Ok, so some of you have asked me questions regarding my experience with cloth diapers thus far. Today I want to talk about the art of cleaning a poopy diaper. I am assuming poopy diapers are the #1 reason why people do not go the cloth route....and understandably so. There's nothing fun or glamorous about it. Kevin actually refuses to do it (for now, at least.....give him time. I'm predicting he will clean his first poopy diaper within the next couple months). I personally don't have a problem with it. It's not something I look forward to, but I'm not gagging at the toilet or regretting my cloth diaper decision because of it. It is what it is = baby poop.
Cleaning newborn breastfed poop is as easy as it comes. You don't have to dump anything into the toilet - you just wrap the diaper up until laundry day then wash. period. Unfortunately for me, I didn't start cloth diapering in the newborn stage, therefore I wasn't gradually eased into the more solid poops. I'm jumping right into peanut-buttery poop. The in-between poop. Some people refer to it as "teething poop". I've never wished for solid turds as much as I do now.
As I mentioned before, I purchased flushable diaper liners when I bought the cloth diapers. 100 liners come looking like a roll of toilet paper. You lay a liner in the diaper before you put the diaper on the baby. When you change the diaper, if its poopy you simply dump the liner in the toilet and flush. If the baby only peed, you can either flush the liner or wash it with the diaper and reuse it. I can honestly say I only used a liner once and I'm not sure why I haven't used one since. It caught about 3/4 of the poop and it really did make for an easier clean-up, but for some reason I just haven't used a liner again. I guess I forget I have them.For the first week or so of cloth diapering i was trying to get into a routine - trying to find a method that worked for me. I found that swirling the diaper in the toilet while flushing was the most effective method of removing poop, though it was often a bit time consuming - especially when dealing with 8-hour old poop from daycare.
Some people will designate an item (knife, spatula-like item, etc) to be used ONLY for scraping poop off diapers. I haven't tried this yet, but I imagine it too works wonderfully.
Did I mention that Trent poops an average of 3 times a day? Sometimes only twice, sometimes 4 times. Yeah.....I think there's a bit of a difference between swishing poopy diapers in the toilet only once a day (or less) versus 3 times a day. With Kevin's encouraging words, I decided that getting a sprayer would be a logical "splurge" for me (I decided to splurge on a sprayer instead of new shoes, haha, j/k).
I went ahead and purchased a bum genius diaper sprayer from abbyslane.com. There's another brand diaper sprayer, but the reviews for it weren't as good as the one I went with. Three days after ordering, the sprayer arrived in the mail. Kevin had it installed in literally 3 minutes. The sprayer can be mounted on the wall (as shown in the picture) or off the side of the toilet tank. We went with the toilet tank mount. I love it. I was afraid the water pressure wouldn't be strong enough to actually blast the poop into the toilet - especially not the caked on nasty poop that Trent's been putting out - but it's fantastic! I still haven't figured out the best technique for using the sprayer and not causing something of a mess, but I'm getting better with it. The other day I had the head facing upwards and came *this close* to spraying my face with freezing cold toilet water. Instead the water bounced off the ceiling and hit the floor a few inches from my feet. I keep making a mess of the toilet bowl too, but at least it's all staying inside the bowl, right? At least, I think it's staying in the toilet. Our floor has alot of brown colors in it, if you know what I mean.
I was only cleaning poopy diapers for a week before the sprayer arrived, but the sprayer has, of course, made the poop-removal process much easier for me on many levels.
Again, a diaper sprayer is definitely not a necessity by any means, but if you have the extra cash or if you are squeamish about cleaning poopy diapers I would recommend it to anyone and everyone. Heck, come on over to my house and see this thing in action....I'll give you a free demonstration. I could turn into a bit of a Gallagher show, so bring a poncho.
If you use cloth diapers, what technique do you use to remove the poop?
