Tell me about cloth nappies -- pros/cons/need-to-knows

[amitymama]

I am an absolute novice when it comes to cloth nappies. I'd like to give it a shot but I need all the info and facts first. I'm concerned about how much extra work it is with no dryer, how comfortable they are for the babe, convenience factors and whether they really do make clothes not fit properly and look bulky.

Also, how in the world do you deal with runny poos? Do you just throw it in the washing machine straight away? Do you soak them in a bucket? If so, doesn't it smell and do your older children knock it over or mess with it? Where do you keep it? Can you wash them with other clothes or do you have to wait until you have a whole load of nappies to wash?

For those who line-dry everything, don't the nappies get all hard and crunchy like towels do? How much extra work do you feel it creates in addition to your normal washing?

Sorry for all of the billions of questions but I really want to give cloth a shot but am not seeing how the logistics work.

I love cloth nappies! Our washing machine broke down and for a week or so my 7 month old was in disposables and I hated it. First of all, I could smell when he had a wet nappy through his cloths. To me, dirty disposables have a horrible odour that dirty cloth ones don't - I can't smell them through his clothes.
Secondly, we had loads of dirty nappies hanging around for ages as we only get fortnightly collections. With reusables, you can just sling a load on when it all gets too much.
To answer your questions

• runny poos. No, we didn't wash straight away, or soak. You can get papery liners for reusables that are usually flushable (though some aren't so be careful!) You can peel these out and sling them down the loo, which gets rid of the worst of it. However, I do have to say that it is much easier now he is on solids and the poo is firmer. Runny poos do end up on the nappy. However, if you get a good big bucket with a tight-fitting lid, it really will contain the smell. I don't have any other children so I don't know what that would be like. It is safer from that point of view to dry-pail though.

• we wash about every other day as that's usually when the bucket is full. We do a wash specifically for nappies - 60 degress with powder and a couple of drops of tea tree oil. I also put a capful of vinegar in to keep the nappies soft.
• drying. Now the weather is nicer, we've been drying outside and, yes, they do get crunchy sometimes. I think it depends what kind you get though as we've mostly got pre-folds (cotton pads) which do get a bit rough but they soften up if you scrunch them a bit when dry. I have also been known to run them through the drier for 5 mins to soften them too .

I've got one bamboo one from Little Lambs www.littlelambs.co.uk which does not get so crunchy but takes longer to dry. I really like it though and they do trial packs (one nappy, one wrap, and a resuable liner) for less than a tenner. And you may be able to claim some money back from your council if they have such a scheme.

Also, have a look at the Nappy Lady website(sorry,don't have URL and baby is waking up!). Loads of info from there and also shop - that's where I got the big bucket!

Well, the first thing is, with no dryer, avoid anything made of bamboo - it is really absorbent, but takes an age to dry.

In terms of comfort, my dd doesn't seem to mind whether she has cloth or disposals. She's aware she's wet a lot more quickly in cloth, and now asks me to change her, which I think is good now she's approacing potty training. Cloth is no less convenient than disposables, except that you have to take your dirty ones home with you. Cloth is more bulky, and non-stretchy trousers like jeans may not fit over cloth.

I have a bucket with a lid with a laundry net in it, which lives in the back porch by the washing machine. Dd isn't allowed out there, the dog has never knocked it over, and provided the lid is on tight, there are no smells. The worst nappy contents go in the loo - wipe the nappy over with loo roll if necessary, then it goes in the bucket. If a nappy is just wet, then I may throw it in with the clothes if I am about to put a wash on, or a wrap if I can't find any clean ones, but unless you're running short of nappies, there probably is no need.

Line dried nappies do go crunchy. I put fleece liners in so they don't rub dd's little rump (an old cut up fleece jumper is fine and cheaper than bought liners). I do 2 nappy loads a week usually: a cold rinse with white vinegar, then a short wash at 60. I don't soak nappies in the bucket - that makes for a messy move to the washing machine, and a bucket of dirty water to dispose of!

