cloth diaperers... - Page 2

[Shazer]

So we have DS in Fuzzibunz leftover from his sis and I also bought Gro Baby Diapers to last us until potty training. DS has a rash on his bum that seems to get much redder with the FB. But the GBD are so large on him, that he can't roll around and move like he wants. He honestly seems to be happiest when I don't have a diaper on him and just let him air out. But, this kid pees all the time. Everytime a diaper is off of him, I stick a prefold underneath his bottom and one on top so he doesn't spray everywhere. Both prefolds get soaked during the airing and usually the blanket he is on as well.

I started infant potty training with my daughter when she was 2 months old. I want to wait to start with DS because I am still a tad bit sore from my c/s and am trying to be there for my daughter. But I may have to start sooner given how happy DS is to be free of diapers. During his evening crankiness, he gets so much happier when I take off his diaper.

[Oliver's Mama]

Well I guess I may have a hundred dollars worth of really nice spit rags..
the pediatrician confirmed ds2 has a yeast diaper rash and thrush, and since I've tried every treatment under the sun (literally including sunlight on his bum too) and let him air out 5 hours a day and change diapers constantly, the pediatrician says he may just have very sensitive skin - we all do here- and just can't be against any wetness without breaking out. He's had this rash for the better part of his tiny life. So- the ped was hinting to me that cloth diapers just may not be best for him. (yes, I'd been disinfecting them in the wash) I've tried fleece liners, but they still feel a bit damp too.

Is everyone using cloth wipes with their dipes? I had been, with distilled water (and tried apple cider vinegar and then GSE added) but the pediatrician said homemade wipes can make the rash worse since they're a bit rougher. I figured all the chemicals in sposie wipes were the greater evil, but I guess there's no good wipes fabric out there that would be softer than the premium sposie wipes.

The prefolds come in handy though for catching all the pee and poop when he airs out.. so I guess you can say I'm open-cloth-diapering

[Carita]

we've had yeast 2x - change uber often - that'll help

to kill the yeast in the dipes, use a touch of bleach, an extra hot wash, w/gse and reg vinegar in the rinse

go ahead and do sposies til the rash has cleared - i do that because i use gentian violet and it'll stain

i use tto, lo, & gse in my wipes solution - i find it especially healing for the end stage of yeast.

[Knitting Mama]

I use homemade cloth wipes made from organic bamboo velour-- much softer than sposie wipes!

[LenaC]

We do both cloth and disposable wipes. I can't stand to wipe my toddler's poop with cloth. It seems like one more thing I'd have to rinse. I get Seventh Generation wipes, which are very mild, no yucky strong smells. I get them on Amazon with subscription, so that I don't spend a fortune on wipes. I put some California baby shampoo and coconut oil in my cloth wipes.

[rhiOrion]

so, do any of you who do cloth wipes use a wipe warmer? we have one and dh doesn't like it for disposable wipes, he says it makes them too wet. so i put cloth wipes in there... but they are starting to stink. i know ppl use wipe warmers for cloth, so what's the trick? should i add some tto or something? or just use them faster?

[Knitting Mama]

I've heard of people using the wipes warmer just to hold their water/solution and keep it warm, then dip their wipes in it. We have a wipes warmer that we haven't plugged in yet, so I might try that myself!

[jsh7809]

We were given a wipes warmer but then I realized it's for disposables only, and although we use about half and half right now, I just never got around to hooking it up and I think I"m just going to try to return it for credit (if I can ever make it to a wal mart). We're using a variety of homemade cloth wipes (from fleece and soft baby washcloths) with a solution I made and have in a spray bottle. It has a tiny amount of TTO, a splash of California Baby body wash, maybe a drop of GSE, and mostly water. We spray it on the wipe and then wipe the butt... sometimes she seems mad about the cold, so in theory a wipes warmer would be nice. But everything takes so much effort these days (just got the baby monitor hooked up after almost 3 weeks) that I don't know if it's worth it.
We have also been using disposable wipes because we were gifted a bunch, but I have been getting concerned about her red looking butt, so I bought some alchohol free Lansinoh soothing wipes that seem more gentle and have been using those about half the time. I diluted the homemade solution even more because I started thinking the TTO was making it too raw.
She is also really happy without a diaper or any pants on so I try to give her some time each day without pants or dipes, and at least a few minutes during each diaper change too. We have moved up to NB disposable size (preemie not fitting was very exciting to me!!) and are rapidly depleting our gifted stock of disposables... so I'm excited to try CDing in earnest, but also nervous about how much laundry we are already doing, getting the poop to wash clean, etc. I asked for a retractable clothesline for the yard for mother's day but don't think I'll get it.
Anyway, we have a bunch of prefolds (maybe 30 or more?) but I use at least 5 a day for my leaking boobs... on top of nursing pads. Hopefully that will even out soon!
We'll be using prefolds, snappis, and a variety of covers. I have some all in ones and fitted diapers too in various sizes but I have a feeling the others are just going to seem easier to me...

[rhiOrion]

All of her CDs and all of her clothes fit in one super-sized load, or maybe two medium loads. So I'm not seeing the laundry as being too big of an issue.

Anybody know if there is anything wrong with washing her clothes in the same load as her diapers?

[kittywitty]

Originally Posted by Peace+Hope

anyone else using knitted wool for covers? the two i have that are peace fleece are HOT, and it's in the high 70s here. to be fair, they are also ones a friend made since i was not able to knit for awhile and came up short on covers once he was born. i had not gauged the peace fleece, and just had her use the gauge from a lighter wool i think... so they are a tighter fabric than the others.

