Thinking about just giving up after a year :(

Rlambert6002

I had posted a week or so ago about having horrid repelling issues with my pocket diapers after stupidly washing my flannel liners with them after using a yeast diaper cream. I have stripped and stripped and stripped to no avail. I scrubbed Dawn into them, poured boiling water over them AND bleached....and then did about 10 rinses. Results? Minimal. They still are not useable. To top it all off I diapered my 2 year old dd last night and she looked fine, this morning I went to change her and she has a wretched yeast rash! She's not on antibiotics or anything so I'm assuming it's still in the diapers. I used almost an entire bottle of GFS extract so I just don't understand how that can be! I'm sure my water bill from this whole stripping ordeal is going to be horrendous....I'm just ready to throw them all away and go back to disposables (an eco-friendly as possible one). I started cloth diapering for ecological, economical and healthy for my baby's bums reasons...but I find I'm wasting massive amounts of water which blows the eco factor, I'm gonna have a tremendous water bill not to mention I'm gonna have to buy sposies until I can figure out how to get the yeast out so there goes the economical factor and my babies getting yeast rashes everytime I cloth diaper them certainly isn't healthy for their bottoms! I have loved cloth diapering up to this point so I am super disappointed. Any suggestions that I haven't tried???

packgal · Whitney Mom to adorable son born 10/20/12

What kind of water do you have?
I have hard water, I don't think super hard but I have had similar problems. I have pocket diapers that were infrequently used that also started repelling overnight for no apparent reason. After doing a few Dawn strips that didn't work, and after emails to my detergent company's laundry guru (I use Rockin Green) I ended up soaking in hot water for several hours x 2 and then doing about 6-8 more hot water rinses, about 3 of those with Calgon. Finally it seems like they are not repelling again. I guess my problem was a build up of detergent and hard water minerals.

I feel like you do though, I can't be going through this ordeal every couple weeks. I did not think that I was using much detergent at all. Luckily I have not had much problems with my prefolds so that is what I have used primarily, but my baby is growing out of them and I have a large stash of larger pocket diapers my mom made for me, so I am going to have to figure out a wash routine that works. Ultimately I will be switching detergents. I am going to try either Ecosprout or Lulu's in the Fluff. Rinsing the diapers a billion times in hard water seems like it is going to cause more problems with mineral deposits too.

My son also is prone to yeast, I have used disposables before with the really bad rashes when we have had to use nystatin. I keep it in check by using GSE in the final rinse water while he is being treated (you only need a teaspoon max, usually I just use 20 drops, so you may have overdone it there) and also with mostly every diaper change I use a GSE dilution on my son's bum: mix 1 oz water with 10-20 drops of GSE, spray, let dry (I use a blow dryer on cool), then apply coconut oil or CJ's butter. Also when I treat the diapers I do it with the GSE twice, about 1 week apart. Here is an article about GSE and yeast treatment. You have to use distilled water when using it to treat thrush or diaper rash. http://drjaygordon.com/breastfeeding/thrush.html
I also give my son a probiotic daily.

Rlambert6002

I have semi-hard water. I'm just at a loss. Once again over the course of this week I tried stripping again with Dawn (did scrub it in), boiling water, bleach....no results at all. If I were at least seeing some sort of improvement it would be helpful, but I'm not seeing anything whatsoever. I'm pretty positive it's yeast because it has the tell-tale satellite bumps, but I guess it's possible that it's not and actually thought about the detergent thing. But, I tried stripping the prefolds as well (which is all that is useable right now), used GFSE (not quite so much this time...lol) again and did, NOT exaggerating at LEAST 8 rinses and I put cloth on my 7 mth old yesterday and by yesterday evening she was blood raw (actually didn't look like yeast this time though) She is being changed adequately so I don't understand. We have been using cloth for almost a year and half now without ever having issues so encountering this seemingly insurmountable obstacle is very discouraging. And when I took the diaper off of the baby last night and hubby seen she was raw yet again he said no more cloth! :( It also did not help my case that I had sold dh on the whole cloth diapering thing by telling him how much money we would save....we got our water bill for the month of Jan a few days ago (they bill a month behind) which was a month I was using a lot of sposies because of yeast and lo and behold our water bill was $40 cheaper! That particularly doesn't make a huge difference to me, but it does to him. It just seems like everything is going against my cloth diapering initiative. :(

packgal · Whitney Mom to adorable son born 10/20/12

I'm so sorry this is happening, it is so disappointing. I hope your daughter's rash is getting better, I would probably use disposables too until it is gone. The only other thing i can think that you could do is to send your diapers away to a stripping service. I think I read about one once here on Autumn's blog.

AndreaOlson

I would go for a completely different solution - reducing, and eventually eliminating, your dependence upon diapers. Yes, cloth is better than disposables in some ways, but when dealing with diaper rash, especially, full-time use of diapers just aren't the answer. Most of my readers find that doing elimination communication, or infant potty training, with their babies has completely done away with all diaper rash, especially the hardest cases. Good luck!

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