Sorry that turned into an essay, but hth

my dd is 10 weeks and so far i'm loving cloth! i used disps for a fortnight which i think is sensible - especially if lo is on the small side. i was going to use disps for 6 weeks but once i tried a reusable i didn't use another disposable - i really think they are horrible!

1. not much extra work - keep them in bucket with net, put in machine, take out and dry. i don't tumble dry on the line now it is warm no probs (actually i really enjoy hanging them up and seeing them there) when it was wet i had an airer in the kitchen which i put by our aga. i have fleecey nappies as they dry fastest.
2. comfort - fine (i think!) i use bumgenius in the day and fluffles at night.
3. convinience - same as disps, bumgenius fasten just like a disp. out and about i just put the nappy in a bag till i get home.
4. they are a bit bulkier - but i think the big bums are cute! you just have to be a bit more carefull buying clothes but most things are fine.
5. washing - out of bucket, into macine, cold rinse, wash at 60 with fairy non bio, extra rinse. seems to do the job!
6. if you are washing nappies then it makes sense to use washable wipes which are much nicer than packet ones and save lots of money! i do a wash of napppies, wipes and the flannels that go on her mat for 'bare bum time' every other day.
7. mine don't go crunchy because they are fleece.
8. it is a little bit of extra work - but just becomes part of your routine. i reckon 15 mins everyother day, so really not a hassle. much better than having loads of poo nappies hanging around and all the chemicals in them really put me off - dd had a horrible crystal on her bottom on morning!

hope that helps - enjoy choosing the nappies - try 'thenappylady' site, she has a good questionaire.

If you want washable wipes, Tesco do plain white face cloths for 20p each which would be perfect. I wish I'd found them before buying my more expensive wipes!

I loved cloth nappies. Especiaslly in this weather when you can get them out to dry. They're much nicer4 and far more satisfying to use.

Most clothes though seem to be designed to go over disposables. Cloth are a bit more bulky, but you get great shapled ones these days.

I strted DD1 off on terry squares, but stupidly small ones from Green Baby, I got zero help buying them and wish I hadn't bothered. If I had been advised properly I would have got some shaped nappies, but I wasn't and ended up some days changing dds nappy about 18 times it really was a nightmare, but I thought it was perfectly normal until I tried Motherease onesize when she was about 3 months old. These are brilliant! I could not recommend them highly enough.
However, they do make their clothes too tight, and I ended up buying several sizes up for DD then rolling legs up, which was OK, but she looked like even more of a little fatty thn she actually was!!
I didn't find the washing a problem, but got pg with dd2 when dd1 was 5 months old, so by the time I was heavily pg, I was knakcered and started to find washables a bit of a struggle.

I started dd2 off in moltex which I use for the majority of the time now, and find them a lot easier, but I do often use the motherease too which is still good. I did however have two dc in nappies at the same time, which I think is a different ball game to just one.
ime cloth nappies smell lot worse than disposables. I have found it impossible to shift the smell.

I think it makes a difference if you have a boy or a girl - for my dd I just had to fold the cloth into three which was dead easy, but for a boy there was some weird triangular thing which I'm not sure I would have mastered. But that is probably me being pathetic.

I can't remember the system I used now (even though it was only a year ago!) but I had a square of quite thick cotton with a disposable paper liner that you could just flush down the loo. I don't remember even the runniest of poos being a real problem, most stuff seemed to get contained in the liner; I would change her in the bathroom and just deposit liner in loo.

I'd then soak the nappies in a bucket with nappysan or whatever it was called and just wash at 40 degrees. never used a dryer, had a stock of about 20 nappies so didn't seem to run out while waiting for some to dry.

the nappies came with a plastic pair of pants; sometimes not great at containing wetness but not a problem if you changed fairly frequently. I think you can get away with once every four hours in disposables but not so much with reusables.

