"But what do you do with the poop?" and other cloth diapering details!
**WARNING: This post talks about [dun dun duuuunnn] POOP!**
When you're a mom, a lot of your life revolves around #2 BMs. Early on, you need to know the frequency, color, consistency, and timing of poo, because it's an easy way for you and your pediatrician to tell if baby is well.This goes for pet moms, too! I don't know how many times my vet and I have discussed my doggo's loggos. haha.
Luckily, with a baby, you change their diapers and wipe their butts all the time, so you become intimately familiar with another person's poo. (See, I bet you didn't look at it as a positive!) If you cloth diaper, you see it more than once, because you change the diaper and later you'll wash it and at least see remnants. And this is the point where cloth diapering mommies get a lot of questions- namely, "what do you do with the poop?!"
Short answer: You toss it or clean it off, or a combination of those two options.
Up until very recently, my son's BMs were completely liquid. They mostly soaked into the diaper or inserts. That left me with only one option- just to wash the whole diaper, inserts and all. Occasionally, it would be thick enough to push some off into the toilet or on a wipe, but not often. That was fine with me; we just put a load of diapers [and only diapers by themselves] in the wash. You can see in this photo (left) the rest of our stash set-up: there are always "diapers on deck" in the green basket that says "love" on it, and the rest of the stash are in the plastic drawers below. I try to keep a good mix of diapers in the basket so they get a good rotation and even use, but my husband and I clearly have favorites. We also have some wipes, spray, butt paste, and lotion in a caddy on the wall within easy reach of his changing table.
We have a Simply Human trash can doubling as our diaper pail (left in photo) because they hold any eau de yuck in pretty well. Once that can fills up (generally after 2-3 days), we take the bag to the washing machine, pull any inserts apart from the diaper shell, and use detergent and a hot water cycle to wash the diapers. A hot water cycle and pretty much any detergent will get out all the mess, and it is perfectly sanitary. I think a lot of people are deterred from cloth diapering because of the poo, but honestly, Baby A.'s pee diapers smell way worse! After the wash cycle, I try to line dry the covers and I put the inserts in the dryer. I have dried my covers in the dryer but some of them seemed to have degraded shells afterwards, so I have been avoiding the dryer when possible.
You can see parts of our process in the photos; on the left are our laundry supplies, including the Mrs. Meyer's Baby Blossom detergent, regular Honeysuckle Mrs. Meyers, and dryer sheets by that same brand. We also will occasionally use a little bleach or oxyclean if we have a lot of smell or obvious staining. We tried some other detergents but we've found these to products to work the best on gentle skin and still have a scent. On the right is our circular hanger, which has worked really well since it holds about 24 diapers with little clips and it can be moved inside or out. Our house does have an actual laundry line that stretches from the other corner of the shed to a tree, but this summer I saw ants going marching one by one all over it, so I haven't used it since then! Outside line drying gets ANY stains out- I'm serious, ya'll, my diapers are more purely white after seeing some sunshine than if I were to dump bleach in there.
Now that Baby A. is eating solids, his BMs are similarly firming up! We have been using Grovia cloth diaper liners, which are these sheets of something like tissue paper that come on a very convenient roll, and we just lay those in his diaper when we change him and we expect a poo. That way, we can just lift that sheet out and all the solid stuff comes with it. There is a toilet right outside his bedroom, so we just pop those in the toilet and flush'em away! If anything makes it to the diaper, it's been pretty easy to wipe it off with the wipe, which can be flushed as well. When he doesn't have solids, we generally use cloth wipes (just wash clothes and a mixture in a spray bottle of coconut oil, peppermint castile soap, and distilled water). Those get tucked into the diaper and tossed in the pail until we do a load of laundry.
The other thing we deal with is poo on the go! As I said in my last post, we generally use our gDiapers when we're on the go, because the disposable inserts you can use with them are easy to throw out or flush. That way, we aren't trucking around with a wet or poopy diaper in our wet bag that takes up a lot of space. Every now and again, we get a wet or dirty plastic pouch from a gDiaper change, and so I still carry a wet bag with me, just in case. Plus, it's always good for messy onesie changes or spit up situations.
You can easily go crazy with accessories when you cloth diaper, which can run up the cost quickly, but you don't NEED all the stuff. For instance, we added a diaper sprayer to our registry. You can install it along with your toilet water line and it comes with a plastic trifold board with a clipboard so you can spray any mess off of your diaper covers right into your toilet. It's very cool and a convenient way to rinse off any extra mess, but our home is older and we couldn't fit the sprayer's attachment line because the space where it needed to go was too cramped.
