Cleaning Cloth Diapers

via raisingarrowsdotcom

So, besides poop (my husband's top concern), the next natural concern with cloth diapering is laundry.

You may ask: how should I wash my diapers? I will preface my response with this is what work for us. Keep in mind that each diaper brand has their own recommended washing instructions and not following these instructions may void any warranties those companies offer. Also keep in mind that every brand we use has different washing instructions, and I personally do not find it feasible to wash them in separate loads. So, this is what works for us:

Type of Soap: We use whatever dye/perfume-free detergent we use on the rest of our clothes and our baby's clothes (which is usually the cheapest and can change from month to month - this month, I think we are using All Free and Clear). Some folks swear by Charlie's Soap or Rockin' Green and even BumGenius (the maker of my favorite diaper) makes their own soap. I have tried samples of all three (free with my online diaper purchases!), but could never bring myself to spend the money on a full size product of them. I could just see this being one more thing to explain to my husband (how much to use per load, "remember, this is just for the diapers"...). And not to throw him under the bus, but I still have to remind him to adjust load size and temperature on our regular laundry loads. I do, however, squirrel away these samples to take with us when we travel, since you never know what kind of detergent will be available. You will want to avoid anything "oxy" or with anything extra included, since the former can break down the diaper materials and the latter can build up on the diapers, reducing their absorbency.

via naturalparentsnetworkdotcom

The load: You will use about a quarter of the detergent you would use for the same size load of laundry. Lots of brands recommend a cold rinse, then a hot wash, then an extra cold rinse. Again, I can't bring myself to do use that much water, or wait around to add the detergent, etc. I wash my diapers on warm, with an extra rinse. I generally round up the load size, too, just to make sure everything gets rinsed clean. You'll want to make sure the laundry tabs are secured. On aplix (Velcro) closure diapers, there is a place to stick the diaper tabs onto themselves, so you don't end up with one long chain of diapers all stuck to each other after a wash (this can make the tabs less sticky). Also, for pocket diapers, you'll want to make sure you have removed the insert before washing. Some diapers will claim that the inserts will agitate out during the wash. I haven't found this to be the case.

Extras: A couple of times a month I add a generous splash (</= 1/4 cup) of bleach to the water in my load of laundry to help with the smell when my nose starts to detect a wet diaper. I haven't seen any damage or fading. Also I have heard (and plan to employ this soon) that a couple drops of dish soap in the wash is one method for 'stripping' diapers. Generally, diapers become more absorbent the more you wash them, but depending on your water and what you are washing them in you may need to 'strip' the diapers of any build up (much like when you can tell you need to switch shampoos for a while...).


This is pretty much exactly what our laundry room
 looks like on diaper day.
via clothdiaperblogdotcom



Drying: Most of my diaper components can go in the dryer. The four Rump-a-Rooz pocket diaper outers (that I use for overnight) don't. Those I lay right on the drying rack. The inners do go in the dryer with all the other diapers. This is one rule I play according to the manufacturers' suggestions, since I don't want any precious pieces to melt (and, honestly, because it doesn't require any extra work to move some of the pieces to the drying rack versus the dryer as I unload the washer). I will say, that though the BumGenius Elementals are my favorite diapers to use, they do take the longest to dry (I think the FreeTime diapers coming out this December may be better on this point, but I'll elaborate on pros/cons of diaper types in another post). Depending on how much time I have I may run a second dryer cycle, or I may just hang up the diapers to air dry the rest of the way. If the weather is nice you may choose to do this outside in the sunshine, which will speed things up and take care of any pesky stains, too.

Frequency: We currently wash twice a week (usually Sunday and Wednesday). We washed 3-4 times per week before M was one, and going through many more diapers per day.

Trash can with a loose-fitting lid
via PlanetWisedotcom

Other equipment: To manage your laundry you are going to need a diaper pail with liner, and a wet bag. For a pail we use a 'dry' system which consists of a liner (like this one from Planet Wise) in an open top trash can (the alternative is a 'wet' system where you soak diapers until your next load. I can't think of a reason why this is actually necessary?). If I were starting from scratch I probably would get a trash can with a loose-fitting lid, but we sometimes put a drop of tea tree oil on a burp cloth and lay it over the top. You'll need the wet bag (like this) for when you are out and about (if you leave a wet diaper in a plastic bag for very long, it is likely to mildew). Perhaps you will want an extra of either of these, but we make do with one each.