The only problem i found was going out; it is definitely less fun when you have to carry a damp resuable nappy around. So I for being out an about I used a disposable brand that claimed to be 75% biodegradable.

I also used the disposable ones at night as for 12 hours you would have to at least double up with the cloth ones and that would have meant she'd be sleeping for quite some time pressed up against wet cloth. I didn't feel comfortable with that.

didn't notice any problems with clothes not fitting during the day; they really weren't that bulky.

that study which 'proved' resuables/disposables had similar environmental impact assumed that you were boil washing and then using tumble dryer; don't think either is necessary.

Thanks so much for all the tips and info, I appreciate it.

A question about the flushable liners -- if you don't change your little one in the loo what do you do with the liner while you're changing the nappy? I guess you'd have to have something nearby to set it on out of reach of the child until you could go flush it? Also, do they clog up the loo? Our toilet seems to like to clog if we put so much as a Wet Wipe down there so I'm concerned about that.

All this talk of liners, wraps, covers, inserts, pre-folds, etc.. has me a bit confused. Can anyone explain what each is and how they are different from one another and how the layers of a nappy work/go together?

There are a number of different systems but I think they are all pretty similar - a piece of cloth which you fold, put inside plastic pants (like a big sanitary towel) but before folding, make sure the paper liner is on - made the mistake of leaving it off a few times and that can be quite gross.

If you don't have a loo nearby it is less nice but i suppose you can just put liner in bag (there are some good biodegradable ones) and put that in the bin (assuming you are in baby changing room, if not carry some plastic bags with you)

Putting it down the loo might be a problem if you have a temperamental system; the liners must be pretty similar to moist toilet paper which I've read takes three days to degrade as opposed to about half an hour for ordinary toilet paper.

If so, I would just scrape off what I could and dispose of the liner as you would a disposable nappy.

quite a lot of LAs seem to employ 'nappy consultants' to try to spread the word about resuables as disposables are clogging up land fill sites at an amazing rate and take about 100 years to break down. Do you have something like that in your area?

I put the lid of the bucket upside down on the floor, put the full nappy on that, sort my son out, pop him in his cot and then deal with the nappy. The liner is quite big so it's easy to make a nice neat package of the poo without getting it all over your hands. It was more difficult when his poo was runny so I'd just take the whole nappy to the loo and get off as much as I could.
They don't clog up our loo. The liners are really very thin. You can get reusable liners made of fleece (or silk!) which solid poo falls off of but they are not so great with liquid poos.
Forgot to say, for wet nappies, I don't flush the liner, just stick it in the bin.

Nappies are confusing! Most reusables come in 3 parts - wrap (cover), nappy and liner. The nappy is the absorbant bit. This can either be a shaped thing that looks like a disposable, has velcro pads etc, or a traditional terry square or a pre-fold like I use. A prefold is a thick pad of cotton that you fold again and put in a wrap. A wrap is the waterproof bit that goes over the nappy and keeps everything in. These are like the old plastic pants that babies used to wear but these days are made of breathable material (usually!) Liners are not strictly necessary but I like them as they make poos easier and also help baby to feel dry. The fleece ones are especially good for this as even in a wet nappy, they feel dry to the touch.

You can also get all in ones (wrap plus nappy) but these tend to take a long time to dry. Stuffables have pockets that you can stuff inserts in to make them more absorbable. There are a ton of different kinds of nappies but if you go to the Nappy Lady and fill in a questionnaire, someone will give you a recommendation based on your needs.

Download "how to nappy guide" on www.twinkleontheweb.co.uk. Its a really good guide & explains all types of napppies etc.

