No, I don’t EC. I do have an aunt (ultra-hippy, met my uncle on at a nudist commune in the 60s) who used it with my cousin. She trained her to go on a cloth diaper that was laid on the floor or outside. They lived on a farm, so it wasn’t suburbia or anything. My cousin used it with her four kids. She refers to them as being “house trained.” She is well-immersed in hippiedom, too.
Other than that, I’ve come across it quite a lot on parenting boards, some more than others, if you know what I mean (and I’m pretty sure Sarahfeena does).
edited to add: looking at the Wikipedia link, it makes it sound like this is a new concept, but my aunt was using EC thirty years ago, even if it wasn’t called that at the time
Ha ha ha! Yes, I do. Actually, aside from the thing I mentioned in that Pit thread, I have gotten some good information about parenting from that board. I’m not a hippy type, by any stretch, but I do appreciate the concept of natural parenting, and try to incorporate as much of it as I can into my own mothering. Although I must say, I never really considered trying to forego diapers altogether!
I have used various brands of disposables and I have never encountered the gel or chemical smell that some people are talking about. When I change a diaper, the lining doesn’t have gel on it, neither does the baby. I never had any issues with diaper rash, and I change the diapers every time it is dirty, and regularly when wet. As the kids get older, you change less often because they hold it longer. But any time the diaper looks bloated, you know it is time to change. I can poke at it from the front and tell if it needs a change or not.
I have been known to throw an outfit out rather than wash it. When it is just covered in crap sometimes it it not worth it to try to save that $3 onesie. I ask myself, “would I pay someone else $3 to wash this for me?” If the answer is yes, out it goes. If it was a special piece of clothing or designer or something I would try to save it.
If I wash a load of clothes that are particularly disgusting I do an empty cycle with hot water and bleach in the washer after to sanitize it. I know the cloth diaper sites say you don’t have to sanitize the washer after each load, but other things I have read about doing laundry say that some bacteria and viruses can live in the washer and contaminate other clothes unless you sanitize with bleach. I know that can happen just with every day laundry too, but doing multiple loads of poopy diapers just isn’t something I want to think about. http://www.sciencentral.com/articles/view.php3?article_id=218391156&cat=2_3
My general impression of EC, watching a few acquaintances try it, is that within a few weeks, the parent is nicely trained indeed. The baby, on the other hand…
Yeah, I’m not exactly a hippy type (and vetbridge is right), but I am a simple living type, which is why I find that particular parenting board useful. We try to use non-disposable everything. We’re not completely there…we still use regular toilet paper (and always will…I can’t quite get my head around doing that laundry for some reason). We don’t have paper towels in our house, though, and I make my own cloth baby wipes, too. And if anyone is interested in giving up their disposable menstrual pads and you’re not interested in a Diva Cup, I’d be glad to discuss the joys of cloth pads!
For all those saying that it would be so difficult managing cloth diapers, I will say that my mother had four babies under the age of three (34 months, almost 16 months and newborn twins) and was a full-time school teacher. This was fifty years ago, so you can be sure she was using cloth. Although when the twins came along she told my brother (the oldest) that he was a big boy now and it was time he used the potty. So I guess she only had three in diapers at one time. It can be done. But I’d still say whatever works best for you - use it.
A whole new universe has opened in front of my eyes with the scraping disposable diapers issue. A universe I will never visit (more so with our second already in potty training and no plans for more).
For those who say that cloth diapers don’t work, well, history is against you. I was raised on cloth diapers. My mom survived to have more babies. Generations did and still do all over.
I have had enough opportunities to scrape poop off soiled clothing as spills do happen (sometimes the baby hasn’t pooped in two days and you just know the jackpot is coming your way). I do it with no regrets, but with no desire to make it a part of my daily routine.
And babies are most certainly not the time black holes some people say they are. They do fragment your time, but they sleep 18 hours a day. That is more than enough time to do whatever it is that you need to do. All it takes is some better planning to do your tasks in shorter periods instead of long hauls. So what if you need to leave a basket of unfolded laundry because the baby woke up. He will fall back asleep and you will go back to your laundry. The world won’t end because the house is not always magazine picture ready.
Toddlers are a different story. I am very lucky that my baby girl is a serious napper and leaves me half the afternoon to do chores. I know I am more of an exception than the norm, though. Thank you Lord for the gift of time.
I used both cloth and disposables on our son and I far preferred the disposables. The cloth diapers leaked and since babies grow, I had to keep buying larger and larger diaper covers (obviously), which cost me a fortune. Also, they were so bulky my son had trouble sitting upright in them - two days after we switched to disposables permanently, he was sitting up easily on his own.
Plus, my son has never been an easy baby. I read upthread about how babies just lie there for the first six months - not so my son. He was a really touchy baby (still is as a toddler sometimes), so he wanted to be in my arms constantly. There was no putting him down. He would scream for hours if I did and has always had far more stamina than me. This is one of the many reasons we still co-sleep much of the time. Even at 17 months, he doesn’t sleep through the night and, though we’ve tried letting him cry long enough for it to work (about 2-3 weeks), it just doesn’t. Even his doctor and a sleep specialist have recommended that we co-sleep because, as she says, “He’s just one of those kids you have to wait out - he’s so determined that, until he gets old enough for you to reason with him, you’ll have to do things his way or not sleep.” Anyway, doing laundry was more or less out of the question when my son was small; he’s walking around now, so things are far easier than they were then.
As stated earlier, use what’s right for you. Try cloth diapers if you want to - though if you do, I’d recommend a diaper service for at least the first month (having a baby in the house takes some acclimation). If they don’t work, go disposable.
