Leaks
Stinky Diapers
Overnight
Stripping your diapers

Leaks

• New diapers
  If you’ve purchased new cotton cloth diapers, wash and dry them several times in very hot water. New cloth diapers, particularly those made of unbleached cotton, are not absorbent, and will likely leak until all the natural cotton oils are washed out. Unbleached diapers like Kissaluvs, prefolds, and Ecobaby one-size diapers sometimes give people trouble in the beginning, until they’ve been “primed”. That is, washed enough to remove all of the natural oils in the cotton. This will usually cause a fast leak around the inside of the legs, coming out of the covers but not through the covers, and the diaper will not be saturated.
• Too large
  If you are using diapers that have already been washed five times or more, check the fit. The waist and legs should fit snugly. Do not try to save money by skipping those sizes that your baby will grow out of quickly. You may run into this with thin-legged newborns particularly.
• Too small
  More common than a diaper fitting too loosely is a cover that is too small. It should be roomy, not wrapped too tightly. I see people in my store that are squeezing baby into covers they should have moved out of months before. Even if everything is inside the cover, a too-tightly wrapped cover will “squeeze” moisture out of a saturated diaper. While the diaper should fit snugly, a cover should leave some room for air circulation. Make certain that the diaper is completely inside the cover. If there is any cloth poking out, it will wick onto clothing. This happens most often at the front of the thigh, and may indicate you’re ready to move up to the next size cover to get full coverage.
• Detergent residue
  I’ve sold diapers for six years, and only in the last year have I gotten emails about covers and pocket diapers wicking through. I don’t think it’s a matter of the covers not being as good as they used to be - it’s certainly related to the new additives that have entered the market recently. My recent discussions with residue-free detergent makers and with Clemson University’s school of textiles has convinced me. Waterproof fabric can start wicking after about 3 months of washing in many of the store-brand detergents. The residues create a wicking medium throughout the fabric. See our laundering page for more information.
• Pocket diapers - repelling fleece/suedecloth
  Detergent residues, especially fabric softener and plant oils, as well as diaper creams can coat the fleece or suedecloth of pocket diapers and create a water-resistant barrier that urine rolls off of, right out the legs! Of course, this is a layer that you want urine to flow through freely. If your pocket diapers leak and the inserts don’t seem super saturated, suspect repelling fleece. Place a cloth wipe or flushable liner between any diaper cream and the pocket diaper, take a look at your detergent to see if it may have troublesome ingredients, and “strip” your diapers. One way to do this is to rub dishwashing liquid into the fleece, scrubbing thoroughly, then wash in hot water until all suds are gone.

Stinky Diapers

• Detergent
  With an ammonia smell, it’s likely detergent residue. Run your diapers through an extra hot wash with no soap; if there are any suds, the detergent did not rinse out completely, and this residue is what causes the ammonia smell when the diaper gets wet again. Run your diapers through an extra cold rinse cycle after washing or use less detergent, or switch brands.
  I always got good results from doing one of my intense cleanings with an oxygen bleach. Wash the diapers as usual, and then soak the clean diapers overnight in hot water with oxygen bleach.
• Diaper creams
  Many of the commercial diaper creams use cod liver oil. It really does come from codfish, and smells like it. It can get into diapers and stay there, so opt for creams without it. There are so many diaper creams that smell nice (Burt’s Bee’s is widely available) that I don’t know how Desitin became so popular. And a money-saving tip: the active ingredient is zinc oxide. You can get a tube of plain zinc oxide at a drugstore for a fraction of the cost of a diaper cream, and it has no smell at all.
• Storage
  • Use a dry pail. Don’t soak your diapers in poop-soup. This allows a lot of odors to penetrate deep into all those layers.
  • Get as much of the solid waste off the diaper as possible before storing in the pail. The best way to do this is to use flushable liners.
  • If you’ve rolled a diaper up into a tight “diaper bomb” to fit it into a carry-bag, make sure it’s unrolled before you put it in the pail.
• Not getting clean enough
  Some people, after reading about too much detergent causing problems, cut back so drastically that they don’t use enough to get their diapers clean.

Overnight
I get a lot of overnight diapering questions. Babies are waking up because clothes and beds are wet.

• Diapers
  Once your baby begins sleeping for long periods of time, your diapers should include the extra absorbency needed to get them through the night. A stay-dry doubler or an infant prefold diaper folded into thirds in any diaper adds insurance.
• Covers
  The covers used during the day are often not made for long overnight diapering - they are just too waterproof, holding all that moisture against the skin for many hours. They can’t handle 8 hours or more of use on a heavy wetter. My favorite solution is breatheable, cool wool (see our “nighttime diapering” page). It allows wetness to dissipate, plus it adds some absorbency (no other cover does that). If you don’t like the idea of the special care wool requires, go for washable fleece covers. Pocket diapers also work better over long periods than diapers with daytime covers.
• Wool or pocket diapers leaking overnight!
  Okay… If wool is leaking, which is unusual, I must suspect that the lanolin has worn off. The best way to keep a wool cover lanolized is to use Eucalan wool wash to care for the cover. You can also rub the same lanolin you used for breastfeeding in your palms and pat your cover to coat it with lanolin if there seems to be a trouble spot.
  With pocket diapers, it is likely that the waterproof outer has some of that detergent build-up that causes it to wick through or the fleece is repelling. Did it happen suddenly after about 3-4 months of use? This is fixable, by stripping them. More info on that at the bottom of the page.

Stripping Your Diapers
“Stripping” is a term that entered the cloth diapering lingo, oddly, around the same time as the increase in pocket diapers and increased use of additives in detergents (it wasn’t always a part of our world!). These residues can cause waterproofing to wick, or persistent odor problems, or rashes. Pocket diapers (and their waterproof outers) are washed after every use rather than just occassionally like covers. So the effect of those residues was really pronounced, making it seem like a pocket diaper issue. But the same thing can happen to your covers, all-in-ones, or anything with waterproofing or fleece/suedecloth. And the routine is the same:
Begin with clean diapers (wash them all). Switch detergents to avoid having to do this again. Fill washer with either plain very hot water or with oxy-clean (not a single scoop - more like 5 scoops) or with RLR, available in the laundry section of wal-mart. Allow it to agitate, and then soak for a few hours. Rinse and then run a hot wash with nothing but water. If there are any suds during the wash, repeat the plain-water wash until there are no suds. That should help. It’s best if you do not return to using the same detergent that caused the problem. In fact, repeated washing in a residue-free detergent will also remove residues, just not as quickly as an intense “stripping”. Some people have found better success with hand-washing in a sink filled with hot water and dish detergent, where you can scrub each individually with a nail brush to speed the removal of residues. That may not be practical, however, if you have two dozen pocket diapers! As always, do not hesitate to contact us for more help.