Wow! Thanks 'Becca!
I was really curious about all the solid matter and what you
did with it. Your email thoroughly explained that. With the
liners I guess things are much easier.
Also the "fitted" ones must be easier to deal with than using
pins. I have not done a web search about cloth diapers, so I
am sure a lot has changed.
All we had when I was a baby in Mexico (a long time ago) were
cloth diapers. And that is all I saw used with my little
brother and younger cousins... but we had the really old
fashioned ones, made at home from flannel cloth, and the
liners where a thinner material made of cotton as well, kind
of like cheese cloth... and then there were the pins... and
the outside shells, if used at all, were plastic pull ups.
Perhaps one day I will have a baby and I want to be ready to
take care of it in an environmentally friendly way. I will
keep in touch with you for last minute updates in cloth
diaper technology.
Regarding the washing machine, I think that using the hot
water and the micorbicide are more than enough to get rid of
the bacteria in the poop.
Thanks for sharing!
Luisa
--On 2/23/07 1:27 PM -0500 becca@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Luisa asked for a separate thread on cloth diapers. What
is it that you want to know? I will explain some basics:
Cloth diapers are one category of merchandise that has
benefited vastly from Internet shopping. Lots of them are
made by work-at-home moms who run little online businesses.
Even the factory-made brands are mostly small companies
working in the US and Canada. These little companies have
done a lot of innovating over the past 15-20 years,
introducing many new types of diapers and related
equipment, so a huge variety of choices are available...and
many of them are very cute!! :-)
I always knew I would use cloth diapers because my parents
and most of my extended family did, so I saw it as a
sensible choice financially and environmentally. Also, I
had babysat for disposable-diapered babies and found their
diapers hard to tolerate aesthetically; they just feel so
fake and crinkly, not something I'd want wrapped around my
body! When I tried cloth menstrual pads and found out how
much more comfortable they are than the plastic kind, I was
even more convinced both that I wanted my baby in cloth and
that I could tolerate the extra work involved.
Rather than deal with pins, we decided to buy "fitted"
diapers, which are elasticized and fasten with snaps. They
need a separate waterproof cover; after trying several, we
prefer the type that's made from nylon and pulls on like
underpants. Our initial purchases included one pack of
flushable diaper liners, which we intended to use during
the meconium (gunk that lines baby's intestines before
birth and comes out in the first week and is very sticky)
phase, but we found that they are really really handy for
getting poop off the diaper, so we decided that the
environment could handle an extra sheet of thin unbleached
paper per poop. We also bought washcloths to use as baby
wipes, "doublers" which are extra layers of cloth to
increase diaper absorbency when needed, and some laundry
bags so fabulous they merit a separate paragraph.
These laundry bags or "wetbags" are made of nylon, a bit
thicker than an umbrella. They have a drawstring with
toggle. If you fill one with WATER, there's some leakage
at the seam, and of course if you turn it upside down most
of the water comes out the hole in the drawstringed
opening...but you can fill one with DAMP things and have no
leakage at all! They also contain odors well. Aside from
use with diapers, wetbags have radically improved my life
in situations like bringing home a wet swimsuit. I always
used to use a disposable plastic shopping bag, which often
works just fine, but those tend to tear. Wetbags are
durable and reliable and come in nice colors, too! Like
the nylon diaper covers, they're easily washed with a
squirt of liquid soap and a quick rubbing and rinsing, or
they can go in the washing machine.
We use a large wetbag to line the diaper pail, which is a
kitchen-size stainless-steel trashcan with lid operated by
a foot pedal. It has an interior plastic bin that I take
out and clean every 3 or 4 weeks. My parents always stored
dirty diapers soaking in water in a tightly sealed plastic
pail, and I remember an unpleasant odor every time that was
opened. In my pre-motherhood research, I learned that many
people these days use a dry pail, and it's worked out well
for us. It smells better, and I certainly appreciate not
having to lug 10 gallons of water down the 2 flights of
stairs to the laundry room!
Before changing a diaper, we wet a washcloth using a
"sports" bottle with pop-up spout that we keep on the
changing table. If the diaper is just wet, it and the
washcloth AND the flushable liner go into the diaper pail;
one of the great things about the liners is that, although
they dissolve like toilet paper when flushed (our upstairs
toilet is VERY particular but does not object to them!),
they somehow survive machine-washing and can be used again
up to 4 times or until they get pooped on. If there's
poop, we take the diaper to the toilet and drop in the
liner and all the poop on it. Sometimes the liner shifts
out of place, so some poop gets on the diaper. We have a
plastic scraper (supposed to be for dishes) that we use to
clean it off, but that's our least favorite part! It's not
that poop won't come off in the wash; it's that we prefer
to put as much of it as possible into the toilet rather
than into the washing machine where we wash all our other
laundry as well.
Away from home, we're usually changing in a restroom and
can wet the washcloth in the sink. We keep a small wetbag
in the diaper bag to store used diapers, then put them in
the pail at home.
Every 4th day, I take the wetbag full of diapers out of the
diaper pail and empty them into the washing machine. I run
a presoak cycle with hot water and Bio-Kleen Bac-Out, which
is a natural microbicide. 20 minutes later (or whenever I
get to it) I start a wash cycle with hot water and natural
laundry soap. When that's done, I get the diapers out and
hang them on the drying rack in our laundry room. Two days
later, Nicholas and I take them off the rack into the
basket, and then he puts them into the dryer, and I run a
20-minute "fluff" cycle with no heat. This makes the
diapers softer, and the fluffing of their layers improves
absorbency. (We use a heated dry cycle only if we're
behind schedule and need the diapers before they've had
time to air-dry.)
It's not that hard, and I enjoy handling the clean diapers.
They are so cute and feel like clothing, not like biohazard
containment devices. It's just part of taking care of my
baby.
In addition to the odor difference I mentioned previously,
I'm surprised at how other parents put up with the poor
containment abilities of disposable diapers. I often hear
giggling, eye-rolling stories about the "blowouts" that
result in a complete change of baby's outfit and sometimes
parents' outfits and furniture too! This has never
happened to Nicholas--and he loves beans and fruits, so
it's not that he's producing less messy stuff; it just
stays in his diaper or at least in his diaper cover. I
often hear about toddlers wetting the bed, while wearing a
diaper, because a disposable can't hold as much as their
bladder. We just add extra layers to the diaper for
overnight. So I feel we're using a far superior system!
Our electricity and water bills have increased by only a
couple of dollars a month due to diapers. The change in
the gas bill for the extra hot water is so small we can't
see it. While the IDEA of poop in our washing machine is
gross, the machine doesn't smell bad or seem dirty; we feel
like our regular laundry is as clean as ever.
Any other questions?
---'Becca
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