And all I’m saying is that everyone needs to look at their own situation - you can’t generalize and say “oh, you’ll have plenty of time, most babies sleep all the time” because baby is one variable of several.
Neither of mine had explodo-diapers and I expect cloth would have worked quite well for us at least as far as the diaper on the baby goes - for us it was a daycare thing - and had we done cloth, it would have been through a service, so the time thing wouldn’t have really been an issue, but daycare needed disposables and two sets of diaper philosophies was more than I could handle.
One of my girlfriends had two in cloth diapers at the same time without a service and did the remodel thing - she also ended up in the hospital twice while both her kids were in diapers for extended stays…she’s still sane - as is her husband.
Oh, please don’t misunderstand…I was just saying that it’s not “me,” but didn’t mean to imply at all that there’s anything negative about it. My point was only to say that you don’t HAVE to be what we think of as a “hippy” to appreciate things like attachment parenting and conservation, you know?
The whole daycare thing is tricky. In our state and in our particular daycare, while they will let you use cloth diapers, you have to have a separate container for each soiled cloth diaper, so we eventually gave in and just got cheap disposables at Costco. We were originally trying to be more environmentally friendly, but since we had to have a separate gallon-sized baggie for each soiled cloth diaper, and we weren’t allowed (and didn’t want) to reuse the baggies, we wound up creating just as much waste as if we had used a disposable anyway. And I’m with you - two diapering philosophies at the same time is one too many.
If you aren’t sure if you will like cloth diapers but you think you might, get a diaper service. Usually you can cancel them on a week’s notice if it doesn’t work out. And with a diaper service, not only is the price pretty close to the same as disposables, there isn’t any need to shake, rinse or otherwise clean them. You just toss them in the pail as is.
Dearly Beloved just reminded me that I washed my own diapers for something above six months and something less than two years in there. I forgot all about it, that’s how much work it was. But I didn’t fold them, I just put them in a basket and used them from there. Nobody ever noticed that my kids’ diapers were wrinkled so it must not have been too bad.
I mean my God, you don’t have to take them back to the creek and beat them clean on a flat rock or anything. Bleaching them by spreading them to dry in the sun on blooming jasmine or lavender bushes is entirely optional. Assuming you have a washer and dryer, the total work time expended to wash them is maybe four minutes, if you include carrying the hamper to the laundry room and carrying the basket back to the child’s room.
I will say, I abandoned the diaper covers pretty close to right away and went to pins and plastic pants. I don’t think they are cute, I think they are diapers.
But really, I just found cloth to be easier and never felt the need to buy paper diapers. I don’t care what other folks catch their kids’ poop in. But the notion that “cloth diapers don’t work” is pretty silly. Of course they do.
Every load of laundry I do has a couple tablespoons of bleach in it, more for whites obviously. If I’m worried about discoloration and fading, it gets dry-cleaned.
Baby clothing always got it’s own private load with hot water and bleach. Poopy blowouts were treated on an individual basis, thrown out if I was away from home for an extended amount of time, nuked with chemicals if it happened at home, then rewashed with the regular stuff.
I know I’m firmly on the side of disposables but I don’t buy the “no time” argument against cloth. My second baby was no angel and even with a toddler around I was still able to do laundry every day. I was simply too revolted by cloth and poo to want to do it.
My mum used cloth for all of us.
The old fashioned, big squares you folded around a liner, held together with a pin and then put a pair of plastic pants over. I know that she always had two buckets with bleach in them, and the soiled nappies went in there to soak until there were enough of them to make up a load of laundry. Since she doesn’t own a tumble dryer, is not Martha Stewart by any stretch of the imagination and disposable nappies were available by the time my younger sister was born, I can only assume she was happy enough with cloth.
Why Not thank you for this advice - we’re about to start trying for our first; and reading that I had this awesome feeling of relief washing over me. I worry too much, and I will make a point of remembering that in the future, I hope!
I tried to use cloth. Really I did. I still have a stash of fabric and PUL leftover from making my own covers.
I had a breastfed baby that pooped eight times a day. At least.
Approximately 1 out of every 3 poops would leak no matter what I did.
I had plenty of time to wash all the diapers (and added laundry from all the leaks).
I gave up.
And when that breastfed baby started on solids and no longer made “cute” yellow inoffensive infant poops, I was very very glad for disposable diapers.
I’ve only encountered the “gel balls” twice over two kids, and those were defective diapers. Typically the mesh layer keeps the superabsorbant polymer beads inside where they’re supposed to be.
Good! Don’t get me wrong, parenting can be hard, but sometimes I think people make it harder than it has to be. “I was wrong,” and “This isn’t working, is it? Time to try something else.” are two of my favorite sentences. They’re like Do-Overs for the real world.
My now 2.5 year old will now come up to me, struggling with a zipper or something, and say, “Mama, dis not workin’, time try some’in else…”
It’s also worth noting that the “gel balls” are completely inert and safe for human contact. I wouldn’t eat them or anything, since they’d gel up inside you using your own bodily fluids, but they won’t harm the skin. When I was in junior high doing a science project on diaper absorbency, my dad gave me a whole bag of the crystals (there was only one super-absorbent diaper on the market at that point, but, again, he was a research scientist studying ultra-ubsorbents, so he had them at work). My friends and I had a ball mixing various liquids into them - by weight, they absorb more of salty solutions than fresh water, by the way - and smooshing the gel around with our bare hands. I always wondered what would happen if you threw a big brown grocery bag full of the crystals into someone’s swimming pool. It would be so awesome! In a very expensive, headache filled way, of course!