Really, all you need in the end is your diapers and a method to wash them if you want to cloth diaper your baby. You can even find a diaper service, where you send them out to a service that cleans them for you (probably more accessible in an urban setting). We do use some extra *stuff* to make a few parts of our process, and I definitely spent more than necessary on diapers from A) trying many different brands, B) buying a set of used diapers on Craigslist and getting duped (the lady put the ONE good diaper on the top of the pile and filled the box with crappy ones-pun intended), and C) I bought way too many diapers just because they were cute (see below!) But there are a lot of pluses to cloth, so don't let the poop deter you, 'cause you gotta deal with that either way!
Well, again, I could go on and on about cloth diapering and how it's worked well with our lifestyle...if you have any questions, feel free to message me or comment and I'll do my best to answer!
-Big A.
When you're a mom, a lot of your life revolves around #2 BMs. Early on, you need to know the frequency, color, consistency, and timing of poo, because it's an easy way for you and your pediatrician to tell if baby is well.This goes for pet moms, too! I don't know how many times my vet and I have discussed my doggo's loggos. haha.
 |
| "We're talking about poop again, Mom??" |
Luckily, with a baby, you change their diapers and wipe their butts all the time, so you become intimately familiar with another person's poo. (See, I bet you didn't look at it as a positive!) If you cloth diaper, you see it more than once, because you change the diaper and later you'll wash it and at least see remnants. And this is the point where cloth diapering mommies get a lot of questions- namely, "what do you do with the poop?!"
Short answer: You toss it or clean it off, or a combination of those two options.
Up until very recently, my son's BMs were completely liquid. They mostly soaked into the diaper or inserts. That left me with only one option- just to wash the whole diaper, inserts and all. Occasionally, it would be thick enough to push some off into the toilet or on a wipe, but not often. That was fine with me; we just put a load of diapers [and only diapers by themselves] in the wash. You can see in this photo (left) the rest of our stash set-up: there are always "diapers on deck" in the green basket that says "love" on it, and the rest of the stash are in the plastic drawers below. I try to keep a good mix of diapers in the basket so they get a good rotation and even use, but my husband and I clearly have favorites. We also have some wipes, spray, butt paste, and lotion in a caddy on the wall within easy reach of his changing table. We have a Simply Human trash can doubling as our diaper pail (left in photo) because they hold any eau de yuck in pretty well. Once that can fills up (generally after 2-3 days), we take the bag to the washing machine, pull any inserts apart from the diaper shell, and use detergent and a hot water cycle to wash the diapers. A hot water cycle and pretty much any detergent will get out all the mess, and it is perfectly sanitary. I think a lot of people are deterred from cloth diapering because of the poo, but honestly, Baby A.'s pee diapers smell way worse! After the wash cycle, I try to line dry the covers and I put the inserts in the dryer. I have dried my covers in the dryer but some of them seemed to have degraded shells afterwards, so I have been avoiding the dryer when possible.
You can see parts of our process in the photos; on the left are our laundry supplies, including the Mrs. Meyer's Baby Blossom detergent, regular Honeysuckle Mrs. Meyers, and dryer sheets by that same brand. We also will occasionally use a little bleach or oxyclean if we have a lot of smell or obvious staining. We tried some other detergents but we've found these to products to work the best on gentle skin and still have a scent. On the right is our circular hanger, which has worked really well since it holds about 24 diapers with little clips and it can be moved inside or out. Our house does have an actual laundry line that stretches from the other corner of the shed to a tree, but this summer I saw ants going marching one by one all over it, so I haven't used it since then! Outside line drying gets ANY stains out- I'm serious, ya'll, my diapers are more purely white after seeing some sunshine than if I were to dump bleach in there.
 |
| Steamed zucchini was a hit. |
The other thing we deal with is poo on the go! As I said in my last post, we generally use our gDiapers when we're on the go, because the disposable inserts you can use with them are easy to throw out or flush. That way, we aren't trucking around with a wet or poopy diaper in our wet bag that takes up a lot of space. Every now and again, we get a wet or dirty plastic pouch from a gDiaper change, and so I still carry a wet bag with me, just in case. Plus, it's always good for messy onesie changes or spit up situations.
 |
| Diaper on the left is a Bum Genius (my go-to for overnight) and on the right is a gDiaper. |
Really, all you need in the end is your diapers and a method to wash them if you want to cloth diaper your baby. You can even find a diaper service, where you send them out to a service that cleans them for you (probably more accessible in an urban setting). We do use some extra *stuff* to make a few parts of our process, and I definitely spent more than necessary on diapers from A) trying many different brands, B) buying a set of used diapers on Craigslist and getting duped (the lady put the ONE good diaper on the top of the pile and filled the box with crappy ones-pun intended), and C) I bought way too many diapers just because they were cute (see below!) But there are a lot of pluses to cloth, so don't let the poop deter you, 'cause you gotta deal with that either way!
 |
-Big A.
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