Total ddc here, but Cascade Eco and Treliske are great for summer knit soakers.

Originally Posted by Carita

we've had yeast 2x - change uber often - that'll help

to kill the yeast in the dipes, use a touch of bleach, an extra hot wash, w/gse and reg vinegar in the rinse

go ahead and do sposies til the rash has cleared - i do that because i use gentian violet and it'll stain

i use tto, lo, & gse in my wipes solution - i find it especially healing for the end stage of yeast.

My third dc had massive yeast issues. TTO, GSE, and frequent washes with hot water and occasionally sunning the dipes helped and we didn't have problems after that.

[crazyeight]

i guess i'm finally trying to cloth it. the dipes are still a little large looking on him but are fitting better. i still have some NB sposies but the 7th gen's are LEAKING now and they were all gifted anyways. so glad i didn't have to buy AN sposie diapers.

haven't even done one load of diaper wash yet and i'm still worried that they won't come clean here however we're going to move and i really really hope we can get a REAL washer hookup with hot water so i won't have to worry about it. i looooovvve the covers though! so bright and pretty!

one thing though...does anyone think that the huge cloth/harder to bend feel of cloth might be a hinderance in the carseat? i feel like ds can't bend at the hips where he needs to to get his bum IN the carseat. it's a steeper carseat though than i think the others are (its a saftey 1st 35 that goes up to 35 lbs instead of 22 or whatever). i am worried that it could be tweaking his back or hurting his hips.

[ivymae]

kRhi - I wash them separate, though I guess it doesn't matter, since so much of her clothes end up with pee/poop on them (user error, not cloth diaper related). I use different detergent on my clothes than the diapers though (cloth detergent is more expensive than the cheap costco stuff we use on clothes) so that's one thing to consider..

We use cloth wipes in the warmer, with Baby Bits. If we just use water they get funky. We just put in dry wipes, make a big bottle of wipes solution, and wet down the ones in the warmer, adding more solution from the bottle if they get dry. We do go through our wipes within two to three days though, so if they were to stay ion there longer they may still get funky with the wipe solution, but i don't know. We do use disposable wipes for the diaperbag (I've never found a efficient way to carry cloth wipes, other than a plastic baggie, and I've had too many of those unzip in my bag) and I just buy the Target brand.

I'm still waiting on a package to beef up my stash, so we're using disposables off and on, and ugh, I hate the powdery smell. No matter the brand, they all just smell weird to me. *crossing my fingers that the box comes today so i have enough diapers for more than a day*

[rhiOrion]

Hmm, we use the same detergent for both. Right this second it's all free and clear, but generally it's Purex. I suppose I'll keep doing them together. It makes more sense to me to do one large load rather than two small loads.

[Knitting Mama]

I've only been cloth diapering part time, but so far I just wash everything together. I do a vinegar prewash (vinegar in the dispenser where the prewash detergent would go) anyway, so I think that takes care of washing away the poop before the actual wash cycle.

[sanguine_speed]

[rhiOrion]

How often do you guys change your LO per day? In sposies? In cloth?

Because all of the price analysis that I see on sposies vs cloth talks about changing a newborn 12 times per day.

I don't change L anywhere near 12 times per day!

Am I the world's worst mother? She isn't bothered by being wet, especially in disposables. I don't want to wake a content, peaceful, sleeping baby to change her diaper unless I hear a poop. She hasn't had any signs of diaper rash. Plus she frequently pees as soon as the diaper comes off, so I just toss the prefold that's under her into the laundry... maybe I should count that as a diaper change, in which case I'm probably changing her 12 times.

I do change her more frequently in cloth, but still not 12 times per day. For one thing, I've been doing disposables at night, and unless there is poop involved, I generally only change her once during the night.

If I had to guess I'd say I probably change her maybe 8 times per day, maybe. That's only one extra hour between each changing, on average. But now I'm starting to feel like a bad parent.

[Knitting Mama]

I think I'm with you around 8. I also refuse to wake her to change her, especially because she hasn't been sleeping much lately. Neither pees or poops seem to irritate her.

[Pepper44]

Ada wakes up every single time she has to pee, so I change her a lot. We're going through at least 3 dozen diapers every two days! It's crazy. (Some of them are used from when she's naked and she pees or poops, or they get dirty when I lay her down on a prefold after pottying her.)

I don't wash diapers and clothes together just because I wash the diapers a lot longer. I do a cold soak for an hour or so, then the short prewash, and then the hot wash with an extra rinse. We have extremely hard water, so it's harder to get them clean it seems. I have to use Calgon.

We use Purex free and clear detergent. I don't think it's the best, but it works ok since we're just using fitteds and prefolds. I think you have to be more careful for pockets and diapers with synthetic fabric because of the way they get build-up. (By the way Rhi, I read that All free and clear has brighteners that can cause some diapers to leak over time. I'm not sure how true that is, the detergent choices are so confusing!)

[Carita]

we are like pepper - we change every hour or more on avg except only 1x/in the middle of the night, so maybe about 16 diapers/day? My understanding is that sposies even say on the package to change every 2 hrs. anyway, dd really doesn't sleep much. i am lucky if se gets an hr at a time, so there's no issue with waking her up. she hates being wet, so she won't nurse or sleep unless she's dry, so i have to change her after every pee.

[rhiOrion]

Ohh, pepper, good to know about the brighteners in the all free and clear. I want to take good care of these diapers because they're not mine! I usually use purex, but all happened to be on sale. Maybe i'll get some purex free and clear for her laundry