Cloth napies and their management!

Cloth nappies, a bane and a boon for all of us. Boon- because they help prevent diaper rashes and a bane for all the cleaning up we have to do after using a cloth nappy!

As I have mentioned in my blog about diapers, I use cloth nappies in the following situations:

• 2-4 nappy consecutive nappy changes in the morning and 1-3 consecutive nappy changes in the evening on a regular basis- that comes to a few hours in the morning and the same in the evening.
• When my poor baby has diaper rash- just using cloth nappies and immediately changing them when they are soiled helps.
• When there is not much time between a diaper change and her bath or if I have to travel with her, and there's still time left before we leave.

Cloth nappies- we got a set off the net, there were 24, and I received another 6 as a part of a gift set. I assumed this was the most useless product as she was comfortably using diapers constantly for the first 3 weeks- without diaper rashes- because she soiled her diapers so frequently that we had to change them frequently- just like cloth nappies.

The problem started when she first got diaper rash. And her bum was an angry red with red splotches! It was horrible to have her crying and screaming every time we cleaned  her. But then, after I spoke to a friend who is a paediatrician, I used cloth nappies along with a suitable diaper rash ointment and in a day it had settled to just a visible rash without the baby being too uncomfortable.

Yes, cloth nappies are a blessing! And they are very useful, especially the ones I bought online- they are neat, and easy to handle.

But how do we use cloth nappies such that we don't soil the bed/ mattress, our own clothes and the babies clothes.

Steps in managing a cloth nappy-

• Cloth nappies are quite obvious, they have the tying strings and loops to hold the strings over the closed nappy.
• I place a plastic mat, and a folded old dupatta/ folded towel/ cut and folded pieces of bedsheets/ pillow covers/ or 'godadis' over the mat
• The reason for using folded cloth pieces is for easy absorption of pee (due to all the layers) and also once the cloth is wet, just unfold the cloth, wash it in water, wring it, and hang it as spread out as possible on a clothes line! I collect all such clothes in the morning and wash them with detergent the next day, all set to be used for the next cycle- which i call nappy program!
• 'Godadi' is a special type of a very thin mattress, although the term is not specific to this. My mum in law got 6-7 of these made by a tailor friend of hers. Its just layers of soft old clothes and covered with another soft cloth. You can use it as a little bed you can keep the baby in while handling the baby. Especially when the baby is sleeping or is in the arms of guests etc. I leave the wet godadi hanging by its edges on a clothes line, these absorb much better, but take a little longer to dry. And the best part is you can wash these like any other cloth. So along with the cloth pieces, this too is washed with detergent!

 

• Coming to the nappy!
• Nappies are worn the same way taped diapers are. They are just a little loose!
• Sometimes, when it is a little colder, i just tie a folded cloth piece round and round her, like a lungi!
• once the nappy and underlying cloth are soiled (my baby starts wailing if she dirties the nappy even a little bit), I simply discard them into a small bucket. It is in this bucket that I collect the next few nappies and collectively manage them as follows.
• A nappy soiled only with pee, is dunked into water, wringed and hung to dry, and washed with the other clothes from the nappy program the next day
• A nappy that has even the littlest bit of poo on it, is washed in cold water (apparently cold water removes poo stains better) and i have a small hard plastic brush for washing clothes that I use exclusively for washing off poo from any cloth. This nappy, with its stain but not actual poo, is left hanging till the time to wash it comes. Along with the other nappies, these stained nappies are also washed (mostly the next day morning or the same day evening)
• I have noticed that leaving these nappies in the sun after the detergent wash, completely removes the stain! And even if a stain does remain, I just wash it again with the next load. Repeated washing will take care of even the worst stain.
• The point here is to reduce your work load as much as possible. Once you set a routine or a protocol for managing such things, nappy change, which seemed cumbersome to me earlier, feels like a piece of cake. OMG, that sounds gross. Ok, not a piece of cake, but certainly not tiresome!

Sometimes I feel all my neighbours must know when my baby has rashes... There's a series of 20-25 nappies drying in the sun on those days!

On the days that i have to travel and my baby has worn a diaper for a longer time, I just let her wear cloth nappy in between diaper changes, so she gets the airtime she gets everyday, atlast after we come home.

Just this doesn't prevent diaper rashes for my kid. But it has reduced the frequency. Now she gets a rash only when she poops much more frequently or when, obviously, she has stayed in a soiled diaper much longer. The latter I can control!