To wonder why more people don't use reusable nappies?

[GinGeum]

I know this will be controversial and I know there will always be some circumstances when they are not suitable, but since becoming a parent, I've not come across a single other parent using reusable nappies.

Everyone I know has also said they were never mentioned to them at all by antenatal classes/midwife/anyone. In the hospital, none of the staff we encountered had any idea what our baby was wearing.

Surely now we are all thinking about reducing plastic, disposable nappies should be fairly high on the list of things to cut down on? Programmes like the war on plastic on BBC barely mentioned disposable nappies. Even switching to reusable wipes would make a huge difference.

AIBU to wonder why reusable nappies aren't promoted more?

I had a small grant and spent £100 on set up, using questionnaire from the nappy lady

I tried the nappy lady questionnaire, with a few other users of the forum I was on then.

When we compared notes it nearly always came back with “tots bots and motherease wraps”.

I did buy a motherease wrap, but could not get on with it. As pp have said it leaked, to get the legs close fitting I had to do the straps really tight.

Bought nature babies off ebay (because they were pretty ) and didn’t look back. The stuffable ones were ace, fold a terry into the pocket and use as a normal nappy.

I think sometimes it doesn’t work because you do need to take your babies physical shape into account. People buy the whole set in one go, so when that particular set doesn’t suit the baby i can understand why they’re reluctant to shell out more.

I would always recommend buying one or two, or several different brands, then buy more once you find out what fits best. You don’t need to go gung ho from birth, take a couple of weeks and experiment, using disposables too.

Terries are underrated too. Cheap, easy to wash, and you can try a variety of folds to find one that pads your baby in the right place.

@bluebluezoo that’s such good advice - wish I’d had this exchange 19 months ago! My son was 96th centile and a chunk, so in theory it should have worked but no. They were very cute and it was a shame. I didn’t have the mojo to persevere, either. I suspect if breastfeeding had been anything other than straightforward, I would have bottle fed too. I was really at minimum function.

Yes that's great advice from @bluebluezoo. I also didn't find the nappy lady questionnaire that helpful, but plenty do I suppose!

I agree that you don't need to go all in from birth, when you're really still finding your feet - I used disposables for a few weeks with my first baby and this was definitely best for us at the time!

@reetgood - that sounds very tough and sounds like you made the right decision to function!

Who has time? Write to the companies asking them to make the nappies bio-degradable. I agree they take up too much space in landfill but cloth nappies are too much work. And the extra washing and soap powder can’t be great for the environment either.

Who has time? Write to the companies asking them to make the nappies bio-degradable. I agree they take up too much space in landfill but cloth nappies are too much work. And the extra washing and soap powder can’t be great for the environment either

Again, have you tried reusables? Do you know how time intensive they are?

Read my previous post. One wash a week. I didn’t use soap powder, or very minimal amounts, as it reduces the absorbency of the nappies. There’s usually enough residual detergent in your machine to do a load.

I do far more washing with toddlers/teens than I ever did with nappies.

Plus all those mumsnetters who insist you wash towels and clothes after one use, who has the time? I do two or three loads a week, yet on here some are doing two/three loads a day.

Don’t dismiss what you’ve never tried.

Because I couldn’t be arsed

One wash a week - plus the time spent trawling through shit and flicking solid pieces of poo into the toilet!

I hate this competitive kind of 'Who has time? My life is so busy I can't even sit down!' nonsense. Not everyone's life with a newborn or young baby is like that. I had bags of time when she was a newborn as she slept so much and even now I have plenty of time to put a wash on (and guess what? My DP actually has the ability to put washing on too! A rare thing on MN apparently). And yes I work, I actually run my own business, so I'm not a SAHM.

One baby isn't necessarily the horrendously difficult or exhausting ordeal it's made out to be for everyone. Of course it is for some people and I understand why reusables would be a step too much when you're barely hanging on, but there seems to be this misery Olympics about it and this snide kind of undertone that hints the poster has a much more important life and couldn't possibly put two washes on a week

I also manage not to trawl through shit. Should I be trawling? Is there gold in there?

If you don't want to use them that's fine, but if you can't manage to explain why without criticising other people or suggesting they spend hours sifting through shit then maybe have a look at why you feel so defensive about it, eh?

With my first baby I wanted to use them and looked into them but j just couldn’t work it out - the pocket vs all in twos and liners and boosters and wraps and I found it totally confusing. I guess because I hadn’t seen anyone use one in real life it felt like a different language.

With second baby I do use them but I decided just to do the easy route and buy all-in-ones, which I’m not sure I knew about first time I investigated.

Also if you join a real nappy Facebook group for advice it does all seem pretty daunting - lots and lots of arguing about how to wash and what temperature and what cycle and “strip washing” and how to fit new poppers and get your elastic refreshed and whatnot. Best stay away from all that. They actually aren’t that hard and you muddle through.

