How hard can it be? Really.

My daughter is about to turn a year old and at this late stage, I've decided to start using cloth diapers on her. She has been plagued with horrible diaper rashes that have led to open sores ever since she started teething (at four months!). This last rash has been outrageous and I felt that cloth diapering might help.

We used a few of the diapers yesterday but used disposable for overnight. But from the time she woke up this morning, she's been in cloth diapers.

Then. It happened.

I had to face my greatest cloth-diapering fear. Poop.

Not a normal, solid, adult-style turd. Nope. It was that soft, mushy, get everywhere baby poop.

THE HORROR of it all!!

The beautiful, clean, white interior of her cute diaper was stained orange from all the tomato in that Carne Asada baby food we fed her yesterday! What to do! What to do!

You'd think that a mother of two could use a little common sense in a situation like this, wouldn't you? And you'd be wrong!

Cloth diapering is a sub-culture of its own. There are pro's and con's to wet diaper pails vs dry diaper pails, wool vs hemp liners, all-in-one diapers vs prefolds (I don't even know what prefolds are!). And so it would seem that there's great debate on how to treat poopy diapers as well.

Some mothers swish-and-flush (swish the poopy diaper in the toilet and flush the waste away). Others attach a special sprayer to their toilet and power wash the poop off. Use an icing spatula to scrape it off, then rinse in the sink. Soak in hot water; soak in cold water. Treat it with stain removers; don't you dare!

In the end, I wiped off as much as I could w/ toilet paper, rinsed in the bathroom sink, disinfected the sink and tossed the diaper into the dry pail. I'll be doing laundry tonight for sure.

Well. I survived. Our first poopy cloth diapering experience and I managed to muddle through with no loss of limb or dignity.