How to Clean the Poo

     Now that we know why King Squishy is sporting a cute, little, colorful, fabric covered tushy, let's talk about how to get over the gross factor. I will admit, poop is gross. And the idea of having to wash that poop off of a diaper does sound pretty nasty. But let's be honest, if you make the decision, or find yourself a parent, poop is part of your reality. You will have to face it head on regardless of diapering choice. If you use disposables, you still have to wipe your little one's butt. Sorry to break the news! But even disposables won't save you.
     Now, with cloth diapers you may have to be close and personal with your child's excrement for a little while longer in time than with disposables, but it isn't that much longer and once you're there, you're there, so you might as well stick with it. First, cloth diapering lends itself quite well to the breastfeeding mom and baby combo. Breastmilk poop is water dissolvable. What does that mean? It means all you have to do with your child's diapers before they start eating solid food is throw them in your diaper receptacle of choice and then wash it once you have a full washer load of diapers.
    Washing diapers is not that much more difficult than washing any other clothing item. It takes some extra rinsing and sometimes a different type of soap, but otherwise it's pretty simple. But what about when inevitably your child starts eating solid food. First, if you use the baby led weaning approach (we will discuss this in another blog post), your baby won't consume that much food at first, and so you won't have to change your diaper cleaning process immediately. Eventually however the poop consistency, and unfortunately smell will change. So, when this takes place there are a couple of options.
     You can go old school. It's called the dip and flush. You dip your diaper in the toilet, swich and flush it and this should effectively get most of the poop off the diaper. Or you can get this handy, dandy tool called a diaper sprayer (some of which are also advertised as bidet's). This device is like a sink sprayer that you use to spray the poop off the diapers. Thirdly, you can get flushable diaper liners. They aren't that expensive and all you have to do is pull the liner off the diaper and flush it and the poop away.

This is the diaper sprayer we have...read the fine print. It can also be used as a bidet....oooo! fancy! Try explaining that to your visitors. Ha!


     Seems pretty easy, huh? And all three options prevents you from having to touch poop. Woohoo! After the solid fed poop clean up happens, you just continue with your wash routine as normal. And if you use formula, you just start off cleaning the diapers as if they are solid fed poop. Easy enough, huh? And it doesn't even sound that gross. OK, maybe a little, but no more gross than having to clean up poop in general. And since you can't avoid baby poop, might as well reap all the benefits of cloth diapers.
     Later, when we talk cloth diapering accessories, we will talk about what you do out and about with cloth diaper poop. So, stay tuned, there's more poop talk coming.
   
Cloth diapering mamas and papas, what is your favorite method of solid fed poop clean up? Have you tried them all? Cloth diapering considering mamas and papas? What's still holding you back?