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Sunday, November 20, 2011

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A Tale of Three Days in Disposables

I lay down my little one to change her fluffy diaper to find a terrible rash spreading from her diaper area down her legs and up her trunk. I couldn’t fathom what would have caused such a terrible, splotchy rash. My daughter has very sensitive skin and would have very slight redness in her chubby rolls from time to time, but never anything I would even consider calling diaper rash. Was it an allergic reaction? I couldn’t think of anything we had done differently that day to cause such a bad rash, but I racked my brain over and over trying to figure it out.

I cleaned her up and loaded her bottom with Grandma El’s diaper remedy and a fleece liner to protect my diapers from too much of a good thing (even though Grandma El’s is cloth diaper friendly, I still like to protect my precious fluff). Making sure to change her frequently, the rash was not subsiding, but instead getting worse and spreading. I made an appointment that day to see her doctor.

Because her signs and symptoms didn’t line up with any one diagnosis, the doctor told us to watch it and keep her as clean and dry as possible. She recommended loading her up with Aquafor and/or Desitin. Knowing neither of these were going to come anywhere near my cloth diapers, I headed to the store to pick up some gDiaper biodegradable inserts to use in my Flip covers. I was still very careful not to spread the “unsafe” creams too far out onto her legs or trunk in order to protect the Flip covers.

Another day and it wasn’t getting much better. I knew I needed to extend the cream onto her legs and trunk too in order to protect her poor skin. Because I didn’t want to risk anything non-cloth diaper friendly getting on the Flip covers, I drove myself to our local Target to pick up a small package of as baby and Earth friendly disposable diapers as I could find.

Much to my dismay, there were no baby friendly or Earth friendly diapers available for me to purchase. It had been over 6 months since I had stepped foot down the disposable aisle at Target because we were using 100% cloth. I had no idea you could only buy name brand, enormous packages of diapers. I wasn’t about to buy 75 chemical laden diapers for my little girl. My hopes were that the rash would clear up much faster than the time it would take us to use all of those disposable diapers. I knew I had seen Seventh Generation diapers at the grocery store, so we left Target and stopped there on the way home to pick up a small package of more Earth and baby friendly disposables.

I kid you not, not 20 minutes into wearing her first disposable in 6 month, she had a poopy diaper that extended out the legs and up the back of the diaper. It was bedtime and my little girl was crabby. Now I had to not only change her diaper again (which, if you have an 8 month old, you know is next to impossible), but I had to wipe her down and change her pajamas. Not a pleasant experience! I cursed the stupid disposables and the stupid rash that was wreaking such havoc on our day.

I used a combination of the Seventh Generation disposables and the gDiaper flushable inserts for another two days as the rash started to slowly get better. That first blow out was not the only one we experienced, unfortunately. Since going to 100% cloth 6 months ago, we had not experienced one poopy blow out. I had four in less than three days in disposables. Yuck.

We are still unsure what exactly caused the rash, but I’m happy to say it cleared up over night (literally) and my freshly cleaned, stuffed, and folded fluff stash was ready and waiting. While using disposables, I longed to use my cloth diapers. Not only are they cute, but my goodness do they do a better job. My mother-in-law even commented on how terrible the disposables were and how much better she liked using our cloth diapers.

In hindsight, 3 days is a very short time period, but boy did it feel like an eternity. Ironically, in that time period, a good friend of my converted to using cloth diapers so I was able to put some of my energy towards helping her out and getting her started down an addictive road. But that’s another blog post for another day.

Bio: Michelle is a part time stay at home mom to her 8-month-old daughter. When she isn’t reading cloth diapering blogs or scouring the Internet for fluff deals, she can be found reading, running, or out and about with her husband and baby girl.

2 comments:

Holly said...

Not that I want to give the disposable diapers any credit, but Desitin can be a major cause of blowouts. It coats the diaper, making it not able to absorb any of the poop, and then it slides right up the back. We switched about 9 months ago to cloth, and I have yet to have a blowout, after my daughter showed us just how talented she was at getting past any diaper to decorate her clothes.

Jes said...

We had to use disposables for a random rash that did the same thing (down his legs and up his belly a bit) I wasn't as good of a mommy as you, and I used huggies, but it was only one day, I bleached all my inserts and made sure every last flip cover was washed (and then an extra hot wash w/o det.) it cleared right up after one night in the huggie, and hasn't come back. but it was a random rash, our doctor couldn't figure out what it was either, she prescribed a steroid cream, which i filled, but never put on him. I didn't see the point since it went away! how crazy!