A poopy butt?

One of the things that seems to scare people the most about cloth diapers is the thought of dealing with poop. I won't lie. You will have to deal with poop. But dealing with your babies poop is part of being a parent, and sooner or later you will get used to it. For me, in the first few days of being a parent, pooping became something to celebrate. My twins were in the NICU and my little 3 and a half pound boy wasn't pooping (or eating for that matter, hard to eat when there is no where for it to go). After a few days of this issue, many many tests and procedures, my little peanut had his first poops. I cried with relief. For me, as a parent, having a baby who pooped on a regular basis became a sign that things were working okay. I was happy to see poop. Although my enthusiasm for the smelly stuff has died down, I still tend to keep track of my babies bowl movements and to have a sense that they are "working" when I see their daily poopy diapers.

How do you deal with the poop?

If you are cloth diapering a newborn you have the option to do nothing if they are exclusively breastfed. You remove the poopy diaper, wipe off your baby and put the diaper, poop and all, into the wetbag. When it comes time to do laundry , you dump the bag of dirty diapers into the washing machine, turning the bag inside out as you go (no need to touch the diapers), rinse, wash and rinse again. And voila, clean diapers.

Even with breastfed babies you have the option to deal with poop before putting it in your washing machine, and once babies are getting formula or solid foods you have to deal with their poop. There are a few different methods.

One that is popular is to use disposable liners inside your diapers. These come on a roll, look like a thick soft toilet paper, and rip off to be used once in each diaper. Once dirty these are designed to be flushed away in the toilet. I have tried these liners, and for my two have not found them that useful. I found they bunched up and defeated the stay dry feeling of pocket diapers, because they held moisture next to the skin. Some people swear by them though. A roll is pretty cheap, so it is worth it to buy a roll to try out and if you happen to love them then you can add them to your routine. I do occasionally use mine as a barrier when I need to apply a bit of cloth diaper safe cream to my babies butts.

If you aren't using disposable liners you have to scrape, swish or spray your diapers clean. Many times with older babies, the poop forms a turd in the diaper, and if changed promptly you can just shake it over the toilet, and it will plop into the bowl. If this doesn't happen, or if your baby has runny poop, you have to figure out how to get rid of it. There are spatula like devices sold that you can use to scrape the poop, I have never dried using one of these, so really have no idea if they work well or not. Some people take their poopy diaper and swish it around in the toilet bowl, sometimes even holding it there as they flush, allowing the water and suction to loosen up the poop. I clean my toilet often, but am just not comfortable with this method as it means sticking your hand and diaper into the toilet bowl. Some people aren't bugged by it at all. Maybe if you had a toilet in your house that was mainly used just for rinsing diapers?

The method I use is to spray. My lovely husband installed a diaper sprayer on the side of the toilet (they cost from $30 to $50 and took him less than 10 min to install). I love my sprayer. There is a learning curve when you start using the sprayer, it is a bit like a mini power sprayer and sometimes the pressure, when aimed in the wrong direction, can send water and poop particles flying. I know I had to give my toilet and the wall and floor around it a good cleaning quite a few times when I was figuring the sprayer out. Now I have the angles and pressure pretty much down pat and can neatly spray off a diaper in seconds, with hardly even a water droplet getting on the toilet rim. My recommendation, for those starting out (something I thought of after learning how to use it) would be to practice spraying down a few clean diapers first to learn the angles and pressure needed to not make a mess.

What do you do about poop stains?

It is rare that I will get poop stains on my diapers. The washing routine I have takes care of most of them. If I do get slight staining, I don't panic, because over time they will be washed so often the stains will just disappear. If stains really bug you, using a little oxygen bleach or even chlorine bleach ( if it is a prefold or insert with no elastic, snaps PUL etc.) might take care of the stains. Just make sure if you use a stain fighting product that you do an extra rinse or two to make sure there is no residues left to bother your babies butts. Another effective stain remover is sunshine. Sunning the diapers outside on the line, or in a sunny window for a few hours, or a few days even, will often whiten a stain right up. Stains in no way effect how a diaper functions though, so really the easiest thing to do is to ignore them, to keep using and washing the diaper, and often the issue will go away.