't really sure what I was dealing with, but The Baby Fish was starting to get some red patches in his diaper area, there was a weird smell that I just couldn't put my finger on (not poopy, not ammonia-y, just kind of moldy) when I took the diapers out of the washer, and his first diapers in the morning could fell a horse. I figured the morning diaper thing was just because he sleeps for 12 hours at night (please don't let me jinx myself) and nothing about 12 hour old warm pee SHOULD smell good, but the other issues were nagging at me.

I called my trusty diaper store and they suggested these two products:



The Bac-Out has live enzymes that eat up organic matter that is in the diaper and the Funk Rock is a natural ammonia bouncer.

Before I used those things, I attempted stripping them with blue Dawn dish soap. I was a little scared that I would come back to suds cascading out of the machine and down the stairs, so I didn't use very much.

I didn't notice any difference in the diapers after using it.

Then I tried the Funk Rock. Still no difference.

Then I tried the Bac-Out. I tried it once in the washer and didn't notice a difference. Then I dumped all of the diapers in the bathtub and soaked them in hot water with a good amount of Bac-Out overnight. In the morning, I washed them as usual (you really want to make sure you've rinsed all of the Bac-Out from the diapers before putting them on the baby so the enzymes don't attack the baby's skin). Still stinky.

So I did what I've heard you're never supposed to do.

I used bleach.

Bleach will void some diaper warranties, so I don't necessarily suggest it, but I did remove all of my diapers that have PUL before using bleach, so I was left with prefolds and a few fitteds. Then I rinsed, rinsed, rinsed.

It did the trick! Even that strong early morning pee smell is GONE. (I seriously stuck my head in the diaper pail the other morning to make sure and I couldn't smell anything! Ha!)

I've since read that using up to 1/4 cup of bleach in the wash once a month or so will not void most warranties, so I may do it every now and then just to keep them fresh.

In the meantime, I am going to try using the Bac-Out and the Funk Rock occasionally to try to keep buildup down.

I will say that we turned to disposables for a few days while I experimented with all of these stripping techniques and I was so glad to be back in cloth when it was all over. If you've only ever used 'sposies, you probably don't notice the chemical + pee smell, but I challenge you to use cloth for a little bit and then go back to disposables. It really is a strong chemical odor. The little trashbag of wet disposables that had only been sitting for one day was almost nauseating. His newly stripped diapers could sit wet in his room for two days and you wouldn't even know they were there.

Linked up here:

Prepping

If you're going to be using natural fiber diapers, you will want to prep your diapers before you use them.

Prepping involves washing and drying the diapers several times before you use them to remove natural oils and help the fabric gain absorbency.  You will want to use a small amount of detergent at least the first couple of times to help remove the oils.  After that, you don't really have to use detergent.  I didn't know that, so I used detergent each time.  Either way works.

If you're using cotton prefolds, your diapers will come out of the package nice and flat and smooth, but when they are fully prepped, they will shrink some and quilt up and look like this...





The more you wash/dry them, the more pee they'll hold.  I think I washed mine 6-7 times before I called it good.

I have a few hemp diapers too, and while they also need to be prepped, they will not quilt up like the ones in the picture.  I found that I didn't wash them as many times to prep them (maybe just because I was so over prepping by the point that we introduced hemp into our stash).  You'll notice that hemp takes a long time to dry.  It gets better once they're fully prepped!  Hemp just holds a lot more liquid than cotton, so the drying time will be different.  Now that mine are fully prepped, they dry in the same amount of time as my cotton diapers.  I don't know how that happened, but I'm not complaining.

If you want to use cloth and you haven't had your baby yet, I highly recommend doing the prepping before the baby comes.  Trust me when I say that washing the same clean load of laundry over and over again 6 times is not going to be your idea of a good time when you're dealing with a newborn and all of the challenges that come along with adjusting to a new baby.  You'll just be happy if you have any clean clothes to put on your own body and you won't want to waste your precious time and energy on prepping.  At least that's how it went for me.

If your baby is already here, you can wash the diapers with some of your regular laundry when prepping them provided you are using cloth diaper safe laundry detergent and your clothes can be washed in hot water. Also, remember, NO FABRIC SOFTENER!  In fact, if your clothes have fabric softener in them from a previous wash, I wouldn't wash diapers with them.  That may be a little extreme, but we are completely fabric softener free now because I'm terrified of having to strip diapers.  Like I needed a new phobia...

Diaper Laundry

I was kind of intimidated by the laundry aspect of cloth diapers before we got started.  It wasn't that I minded the idea of an extra load of laundry every day, it was just that there are rules regarding diaper laundry.  It's really not so bad though, and once you figure it out, you always do it the same way, so you form a routine and it becomes second nature.

My routine goes something like this.

