Wednesday, July 31, 2013

When Good Diapers Go Bad

One small side story before I talk about our June: I had to get the car’s tires rotated before our car trip so we went to Costco and had an hour to kill. We were in the tire center after dropping off the car and Jack was running around the tires and having a great time and Juliet was in the car seat stroller and starting to fuss. I picked her up and noticed she had a little blowout and I realized I didn’t have an extra outfit and debated whether I should clean her up or just let her sit in it but since I had a lot of time on my hands I decided to try and clean up her outfit the best I can and put it back on.

We went to the bathroom and I took off her outfit and it was way worse than I thought, her poop was almost up to her neck, it just hadn’t seeped out of her cloths yet. Again, I  debated what to do, I didn’t think I could put it back on with a simple wipe of paper towels, and I wasn’t sure if I could put her in the car seat with just a diaper and no cloths, so I finally decided that I had time so I’d clean and dry her outfit right there. I used the sink to clean off the poop and it’s this big communal sink so all the people washing up after using the rest room are giving me weird looks, plus I had Juliet just laying on the changing table, while Jack did who knows what. I cleaned up the outfit, cleaned all the chunks out of the sink, and proceeded to dry Juliet’s outfit in the hand dryers.

I love the hand dryers at Costco but they are not good for drying clothes. They are on a sensor and it was really hard to keep it on and it took probably 20 minutes to get the clothes dry enough. When a new diaper was back on, and “clean” clothes too, we went to check on the car and it was still being worked on, and so I caved and got a berry smoothie. Here is a picture of the very same smoothie, and the outfit I cleaned, and all the people who had no idea of the ordeal I had just went through.

So, now a word about diapers. Disposables are great, they are so easy and you can just throw them away and they keep the pee in really well. But, they blowout. We usually use cloth and with Juliet she was pretty much exclusively cloth since she was about 4 weeks old or so*. Cloth diapers save a lot of money but they are a pain to clean all the time. However, I have never had a blowout with them. So kudos to you cloth diapers for keeping my kids clothes a little bit cleaner. 


*when I first put Juliet in the diapers they would always leak and I couldn’t figure out why, it was really embarrassing and I almost didn’t want anyone to hold her because I was afraid she’d wet her pants. Then I discovered that the liners I was using were all destroyed because of the high heat in my dryer. I had switched dryer modes without noticing that the new setting was on high and it warped and cracked them, so always dry your diapers on low, or hang dry. I still use all the diapers, but have an additional cover on top that I can reuse several times before washing, and Juliet has a nice fat bottom.