Pooooooooop

[Contents: poop and ways of dealing with it; menstruation and related products]

Not my poop, although there is a whole lot we could talk about with being pregnant and what that does to one's digestive system. Baby poop.

So, babies poop. Kind of a lot. And pee. Kind of a lot. So you kind of need some way to deal with that business.

And oh my Maude, y'all, there are some STRONG. FUCKING. OPINIONS. out there about how to do that.

My opinion can be summed up as follows: look it holds bodily waste, so long as it does a good job containing that, whatever you choose is fine.

I do personally really like cloth diapers. Super cute! Supposed to be better for the environment! Soft and can cause fewer rashes! Did I mention cute! We are cloth diapering The Kid while at home (mostly - sometimes we use disposables, and we definitely use disposables while out of the house) and y'all, I really really do like cloth diapering The Kid. This post is mostly about why, what I like, and the concerns people have with cloth diapering.

There's a lot of bullshit that goes along with cloth diapers, including some of the OMG CHEMICALS ARE SO HORRIBLE WHY WOULD YOU LET ANY TOUCH YOUR BABY crowd (newsflash: everything, literally, on this earth is chemicals). Which, seriously, can we please stop trying to promote our positions by shaming the other position or position. (Unless the other position is something like "people don't need food" or p much anything else in the US Republican platform; then shame away.) So while I totally understand not wanting to do it because of that, there are a lot of nice things about cloth diapers, too.

One of the nicest things about cloth diapers is that if you are running out? It's a pretty easy fix - LOAD OF LAUNDRY. Admittedly, you can't just throw your diapers in with whatever other clothes need washing; they need to be a separate load. And it takes longer, because you have to pre-soak and then extra rinse and blah blah blah. And you can't throw all of them in the dryer. But hey! They ARE washable! If you have your own washer and dryer like us, you can be in your pjs! It can be midnight! Doesn't matter, you can have more diapers ready to go without having to get dressed, go to the store, deal with people, and come home.

For those who are now going OMG POOP IN YOUR WASHER, well, baby clothes and sheets and blankets frequently get poop, pee, spit-up, and drool all over them. And what do you do when that happens? You wash them. Same thing. Also, once the kid is eating solids and is pooping actual poop instead of the watery loose stool you get from formula or breastmilk, you shake the poop off in to the toilet and flush it. Our washer does not smell like poop, and we've been cloth diapering for like six weeks now. Our clothes do not smell like poop either (unless they have been freshly pooped on, which, for a while, The Kid liked to poop in that thirty seconds of not having a diaper on for a diaper change, and you would be amazed at how far a three-week old infant can launch poop. It is truly terrifying.).

The diapers also don't smell like poop or pee, they smell like clean cotton. One of the challenges of cloth diapering can be getting them clean. Depending on your water and washing machine, what detergent you use, what materials your diapers are made out of (we are only using cotton and waterproof PUL covers), this can be a challenge and require lots of trial and error. There's also about eight zillion recommendations online, making things even more confusing. I was lucky enough to hit on a good combination the first try, so that's what we do. Some people recommend special detergents; I have found that the all Free & Clear detergent we normally use works just fucking fine, thanks. It does take longer to wash and dry a load of diapers than normal laundry. It takes two wash cycles - a prewash, and then a super-long wash cycle with an extra rinse. They also take a longer dry cycle, because we have mostly flats but some prefolds, as well as some doublers, and since the prefolds and doublers are thicker, they take longer to dry.

But once the diapers are clean and dry, it takes maybe five minutes for me to fold and prep the entire load? Most of the time The Kid is laying on the bed next to me, watching in utter fascination. (Folding laundry is like a fucking AIR SHOW for infants.) Changing the diapers is no more complicated either. The covers are the same shape as disposables, and are applied the same way. They close with either hook-and-loop tabs or snaps. We do use cloth wipes with the cloth diapers, and that's easy too - there's a stack of clean wipes next to a bowl filled with water that has a touch of baby wash added to it. Dip the wipe, squeeze it out, apply to baby bottom. The wipes then get washed with the diapers. They're also super fucking absorbent, so like when The Velociraptor pees in the middle of a diaper change, hey, let's use a dry wipe to soak up the extra that landed on the changing pad, YEAH. And if it takes me a dozen wipes to clean up poop, WHO CARES, they just get washed.

Cloth diapers are bulkier than disposables. Some cloth is bulkier than others (this is why I have my favorite covers and usually use flats, but that's a subject for a whole other post). I have found that generally, I have not had to size up The Kid's clothes to account for this. If it fits them while wearing a disposable, it fits them while wearing cloth. Their butt looks bigger, but that's about it.

Also, we have not had any problems with leaks with the cloth diapers, even when The Kid went to sleep for the night way earlier than we expected and slept in a cloth diaper. We've had one poop leak in disposables, and one in cloth, so it's less the cloth and more OMG SO MUCH POOP. Because leaks happen, no matter what kind of diaper you use. The cloth diapers we are using - flats or prefolds in waterproof covers - work really, really well, y'all.

Finally, once we started cloth diapering The Kid, while the amount of laundry we did went up (and probably our gas bill, because we do use hot water), the amount of trash went WAY THE FUCK DOWN. Pre-baby, we generated one bag of trash per week. We are back to that now, from about 3 bags per week. This, I like, because I don't take out the trash, and trying to stuff yet another dirty diaper in the trash when it's already full is no fun. We also are not scrounging to find any sort of plastic bag to put dirty diapers in. It's way better for us.

Also did I mention cute? I mean, how can you argue with a cow-print diaper? Or dinosaurs? Or little birds? I mean seriously.