I think there should be a VERY, VERY basic information sheet with pictures handed out by midwives and HVs with the other info they give you.

One thing I don’t get, as someone who now uses reusables 90%+ of the time (don’t for holidays when I don’t have a washing machine and very occasionally I get caught out with 15 nappies hanging on the line when it starts raining etc) is the obsession with different patterns. None of them are really all that nice.

If they constantly leak then you need more boosters or you’re not putting them on properly. They can and do work for every baby.

I had lots of time with a newborn too, they sleep most of the time. I remember my Grandma telling me to use disposables because I wouldn’t have time with DC1 but I actually had lots of spare time. And actually, reusable nappies don’t take any time at all. It’s called a washing machine, amazing invention.

@Cookit but sloths! SLOTHS!!!!!!

@whattodowith any suggestions for nappies flaring up eczema? It’s either the heat or the friction.. they’ve been stripped and only washed with the same stuff as his clothes. Still can’t get him to be anything but an upset itchy mess in cloth. Oddly it doesn’t happen with disposables, even the same nappy over night.

Tried wraps with flats, all in ones, microfibre, cotton, Bamboo and fleece?

I think its a lot to do with actually educating how they are used.

People genuinely think you put the fluffy liner in with all the poo on them, I think if they did a little starter course maybe (although people would get "offended" saying it's being "shoved down their throat") people may see it's not really like that.

It was discussed with us at our antenatal classes and other classes, but didn't really get down to the practicalities of it. If people can't afford the set up for them, some areas did/do a grant where you could get a voucher to buy all the your covers and liners on line from pre set shops.

I do sort of wish we'd tried them when he was a newborn, as if we had we'd just be used to the work/washing routine and not think about it (though as I said I do find the wipes a hassle, though also far, far better at actually doing the job than disposable ones). Realistically, I'm not going to add another thing to do now, and it's also a pain in other ways - for eg we have a local nappy library but I'm not taking a day off work just to go! (They don't run in school holidays, which is when I normally have holiday, such as today!). You do just get used to the level of convenience you have - for instance, I now struggle to get DS to stay still enough for tape up nappies and find them near impossible to use, but I'm sure if we had never tried pull ups we'd have coped. Maybe I should have never let myself get used to the convenience of disposables, but I have.

Also, celebelly, a bit pot calling the kettle black on the 'getting over defensive' front!

Ha possibly, but the repeated references to handling poop like we are all grabbing it with our bare hands might have irritated me

I do think the 'eurgh but you might have to touch poo' thing is ridiculous, and presumably is coming from the mothers of tiny babies who still lie still to be changed - once they get to the 'sticking their hands in it and attempting to run off mid change' stage you're going to get poo on you sometimes no matter what sort of nappy you use!

I used the same set of cloth nappies for both DD’s. So initial outlay of £300 (I chose expensive nappies ) has more than paid for itself as opposed to cost of disposables. The only time I’ve had leaks is in disposables. Poo gets collected on a disposable liner and chucked so doesn’t end up in washing machine.
We’ve had times we’ve had to use disposables for DD2 as cloth doesn’t work when inpatient in hospital.
Cloth isn’t for everyone in today’s busy world, but for those that can it’s much better for the environment.
If there was some sort of service where they take your nappies away, launder them and bring them back, I bet more people would use them.

@whattodowith any suggestions for nappies flaring up eczema?

Are you sure it’s the nappies? My dd had terrible flare ups- disposables made it much worse though so we quickly figured it wasn’t the nappies.

Turned out it was the petroleum distillates in the nappy cream. Switched to burts bees and neals yard and not had a problem.

I’ve never “trawled through shit” either. No different to disposables, if there were solids I’d flick it into the loo rather than have it stinking out the bin.

@whattodowith I had one that would sleep until put down on any surface. And yes, I used a sling. The levels of not getting that people’s circumstances differ on this thread!

I could have done cloth nappies, but I chose not to because frankly I felt unable to deal with the additional load (and that included finding out which nappy worked for him as sounds like the ones I had didn’t!)

If there was some sort of service where they take your nappies away, launder them and bring them back, I bet more people would use them

There are. Google is your friend here- there are too many to link to :)

This thread is sounding like a 'bottle vs BF' thread - advocates are totally deaf to the reasons why they haven't worked for lots of people and seem to think it's all a case of 'didn't try hard enough'

I did try reusables and eco alternatives, they didn't work for us. I'm glad it works for some of you, but clearly it's not for everyone.

I obviously wish I’d used them for my first but in a way it’s easier to use with a second baby when having gone through weaning poo, a baby/ toddler that is on the move for nappy changes, potty training and regressions I’m not remotely squeamish now about putting a pooey nappy in the wash. I do find it surprising when parents are so squeamish about wee and poo.

I get as much poo on me as when changing a disposable (ie usually none).