1. • Not much extra work without the drier - I have a sort of peg thing that hangs from a coat hanger which I dry all my wraps boosters, liners and half my nappies on - it doesn't take up much space at all.
2. • DD2 is 2 now and prefers cloth to disposables for comfort - she has told me so! When I put her cloth nappy on she says 'ahhh, nice and soft!'. Recently I have been more concerned about how comfy they are for her (they are hemp and old and get stiff) and she says they are fine - she would complain like mad otherwise I'm certain.
3. • I found I got into a routine with mine very quickly. I use them when out and about without any problems. You adapt to them very easily. There are four parts to my nappy set-up (which is rather a lot) and I quite enjoy sitting down with the DDs assembling them oncer they are dry - then I just put them in a box ready to put on when required. POcket nappies are as quick to put on as disposables.

4. Clothes are the downside for me. Boys clothes tend to fit over cloth better than girls. Up until the age of 2 we didn't have many problems getting clothes to fit over DDs nappies but now she is two the clothes seem to be more 'trendy' and cut very slim around the hips so you have to bear that in mind. It looks like boys clothes get baggier with age . Dungarees are fab too and there is no need to buy special 'cut for cloth' clothes unless you want to. You get used to the look of the nappy under clothes pretty quickly but at first you'll notice the big bum. The padding is a great help when they are learning to walk. DD2 rolled over,crawled and walked very early even though she was in cloth.

5. Runny poos aren;t a problem at all if you have the right set up - make sure you get a good wrap and you'll find you have very few leaks - certainly far fewer than disposables. I find that a lot of mums with young babies are very surprised to find they have no leaks when they try cloth. No need to soak, wash it all off etc - the washing machine will cope with it all

6. SOaking far too much hassle and not neccessary.

7. bucket has never smelt - bin used to smell with disposables though (yuk)

8. no one has ever knocked over the bucket in my house. DD2 has opened it a couple of times (she is into everything) but has never felt the need to empty the contents. We keep it in the bathroom.

9. I wash nappies with other clothes if they aren't too pooey or very, very wet. I have a tendancy to leave them on for a long time so they do get sodden sometimes. Anything that has been changed after a more reasonable amount of time goes in with the normal wash!

10. Some nappy brands / types go hard over time if you only ever line dry - others don't. There are ways to soften them again though.

11. I wash my nappies every 3-4 days and honestly do not notice the extra washing at all.

Get some good one-to-one advice from either a local nappy project or online to find the best nappy for you. There may even be a trial kit system in operation in your area or financial incentives to use cloth.

• I think that is my longest ever post!

I'd recommend buying second hand size 1 nappies in all different types and trying them out to see which kind you like. put an ad up here and you'll get plenty of offers, or try usednappy.co.uk
I'd get motherease wraps though, and avoid totsbots wraps as everyone i know in rl has ishoos with leaking using them, wouldn't be a good start to your cloth nappy experience

I'm not going to add much to all this except to say, we don't have a dryer and I use flat (unshaped) bamboo terry nappies and they dry fine - it did take two full days when it was pouring outside and we had no central heating, otherwise I hang them out in the afternoon and collect them first thing next morning.

It was precisely for this reason that I went for flat terries!

also fwiw - and I really have no explanation for this - my whirlpool washer died last week and we bought a reconditioned hotpoint one, and ever since my nappies have been coming out soft instead of crunchy. go figure.

amitymama, good for you for thinking about using them

Don't think it's been suggested yet but there are several sources of advice, it might help you to chat to someone in person/email/phone or go to a nappycino etc. Flamesparrow is a regular mumsnetter who also runs Bumfluff Nappies and she'll give you free advice. Nappyzone will as well. Plenty of sites will also do trial packs to suit you, and even buy the nappies back off you if they don't (e.g. kittykins). Try the Real Nappy Campaign for events and support in your area, you can also find out from here if your council offers incentives which would help.

Hello - i have just seen this thread but it seems like you have oodles of advise to be going on with. Bumfluff and I are both mumsnetters and can be found in the small business ads area. We are both more than happy to give free advise and guidance.

Wot Nappyzone said really