Warning to any expecting moms out there: babies require a LOT of laundry, whether you are using cloth diapers or not. The first few weeks we had our little guy home we must have done a load of laundry every day as we all changed outfits often (which is probably the next best thing to the showers we didn't have time for). And its true that cloth diaper laundry is additional to do a couple times a week. I would say that we really have it in our routine at this point, and don't notice it at all. Occasionally, we forget to do it, so we use our back-up disposables with only minor guilt.

Wow: looking back on the length of this post, you might think that caring for cloth diapers is difficult, but really it isn't. Spending a few minutes on mini-research for how to care for your diapers up front is worth it... as it similarly would be for any new garment you purchase. They'll last longer and perform better. And once you know, you won't spend a second more on this load than you would any other load of laundry.

Learning to Breastfeed in Public - the Mommy Group

About the third week home, I decided the baby and I were ready for our first field trip. The hospital where we delivered offered a mommy group that met once a week, to let moms bond with each other and compare notes, and to ask questions to the lactation consultant and pediatrician that also attended. I was pretty stoked to get out and about. I didn't have any questions, but I was dying for (adult) human contact. It took us pretty much all morning to both get dressed, pack the diaper bag and car and to almost make it on time. We planned to blend in with the wallpaper and just listen to the others speak. But of course, the little guy was due to eat right in the middle of the meeting. This was a mom-and-baby-only (no men allowed) so that detailed questions could be asked, but also so breastfeeding could go on, uninhibited. I wouldn't fully appreciate this aspect until several weeks later.

I first was mortified that my baby was crying and "interrupting" this meeting. I immediately started to get hot and flustered. New mothers everywhere: do not feel embarrassed by this. Especially newborns, whose cries are nothing compared to what comes later. Especially not at a new mom's meeting offered by your hospital, where the fully expect such behavior and where you will not be the only one in this position in the room. I tried to be super-covert as I tried to position him on my lap, lift my shirt, undo my nursing bra, get him latched on (and at this point we were still using a nipple shield, so this was yet another thing to try to orchestrate), and all under the cover of a lightweight swaddling blanket so, God forbid, no one saw my breast. This was an utter disaster (no pun intended). I felt so embarrassed! One of the facilitators came over and offered me some pillows to get more comfortable. I thanked her, but really couldn't handle trying to manipulate one more object. I was literally sweating, and luckily my guy figured out how to latch on long enough to get some milk and be satiated and quiet. I really have no idea what the topic of conversation was that day.

I tell this story because 1) it really wasn't as big of a deal as I was imagining it to be at the time, so if you find yourself in a similar situation, please know that it really is OK, and absolutely nothing to be embarrassed by, and 2) these meetings are the perfect place to learn how to breastfeed in public. I assumed you already have the hang of feeding your kid in the privacy and safety of your own home. There you can walk around all day with no shirt on and feel perfectly normal. Not to mention you have a handy dandy Boppy pillow, and a comfy rocking chair. If you don't, though, these meetings are great to ask questions about how to do this better, too. Really, its why they even bother holding them in the first place.

Our second outing was a La Leche League "cafe". This was an informal meeting at a cloth diapering boutique in town. Similarly, there were several new moms and babies in attendance. There was prime emphasis on babies and chatting, and some highlighting of the official LLL stance on the answers to some of the questions going around, and no pushing of the boutique's merchandise, whatsoever. Here is where I got over the initial breakout of sweat and embarrassment and started watching what the other moms were doing. I was fortunate that my little guy slept through this whole meeting, and another mom was feeding her daughter lunch. I watched how she nestled her baby's head in the crook of the elbow of one arm, and used the other hand to aim her breast into the baby's mouth. Baby's bum rested in her lap. Aha! To cover it all she had this nursing cover, which is really just a glorified cooking apron, sans strings. If you have any sewing talent at all, make yourself one before you have the baby and save yourself $30. If you don't, just add it to the registry, because its pretty danged handy. While you're at either this meeting or the hospital-sponsored one, ask all the questions you can think of. Invaluable resource. And once you go back to work, you'll likely not be able to attend these anymore :(

