Stains

My son got his first ear infection.

It's not bad, a minor ache he told me about by cleverly pulling on his ear which led to the doctor's office and prescribed antibiotics for ten days.

The pharmacist warned me there may be an increase in poopy diapers and they might be a little more nasty.

On top of that I put him on probiotics to replace the good human bacteria killed by the antibiotics and I was warned that they could also make an increase in poopy, colorful diapers.

Normally, exclusively-breast-fed poopies are a bit like seedy mustard. There can be some color variation but that's about it. It's water soluble so it doesn't have to be pre-rinsed or dunked or sprayed, it just goes right into the diaper pail and then into the washing machine and comes out clean on the other side.

But BOY oh BOY did my baby's diapers take a radical change in the last week.

I went from one to two big poops a day to five or six and from small amounts of yellowy poop to whole diapers saturated in what looked like green and yellow slime. Yeah, just the mental image you wanted, huh? (Well, get used to it!)

Anyway, they still were going directly into the washing machine and while everything was washing out cleanly I noticed an increase in staining.

Normally I don't give a rat's butt about stains on a diaper. After all, it IS a diaper. You know, kids poop in it, daily. I was and am prepared for some stains to occur.

But this was different. One of my diapers went from a soft vanilla cotton color to green! These are serious stains.

Now, since bleach and other stain removal products can be harmful to babies' delicate skin, damage diaper fibers and void diaper warranties there is a limit to what a laundry obsessed mother (that would be me) can do.

The first option is the sun.

That's right, folks, the sun. "Sunning" an item is one of the most effective ways to remove stains. Just lay the item out for some time on a sunny afternoon and watch the stains fade away. I've done this successfully on many a hemp doubler and bamboo diaper.

My rescuer in this case... Du da-da dunt da-da...

OxiClean Baby!

Gentle enough for baby but with the stain fighting power of OxiClean.

I was prepping new prefolds anyhow so I took my four most stained diapers and threw them in with the prepping prefolds, added a 3/4 scoop of OxiClean Baby, one scoop of Charlie's Soap (since everything is technically "clean" I didn't have to use my high-powered Planet), set my washing machine to "hot" and "regular load" and let it go. (I didn't even put in my water softener pellets.)

I was (and am) extremely impressed with how well it removed the stains on my diapers. The green diaper has gone back to vanila in color, and everything else looks as clean and bright as new.

I already use 1/2 scoop of OxiClean Baby as a detergent booster in my regular wash of diapers but now I know I can use it as a powerful stain removal in my moment of over-stained need.