My Rise and Fall in Cloth Diapering

I entered this world a little late. I didn’t start cloth diapering until my second son was about 9 months old.  What got me into it was the fact that I was diapering 2 children and spending a fortune on disposable diapers.  We were looking for ways to cut costs and honestly the spoiled brat in me didn’t want to give up cable.  I researched a little online and found Smartipants.  It really is a chunk of change to get everything you need to do this.  However when you look at what you’ll be saving in the long run, it is definitely worth it.

I got them within a few days  and started diapering my 9 month old Jack with them.  I liked it, they were really cute and seemed to have pretty good absorbency.  I’m going to be honest with you about the poop.  It can be pretty gross, but then again changing a poopy diaper in general whether cloth or disposables is gross.  Usually, I’d just dump the contents into the toilet before throwing the diaper in the diaper hamper.   As far as washing, I’d start with a cold rinse, then a hot wash with my regular detergent, followed by 2 more hot rinses.  Then I’d put them in the dryer.

Jack got a pretty bad diaper rash that required a prescription cream.  I made the mistake of not using a disposable liner while he needed the cream and I ended up getting a build up of diaper ointment and my diapers began to leak and repel.  Not cool, not cool at all.  I also realized that I was using too much detergent there was a build up of that as well, which was also contributing to the leaking and repelling.  I got pretty frustrated considering I’d invested money and time into this and I felt like these diapers were not dependable and just causing more work for me because Jack’s onesies were soaked all the time and James would wake up in the morning with bed sheets full of pee that I’d then have to strip and wash. I broke down and bought a box of disposables to use until I could figure out how to fix the issues with the cloth diapers.

After doing some reading online and chatting with other moms who cloth diapered I realized that there were several mistakes I was making.  I needed to find a cloth diaper friendly detergent.  A lot of regular detergents have softener, perfumes, and other additives that will build up in the diapers and cause them to leak and repel liquid.  I wanted to find a detergent that was sold in stores and not something I’d always have to order online.  I ended up finding a website that had a cloth diapering detergent chart that analyzes many different detergent choices and rates them from best to worst to help you find the best choice.  I also leaned that stripping the diapers with Dawn dish soap would help rid them of the build ups that were causing the leaking.

I did these things and I thought we were getting back on the right track.  Then it seemed that the cloth diaper friendly detergents would make my son break out in a rash.  I started getting more frustrated as I slowly began to have more leaking issues.

Then one morning, I went to get the kids up and they had both wet through their diapers all over their sheets.  My youngest had also pooped and when I went to dump the contents into the toilet it got clogged.  So there I was, urine all over my shirt, urine filled bed sheets to wash, plunging a toilet because of a diaper’s contents.  I looked around at the huge piles of laundry being neglected because my washer was occupied with a load of diapers, and I snapped.  That’s it, I’m done !  I’m going back to disposables for a while because let’s face it…it is just going to be easier for me.  Maybe I’ll give the cloth another shot and try to find a skin friendly/cloth friendly detergent that will help me avoid both the rashes and leaking.  I’ve really got to hand it to all you cloth diapering mommas out there, it’s a lot of work!  One thing I’ll miss, they were so darn cute!

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