So, once you have found a couple of groups to frequent, keep going! Practice your new skills. Trust me you'll learn many more tips from the other new moms and you'll give yourself plenty of opportunities for dealing with other new challenges, including 8 ways to recover from a poopy diaper explosion. Our son pretty much only has two poop speeds: not pooping, or explosion. You'll become a regular James Bond making due with pieces of outfits or swaddling blankets in the bottom of the diaper bag (because you have already used the 2 actual outfits you'd packed). Or you can practice eating your lunch while holding a baby. Or practice entertaining baby while carrying on a conversation. Or at the very least, it is practice for trying to get somewhere on time, with a baby in tow. And of course, getting comfortable with breastfeeding in front of someone other than your husband or mother. I begged for suggestions on how to get good at this, and I actually got several responses telling me to just give up on it, and give the kid a bottle (of expressed milk, but still!!), since at some point he'd have to learn to take a bottle anyway. I quickly found this to be a ridiculous suggestion. Sure, maybe in the middle of a wedding or funeral isn't the best time to whip it out, but nearly all other options are OK (in my opinion) And hiding out in the car to nurse is always an option, if you need a little privacy. Why forgo the convenience of carrying your baby's food around with you everywhere? I promise, you will soon tire of having to think ahead to pump a bottle, and then give your kid said bottle, when you can just skip the middle man and nurse him. With a little practice, soon you'll be able to do this at tailgates and restaurants, so nonchalant-ly that folks will hardly realize you are even doing it!

Let me mention two more things: 1) my husband was resistant to breastfeeding in public at first. He wasn't fond of the idea that my boobs could be in plain view to the public. However, as I practiced, he got more comfortable with my skills, and confident that said boobs would remained covered. 2) There will be times where it is worth it to pump milk instead of nurse. This includes the night shift. If you get good at squeezing in a pumping session for your freezer supply, you might keep an extra bottle in the fridge to give you baby in the middle of the night, if s/he needs it. This way you don't always have to be the one to get up. And this will then leave you with some extra milk in the morning, that you can then pump and save. Its a nice cycle.

Freezer Stock

If you are breastfeeding, it is true that it is pretty handy to have some back up milk in the freezer.

If you ever plan to be away from your baby for more than a few hours (let me just say that if you don't plan to get away some, you will likely go insane, so just plan on it now), someone else will have to feed your kid. And if/when you are going to back to work, get sick, going on vacation, any of these things can disrupt your schedule (and your eating/hydration schedule, too) and might cause your milk supply to dip, so its great to have some backup on hand, of for nothing else, then peace of mind. Not to mention if your baby hits a growth spurt and you haven't enough fresh milk on hand to keep up. Our little guy hit a spurt right around 3 months, which is when he started at daycare and I started back to work. Trifecta for us. I took some pressure off myself because I had a pretty good supply in the freezer for just this case.

OK, OK, you say. So I'll get to work on my freezer stock... but how? I wondered this myself. When I was about 6 or 7 months pregnant, I recall asking one of my new-momma friends how she ever "got ahead" to be able to build up a freezer stock of milk. She thought back to her first "daze" on the job and said, "you know, I don't remember". So I made a conscious effort to pay attention. At first, you do not work on this supply. Depending on how well breastfeeding is going for you, you just work on that, and bonding with your baby. Once you start to get the hang of things (maybe a couple weeks? You'll know because you'll have a split second to think: wow, a free moment - what should I do? If you even think you might be tired, though, just take a nap instead.), I suggest pumping sometime after the first feeding of the day, maybe when the little one goes down for their first nap, maybe for 15 minutes or so. There always seems to be extra milk in the morning. And I would wager that this is a good strategy to up your supply in general. Lactation is all about supply and demand, so keep demanding. The supply built up because until the baby was 3 months old, I wasn't away from him much at mealtimes, and I was getting an extra few ounces of milk nearly every day.

I read in a couple of sources that folks recommended freezing milk in one or two ounce portions, so that this was more flexible for you to use. But I just found this wasteful. Once you thaw one of those little baggies, there is all kinds of milk still clinging to the sides, so why do this 2 or 3 times just to get a full bottle? By the time I was pumping to freeze, my guy was drinking 3-4 ounces per feeding anyway, so I reasoned that there was no reason to freeze any less than that. Now that he can down an 8 or 9 oz bottle, I only freeze in 6 oz portions. In both cases would just top off whatever I'd thawed with refrigerated milk, and voila, a full bottle is good to go.

Homemade Baby Food

Very exciting, but bittersweet. My little teeny baby is growing up!

At 5 months he isn't going off to college or anything yet, but still... Also, at 5 months, he's going for the gusto a little earlier than usually recommended by pediatricians, so if you are out there reading this, be sure you check with yours, and check the million checklists that are out there to see if you think your kid is ready.

