The Great Cloth Experiment, Dad’s Point of View

Jessica just left for California for her brother’s wedding, and I get to spend the weekend (a 3-day weekend!) with Spencer.  I’m quite happy about this.  I also get to spend the weekend with cloth diapers, or at least that’s what I thought.  This post is NOT void of vivid descriptions of baby poop, so be warned.  🙂

I’ve changed his cloth diapers before, but I’ve never done the whole shabang by myself.  This involves using them throughout the day and having to deal with any poopies as well as washing/drying them at night and re-stuffing them.  I was all gung-ho about it.  I was on board.  In fact, I’ve never had any issues yet, and I’ve been behind Jessica 100% with this.  I still am, but I think my weekend of cloth diapering is over.  That’s right: after one diaper change I may be going disposable until Jessica gets back.  Here’s why.

The very first diaper I changed after we got back from the airport was a poopie.  It stank pretty bad, but I’m a veteran.  I don’t cringe in the face of duty.  I wisely removed the cover from the changing table, not knowing whether the wet in his pants was pee or poop (gross!).  I laid him down, pulled down the pants and diaper, and there it was, Lake Spencer.  Maybe Mud-Bog Spencer or Swamp Spencer would be more accurate.  It was definitely liquid, but with solid leanings.  Please understand, I’m not a noob when it comes to these things.  I have always done my fair share of diapers, poop and non-poop alike, but this one was massive and disgusting.  And the worst part?  I knew I couldn’t just wrap it up and throw it away.

I cleaned off Spencer’s bum while trying to keep his hands from investigating The Swamp and finally managed to get poop separated from baby.  I set him down, bottomless, and sent him to the bath tub.  I very carefully carried The Mud-Bog to the toilet and prepared to dump it out like I’ve been instructed.  Jessica’s told me that you just dump out what you can and then put the rest in the pail.  First of all, this was NOT going in the pail because I didn’t want to have to SCRUB sloshed over swamp-stuff from the pail.  That meant it was going straight to the washer, but I wasn’t going to throw all the “mud” in there.  My problems increased as I realized it was just in that “sweet” spot on the liquid/solid scale that it wouldn’t dump out of the diaper.  I balanced it in one hand while going to get water in a cup with the other hand and tried to rinse it off into the toilet.  That was fine for the first time, but then I realized I had to get more water, but now I had a dripping swamp-diaper that I had to balance just right so it wouldn’t come out while I got to the faucet.

I did this about 5 times and decided it was ready for the washer.  Unfortunately, on my way over there, the now mostly water/somewhat poop stuff on the surface of the diaper started to drip out, so I had to catch it with my hands.  This does take two hands to achieve such a feat, and I found myself at quite a loss for how to open our front-loader washer.  My feet soon sprang to action, and I really hope you can get the vivid picture of me juggling the swamp diaper while dancing on  one foot while the other is tangled up in the washer door handle.  It even makes me laugh…now.

So, it all turned out ok, but I just don’t think I’m going to do it the rest of this weekend.  Sure, Spencer likely won’t put me through that again, but I just don’t want to deal with it when the disposable works just fine.  Don’t get me wrong, I am totally behind moving to cloth diapers and think it’s a fantastic idea and will support Jessica a 100%.  But Jessica’s not here.  🙂

P.S.  I really am behind you a 100% sweetie!  Just not for the next couple days!  I love you!