So we made the decision after Rory was born to embrace cloth diapers. For those of you who are already disgusted, cloth diapers really have come a long way in the past 30 years. They're only slightly more disgusting than disposable diapers and really saves a lot of money in the end. Plus, you get to attach a sweet hose to your toilet, and who doesn't want that, right? Plus, they are so cute!
So for about 6 months, Rory's Fuzzibunz (there's like 20 brands to choose from) worked great and gave him some amazing bum padding! But around the 7 month mark, our amazing cloth diapers stopped being so amazing and started smelling really badly of ammonia. For the scientists out there, apparently detergent build-up, when mixed with urine, produces an ammonia smell.
The smell is pretty horrendous and we weren't sure exactly what to do.
About the same time, Rory's bowels became quite regular, and another funny quirk about Rory revealed itself. Each morning, Rory would wake up practically soaking through his diaper. Being the good mother that I am, I would change his diaper first thing. (Joe definitely did his fair share as well.) Almost every single morning was the same, within 5 minutes of giving him a clean diaper, he would have his daily poop! It was like clockwork! He would NOT poop in a wet diaper.
My first brilliant idea was to remove the wet cloth diaper, put a disposable diaper on, let him poop, then put on a clean cloth diapers. I thought it was genius. It eliminated our need to handle poopy cloth diapers (and use of the toilet hose) and I was feeling pretty clever.
Then, another lightbulb went on. Why not eliminate the diaper altogether and just get that morning poop straight into the toilet! (Apparently I'm not the first to think of this, and there is a philosophy called Elimination Communication that starts potty training at birth, but I'm not that crazy.) So, I ordered a little froggy potty from Amazon. Day 1 our alarm clock (Rory) woke us up right on time at 6:30. I took off his diaper, stuck him on the froggy potty, and I kid you not, he pooped! Joe and I were practically rolling on the bathroom floor laughing! Rory was equally excited, though I'm not sure he knew why. Here's a picture from the moment after.
Since then, we sit on the froggy potty most every morning. He did another poop last week and frequently pees on it (In one 20 minute session he peed 4 times! Most of it ends up on the floor.) So we're embracing this, not putting pressure on it, and seeing if we can eliminate diapers altogether (may be a 2 year process).
The unfortunate reality is that even though he has miraculously pooped and peed on the potty, there's still 23.5 hours in the day where he's not sitting on a potty, so we're back to our diaper smelling dilemma.
There are tons of theories on how remove the detergent build-up in order to rid of this ammonia smell, and I've tried them all. We were down to our last option - bleach.
Now - I've been avoiding this bleach option purposely, because bleach and I don't get along, and never have. I swear that no matter how careful I am with bleach, I end up with white spots on clothing that wasn't even near the bleach! I hate it with a passion and prefer to never have it in my house at all.
So, Shauna to the rescue as usual, says she has a great relationship with bleach and would be happy to bleach our diapers for us. So, on Thursday night I went to the store. I searched for a small bottle of bleach (to minimize risk) but they were only selling gallons. It was only $2, so I bought the gallon and planned on throwing it out as soon as this mission was accomplished.
I put the bleach on top of our dryer where the rest of our detergent has lived peacefully for months. Friday morning I'm getting ready for work. Queue loud noise. Gallon of bleach plummets nose first from the top of the dryer, the entire bottle splits open splits, and begins drenching our carpet.
While the bleach did destroy about 4 towels that we used to clean up, I am very thankful that for some unknown reason the carpet was not affected AT ALL. It's a miracle if you ask me.
So the moral of the story? The froggy potty is awesome. I will NEVER buy bleach again. Our diapers still stink and I will humbly ask Shauna if she could bleach Rory's diapers at her house. We're using disposable diapers full time right now.
But hey - we're trying!
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