The Biggest Myth About Cloth Diapers
Photo: Veer / The Bump
I remember vividly the first time my husband ever changed a diaper. We were visiting my sister and brother in law who had a beautiful new baby girl. As we planned to start a family in the near future, I encouraged my husband to help his brother in law change the baby’s diaper, as he’d never done this before.
Well, you probably know where this one is going.
Not only did the little Miss do more than pee, but she decided to partake in that activity after the diaper was off– all over the nursery, changing table, herself, my brother in law, and my husband. As a novice at baby diapering, I’m pretty sure my husband was about to be sick after witnessing the whole ordeal.
At some point when we become parents we all deal with the inevitable “poopsplosion”. This could be in the car seat, while baby is sleeping, and honestly — probably a few times on your lap. Babies poop. And they poop a lot.
There are not many things you can do to avoid this phenomenon, unless you have a paid, live-in nanny and housekeeper to clean up the messes you deem unsavory. I don’t have any of those services on hand, and I’m guessing most of you don’t, either! As a parent, you just have to plan on being knee-deep in it sometimes because you just love your child that much.
Because of the possible messes involved, when we made the decision to cloth diaper our first child most people we told thought we were nuts. We were asked many questions, like “Wow, do you realize how gross that will be to handle? or But do you realize there will be poop in your washing machine?”
I try to politely answer those people in the kindest way possible, but in the back of my head it just doesn’t make sense to me. If you can find me a parent who has never accidentally gotten poop on themselves (and realized it then, or hours later, more disgustingly!) or never put a soiled item into their washing machine to be cleaned, then please, direct me to that person. If that is possible I must be doing something completely wrong.
Modern cloth diapering can be extremely easy and in our case has proved to be much less prone to poopsplosions than our use of disposables for daycare or grandparents. For a newborn taking only breastmilk or formula, there is often no need to rinse the diapers of solid material prior to a wash. And, with new equipment such as a diaper sprayer and the Spray Pal device, you don’t even have to touch the diapers of an older baby to rinse them.
If you’re on the fence on whether cloth diapering is a possibility for your new (or older) child and your family, I’d recommend giving it a shot. But, if your only hesitation is that you’ll have to deal with soiled diapers, you may consider that nanny and maid — regardless of the diapering style you choose!
What do you think of cloth diapers? Would you use them?
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I never thought of having poop on me being “no big deal” I really didnt think about it while I was pregnant but when it first happened of course I was quick to clean up my DD then my self but I just think back on my pre mommy days and if I had gotten poop on me I would of probably went into panic mode along with some nausea and so forth but with my LO it just dosent seem to bother me. My favorite thing to tell my expecting friends is just wait you will be pooped on and if your lucky you might make it out of the house with out it. Me on the other hand not so lucky! My and my husbands 1st night out of the house I left with a dirty diaper attached to my sweater not noticing until after we had dropped the baby off with the inlaws and was on our way out to eat (thank goodness it was only a wet diaper). The best was one morning I woke up to my daughter playing in her own yes you guessed it poop! It was EVERYWHERE all over her the wall the crib so I turned on the bath water got her all cleaned up and then cleaned the mess well with this happened I was running late for work no time for a shower for mom so I quickly washed off and got ready to go while I was sitting in my office I kept smelling poop and finally found that I had left the house been to the day care and worked nearly and hour with poop on the back side of my arm. Fun time!
We’re doing cloth with our little one due in February! I really don’t see what the big deal is. Explosions happen in cloth and disposables. It gets all over their clothes and those clothes go in the washer, they’re not disposable! And the diaper systems today aren’t much more difficult than a disposable, you just throw it in a pail then the wash rather than the trash can. We just figured since hubby is allergic to at least 15-20 different things (I had him tested…) then it’s best to just get LO off to an “easier”/better start.
LOL @ Celeste! I’ve never had a diaper stuck on me leaving the house, that is too funny! Thank goodness you found it before you got to the restaurant!
[...] The Biggest Myth About Cloth Diapers. [...]
Reblogged this on Los Angeles Surrogacy Center Blog and commented:
Cloth Rocks!
can I print copies of this and give it to skeptics?
I have never had poo escape my cloth diapers, disposables do it all the time. I’d rather wash the 3-4 extra loads a week of diapers than extra daily loads because poop got all over clothes, bedding and seat covers.
I never had a poop explosion in 15 months of cloth diapering. Swear it. We started cloth diapers at 10 days of age and never looked back. I was just annoyed when the breastfed poo would go on the diaper cover (as opposed to staying on the fabric) as I initially thought that I could reuse diaper covers on a newborn while just changing the inserts – then quickly realized that that was simply wishful thinking and bought more covers to change them each time. Still, on a playdate when baby was 4 months and Friend’s was 5 months, she showed me some carseat protector for poop and I looked at her quizzically. My son had spent the whole lunch sitting on my in a ring sling and Friend looked at me wondering how come I was able to ‘risk’ having a baby sitting freely like that without worrying about a mess. We’ve had a bit of pee messes through the leg holes when Baby went through his skinny phase or when the diapers were maladjusted, thus having to change the onesies. But I don’t know what a poop explosion is. I’ve heard the description of poo up the back and poo down the legs and have not experienced it.