A stinky little secret

I've posted before about how much I love cloth diapering. I really do - it's great. And most of the time if the subject comes up, either in my blogging or in conversation, I find myself being a great big cheerleader. I guess it's because I don't want to say anything negative, just in case someone is on the fence about giving cloth a try.

But let's face it! I don't think there are that many people on the fence. Most people I meet are either cloth diapering and loving it, or using disposables and loving it. So I'm not worried that what I'm about to post is going to change anybody's mind. Although, I do hope it won't give the cloth-diaper-haters ammunition to use against us cloth-diaper-lovers. No hating, please!

My secret is: my cloth diapers have got a case of the stinkies. They smell just fine coming out of the washer - like nothing at all, which is exactly how they're supposed to smell. They smell fine once dried, too, whether I dry them outside or in the dryer. But once they're wet, they get stinky pretty quick. When the diapers were new, they would only smell very faintly of fresh pee when I took them off Katie. Now they're a little more likely to have ammonia-funk-smell. And gone are the days of being able to go three days between washes - the diaper pail gets pretty ripe after two days!

So, it's time to strip them. I've been really lucky so far - this is only the third time I've stripped diapers in almost 2 1/2 years. so really that's not so bad. Unfortunately, my internet research has turned up 10,000 different methods on how to strip diapers. I am lucky to have the absolute easiest diapers to strip - cotton prefolds. I've heard that synthetic fabrics hold stink a lot more, thus have to be stripped more often. Not so with cotton. Plus, my prefolds don't have any waterproof fabric attached, so I can toss them into a pot and boil them. All-in-ones or pocket diapers often have the waterproofing attached, and it can melt if exposed to high temperatures.

So Katie is in her crib for naptime (although she's definitely not asleep yet) and I have just put a big pot of water on the stove to boil. I'll add 2-3 diapers at a time once it's boiling, and boil them for 5 minutes or so. Then I'll cool them off in a colander, wring them and hang them outside. I know it sounds pretty arduous, but a) I'm only boiling a dozen diapers, so it won't take long, and b) there's something about boiling laundry that makes me feel like a pioneer woman. This is great, because I can get that homesteading feeling with a project that will probably take less than an hour and won't create any additional mess for me to clean up. Yay for that!

Got any household rituals that take you back to our homesteading roots?

a dark secret...

So you probably know I'm a big crunchy hippie when it comes to diapers.  I love cloth*, and I also practice EC with my daughter (aka Infant Potty Training.)

But I have a dark secret.

For many months now, I've been using - cue dramatic music - a disposable diaper on Katie overnight.  I didn't want anything to interfere with her sleep, since we were trying to get her to sleep through the night.  I wasn't sure if that wet-diaper feeling was waking her up.

Now that sleep is going pretty well, I'm inching closer to going back to cloth at night. Know why? Coz those damned disposables LEAK! I'm so tired of changing all of her layers of clothing in the morning, and sometimes her sheet too!

In preparation for the eagerly-awaited jump back to cloth, I bought my first wool diaper cover.  If my research is correct, wool is supposed to be the absolute best thing for night.  It sounds insane, not to mention itchy.  How can wool keep Katie dry with no plastic or laminated fabric?

The answer, I'm told, is in the lanolin.  When you buy a wool diaper cover, you have to "lanolize" it before using it.  The lanolin is antibacterial, neutralizes odors, and helps the wool absorb the pee.

But lanolizing is a pain in the butt and I *totally* screwed it up by using about 10 times more lanolin than I should have.  I've had to strip the darned thing repeatedly, and it still feels sticky.  Fail!

So we shall see.  I think tonight may be the night!  I'm going to put her in an Under the Nile fitted cotton diaper, with the sticky wool cover over it, and hopefully the whole thing will fit under her pajamas.  I'll post a picture if she looks like a stuffed sausage.

Fingers crossed!!!!

*Yes, the jury is out about whether cloth is really THAT much more eco-friendly than disposables.  I intend to post about this someday; for now, I think it's safe to say that cloth is at least a little better for the baby, if not for the planet.  ;)

Diapering is SO overrated!

My husband and I gave a lot of thought to cloth vs. disposable diapering before our daughter was born. I convinced him to give cloth a try, with the stipulation that after she started eating solids, we could switch to a diaper service if things got too icky.  Or just give up cloth entirely!  We remembered Bill Cosby's standup routine about baby poo - how it's just sooo cute in the beginning and then BAM!!  Not so cute anymore!  Lol.

Lucky for us, I came across an article about the top 10 things you don't need to buy for a baby.  On the list were things like a baby bathtub, baby lotions/shampoos, a stroller, baby food, and a couple other items I can't remember...and diapers.  I did a double-take. I was expecting them to say disposable diapers, but no!  The list item was "Diapers." Period.  The article went on to explain that in many parts of the world, especially poorer countries where access to laundry services is limited, parents don't put their babies in diapers.  This blew my mind!  What do they do about the near-constant pee and poo, I wondered?  They potty train their babies from birth, that's what!  At first glance, I thought this was absolutely insane.  But I kept reading.  The more I read, the more sense it made.

Elimination Communication, or Infant Potty Training, is actually a gentle, no-pressure way to communicate with your baby about his/her potty needs.  In other words, you can teach your baby to let you know when it's time to potty.  It's not even difficult!  The theory is that babies naturally prefer NOT to sit in their own waste (um, who would?) and have a great deal of awareness of their potty needs, even at birth.  The trick is to figure out a way for baby and parent to communicate, so they can work together to get pottying done on the potty instead of in a diaper!

Anyway, I can't do this premise justice the way this book can: The Diaper-Free Baby by Christine Gross-Loh.  Suffice it to say that I tried it with Katie and it WORKED!!!  We do what's called "part-time" EC, and we use cloth diapers as a backup.  So for us, Katie wears diapers all the time, but whenever it's time to change her, I offer her a "potty-tunity."  I sit her on the potty and make a "cue" sound that she recognizes.  If she pees, great!  If not, no problem.  Then we change her diaper and that's it.  Often her diaper is dry when I put her on the potty, so we just put it back on.  Couldn't be easier!  Oh, and now that she knows some sign language and words, she tells me "Poo!" and makes the "poo" sign, and I whisk her off to the potty and she poops!  NO MORE CHANGING POOPY DIAPERS!

I wish I could tell every person in the world about this.  It's the greatest thing ever!!!!  And, if all goes according to plan, it should make potty training (REAL potty training, I mean) much easier.  She already knows that pee and poo are supposed to go in the potty.  She's not afraid of the potty.  She doesn't even mind me flushing it.  If she had the dexterity to take her pants off and climb onto the toilet, she could do it herself!  Woohoo!