So far we started with about two weeks worth of rice cereal. My first thought was that it didn't sound very nutritious, but the Pediatrician assured me that it was really for more of the practice, but also that it was fortified with iron, which babies are in need of at this age, particularly if they are breastfed (ours is).
We started with a tablespoon once a day, to two, then three tablespoons once a day, and then we added a second meal at two tablespoons, then three. (Quick aside: we saw food being recommended in increments of tablespoons, but I wasn't sure if this meant the flakes or the mixed product. The hubby and I decided "they" meant flakes) of organic brown rice cereal. We went with this brand of cereal because it was organic, and because it came in a resealable bag, which was a good call by the husband. This stuff is pretty inexpensive, even organic, so we decided just to purchase this. If you make it yourself by pulverizing rice into a powder, it still requires cooking. So between the labor and the cost, I figured purchasing was the best route.
Don't let the packaging fool you: we didn't find that adding rice to his diet affected his sleep whatsoever, so if you are thinking of starting early so your little one will sleep longer, I would still say check with your doc first.

After getting to two meals a day, we started a third: breakfast. And this time it was with a "real" food. That we made ourselves!!

Sweet Potato
1 sweet potato, peeled and cubed
1/4 c water

Place cubes and water into a microwave (and baby!) safe container, and nuke until soft. It took us about 4 1-minute intervals. Puree until smooth (we used a stick blender or Magic bullet). Add water (or formula/breast milk) to the consistency that makes sense for your baby. I think I initially made this too thick and will add a little more liquid with his next meal.

A website for reference: WholesomeBabyFood by Momtastic (this link points to food suggestions for -6 month olds).

Cloth for a working mom: Follow up on diapering part time...

photo by Thirsties

Part-time cloth diapering is going well for us, I think. By part time, I mean that during the week, we are using a cloth diaper at night (rump-a-rooz). We upped our "stash" of these to 3 right after I returned to work. Occasionally there is a need for an additional diaper between coming home from daycare and going to bed, and then we use a cloth diaper here, too. Also we moved up a size in the Thirsties covers and prefolds. The latter are quite a bit bigger than the newborn-size ones we started with, so this has been a bit of a challenge. On the flip side of that, though, they certainly hold more moisture before needing to be changed. So now on the weekends, we have enough diapers to last all day, so we go all cloth starting Friday afternoon with his early pickup from "school".

The laundry situation is not all that daunting. Monday we start with all clean diapers. By Wednesday we are on the last overnight diaper, so we wash the two other dirty ones with a load of baby clothes that evening, and an extra rinse cycle on the end. The overnight diapers are usually only wet ones, so this work out perfectly. Then we hang them up to dry overnight (or the next morning if we forget). We are now in the winter months, and we keep the drying rack near an air vent, so they definitely are dry by the time we need them the next night. This was more of an issue in the warmer months, when we didn't have the heat going. But then we could hang them up outside without fear of diaper-sicles! Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings (after the babe's in bed) we generally do an entire load of diapers and dry overnight for the next day.

The husband involvement is going well. I can't say he is as into the idea of cloth diapering as I am, but he is resigned to the fact that I really want to do it. AND he has more confidence in a cloth diaper for containing poopy messes than a disposable. AND he actually defended the "ease" of diapering in a conversation recently. He is still skeptical about how to flush "real" poops, but we think they will be fewer over the course of the day when we get to that point, so maybe it won't be as inconvenient as initially thought...

Here is what I think cost-wise: cloth diapering is like going to Vegas with $5. if you don't have enough, you are surely going to loose. It does cost money to run the washing machine, so you want to have a full load when you wash (no pun intended). We only have enough to meet the smallest load setting (on an old-school washing machine). So when I have fewer than that to do, I try to sneak them in with some baby clothes, with an extra rinse. Also, there is a trade off in what kind of diaper to buy if you are only going to be doing this part time: the fancier types (all in ones or twos, pockets) are generally a little easier (if you aren't getting a ton of practice during the week, but they are also a good bit more expensive than prefolds and covers. For costs sake, we are holding onto all the ones we have tested, we purchased some additional, aforementioned, nighttime diapers and bigger covers/prefolds, and for the time being, not planning to order any more.I anticipate that they all will have paid for themselves over the course of a year. If we could get the daycare to use them, we'd be miles ahead of that (though we'd have to double the supply). For more on this idea, see this handy dandy cost spreadsheet I came across. Assuming the inputs are relevant to you, you must be able to wash at least 9 diapers at a time, to see a cost savings over disposable, so be able to go at least that far in.


Lastly, I have pondered investing in a wet/dry bag for evening and weekend outings. However we are currently using plastic baggies that we keep in the diaper bag for disposables anyway. I think if cloth outings become more of an issue, we'll make the leap. The bag is advertised as handy for carrying many other things as well.