1.  Take Wet bag with dirty diapers and dump them into the washer.  Turn the wet bag inside out and toss it in with the diapers (never touching the dirty diapers!)
2.  Run a cold rinse cycle with no detergent.  This dissolves the poop and keeps it from getting baked into the diapers.
3.  Run a hot wash cycle with a small amount of detergent and do an extra rinse.  On my washer, I can specify that I want an extra rinse without having to restart the washer.  The hot cycle cleans the diapers and the extra rinse makes sure you've removed all of the detergent.  Failing to remove the detergent can make diapers stink, and nobody likes a stinky diaper.
4.  Toss clean diapers into the dryer.  Never use fabric softener on diapers because it will waterproof them.  We use wool dryer balls instead (here's a tutorial for making your own!).  They reduce drying time, so that's an added bonus.  I do hang up our covers to dry because putting them in the dryer can wear out the elastic faster.  On the other hand, putting the covers in the dryer occasionally can help make the waterproof layer stronger and can help strengthen the Aplix.  Don't ask me how.  Basically, do whatever you want in regards to drying covers.

*Note:  If you're super eco-conscious and not lazy like I am, you can line dry your diapers.  Besides the obvious benefit of saving energy, hanging diapers in the sun to dry removes stains like magic!  The Baby Fish is not at all embarrassed by his stained diapers.

That's it!  Then you can fold them (or not) and start all over.

We have an HE washer, and some people with HE washers have to "trick" their washer into using enough water to clean the diapers well, but we haven't had to do that.  If you have an old school washer, you'll be able to adjust the amount of water you use, so you won't have to worry about it.

You also can't use just any detergent.  I use Ecos Free and Clear simply because I found it on this list and it was readily available at my local grocery store.  I think the big container I got of it was $8 and I use so little per load that it lasts forever.

You will also want to be careful about which diaper creams you use when cloth diapering (petroleum based ointments can waterproof diapers).  One benefit to cloth is that babies tend to have less diaper rashes than in disposables.  However, we have a sensitive boy and we keep cream on his rear at all times.  Here is a list of acceptable diaper creams.  The one we've found to be available at regular stores like Target and Babies R Us is California Baby Diaper Cream.  It is the only one we've used so far, but I do have another brand on standby for when his current tube runs out!

The Scoop about Poop

In my first post, I mentioned that the cloth diapering rules are a little different for formula fed and food eating babies than for breast fed babies.  In a couple of months, I will be feeding The Fish solids and I will be able to weigh in from experience, but for now, this is all based off of research.  I like to research.  :)

Here's a little science lesson aside:

Breast milk poop is water soluble because breast milk is digested so completely that baby just doesn't leave much behind.  It's mostly water by the time it makes its grand exit.  Babies' systems aren't as efficient at digesting formula, so more of it turns into waste and it tends to be much more stinky and less watery. 

*disclosure* I've also heard people say you don't have to rinse off formula poo. There seem to be varying ideas about that and I have no experience with formula poo, so I can't verify that. *

Aren't you glad you stopped by for that highly technical little nugget of information?

Anyway, the good news is that even if your baby isn't breastfed, you can still cloth diaper and it's probably easier than you think.

The difference is that you can't just toss a poopy diaper into a pail.  You need to plop the poop off into the toilet first.  If the poop isn't a ploppable (I can make up words if I want to) consistency, there are a few different ways to get the poop into the toilet.

You could go old school and dunk the diaper in the toilet (gross!)
You can keep a spatula or some other tool of your choosing in the bathroom for this special purpose (slightly less gross!)
You can invest in a handy dandy diaper sprayer and spray your troubles away (ding ding ding!  We have a winner!)

Diaper sprayers run around $40-$50 and there are several brands available.

We have the Flo Diaper Sprayer, but we haven't installed it yet.  It looks fairly simple to install, but we haven't needed it yet and we are procrastinators.

If you need a cheaper option and you're handy, I've heard that you can take a regular kitchen sink sprayer and use it as a diaper sprayer.  Look, I even found a tutorial for you! You're welcome.

If that all just seems like a little too much, there is another option.  There are several different brands of diaper liners on the market.  These are little disposable pieces that you place on the diaper so that when poop happens, you just pull off the liner and flush the liner + poop away.  If you go this route, you will follow the same diaper routine as breastfed babies once you remove the liner.  Easy peasy.

I have not found any liners that I felt comfortable about flushing since we have a septic system, otherwise, I would consider using them.


Technically you're not supposed to dispose of human waste in the trash (some disposable diaper packages even say you're supposed to plop the poop in the toilet before disposing of the diaper) due to the risk of contaminants getting into the ground water.  I don't know anyone who does that, but luckily, I think developed countries have well designed landfills that mitigate this risk.