cloth diapers and vaccinations - All Things Washing Discussions on Welcome!

karianne

My son had his first vaccinations today and the nurse told us to seal the bag after throwing the diapers in for the next 10 days. We told her we are using cloth diapers and she said we have to use disposables as our son might be contagious. We asked if washing the diapers on 140 degrees would kill the virus but she said it needs 212 degrees to be killed. He got the triple vaccine plus the polio vaccine, and I think the issue was regarding the polio vaccine but I'm not sure.

Has anybody else encountered this? Is there a way of killing the virus in the cloth diapers? (I live in Chile so bac-out is not an option. I've looked for tea tree oil but not been able to find it. I do however have some grape fruit seed oil, but I'm guessing I need way more than I have to be able to use it over 10 days..?)

Thanks, Karianne

mrsgintoft

I've never heard of that! To be safe, 212 is the temp of boiling water so after your dipes are clean, boil them! Then I would run an empty cycle through the machine with some bleach. I think American babies don't get the polio vaccine until 12 months so maybe it's harder on little babies.

mrsgintoft

Never mind! I just checked out my son's vaccinations, and he has had 3 polio vaccinations so far! Don't think he has contagious diapers either... :)

karianne

I thought about boiling them, but I don't want to boil the pocket diapers as I'm afraid it'll ruin the PUL.. (will it? does anybody know?)

I don't have any fitteds yet (they're in the mail) otherwise I'd use them and just boil them, although I'm also not sure if cotton or bamboo will shrink a lot when boiled - anybody got any experience with this?

So for now I've been using pockets that I bought used and I've been adding bleach/clorine to the first rinse, then cleaning with Tide to get the bleach out properly (they still smelled bleach when I washed with RnG) and rinsing a ton as I could only find the TL version here and I have a FL.. I hope the bleach is killing the virus!!

It is definitely the polio vaccine, he was given the oral vaccine which contains live virus (the injected version is inactivated/dead). The oral version is no longer used in the US and Europe and I wasn't very happy about what I read about it after the fact. But for now it's too late!

Rlambert6002

You may want to further research this as to not pose a risk to anyone unecessarily, but I am almost positive that even with the live virus vaccination the only people your son's diapers would pose a risk to would be those with a compromised immune system. At that, I'm thinking that no one outside of your home or family is going to be in that close of a proximity to your son's dirty diapers. I base this on my remembrance of the live polio vaccine in my older children and the info sheet I was always given with it. I remember it stating that if you, your child or anyone in the household had a compromised immune system then the child should not receive the live virus but the inactivated vax instead. Anyways, unless alot of other people that you are not sure of their immune system status are going to be in contact with your son and his diapers (such as a daycare situation, etc.) then I don't think it is really something that will be that big of a problem.

karianne

Thank you!! :-) I might ease up on the bleach a little then.

Howdy, Stranger!

Categories

In this Discussion