My top tip is to smother your baby's bottom with sweet almond oil. It makes the skin lovely and soft and is so much better than mineral oil. The latter stops the skin breathing, whereas vegetable oils - olive oil is good too - feed and strengthen the skin helping it perform as a protective barrier to the outside world.
And here are more tips on starting out with real nappies on this short You Tube clip
Tuesday 23 November 2010
Thursday 18 November 2010
Is the up-front cost putting you off?
At Real Nappies for London we have always been a source of impartial information. However we’ve been concerned for some time now that the upfront cost of starting to use real nappies has risen and may be putting some people off trying them. If you think you need to buy 20 nappies at £15 each then £300 is a lot to spend when you’re also not sure whether they will work for you.
But there is a way to enjoy the benefits of these new, well-designed birth-to-potty nappies without spending that much. You could consider buying 6 flat nappies @ about £3 each – muslin, towelling or pre-folds - and 1-3 of the birth-to-potty nappies, such as the Bum Genius. Once you've tried these out you can buy more according to what works best for you and your baby.
In North America the humble pre-fold has remained popular and is seen as an essential part of the nappy wardrobe. A pre-fold nappy is a flat nappy, usually made of layers of muslin. It has layers sewn into the centre that build in extra absorbency. Visit You Tube and Google ‘pre-fold’. Follow the link at the end of the blog to see an example. And look at how many times these videos have been viewed!
You can use the modern pocket nappy in the normal way (with the micro-fibre pad stuffed into the pocket.) But you can also wrap your baby in the cotton nappy, as shown in the You Tube example and then use your birth-to-potty nappy as a waterproof wrap or you can just lay the cotton pre-fold inside. Using a flat nappy next to your baby's skins mean you don't have to wash the whole nappy at every change.
There are lots of benefits to having a stash of pre-folds. Most of us prefer cotton next to our skin, so surely that’s more comfy for baby. They can also be used on the changing mat for bare bottom time. Another advantage is that a cotton nappy gets wet so your baby learns the difference between wet and dry, which helps your baby develop bladder control.
As well as these benefits 100% cotton pre-folds can be put through a very hot wash when necessary. They are also durable so last for more than one baby. Another advantage is that they dry quickly and in winter you can dry a cotton pre-fold on the radiator without any danger of ruining it. (Never dry a waterproof wrap on the radiator – it makes them leak.)
Another advantage is that the organic, unbleached version is affordable – so the ethical choice. And at the end of their working life they can go in the compost or be sold on for recycling - so the zero waste option.
See how to use a pre-fold on You Tube
Tuesday 2 November 2010
An Inconvenient Nappy
Many convenience products turn out to have a cost – we now know too many ready meals can cause strokes and heart attacks. And as Jamie Oliver says, cooking is fun and fresh home-made food tastes better. Not only that, if your children see you do it that’s what they learn and before long you will be coming home and finding healthy home-made dinners waiting for you.
Disposable nappies also have hidden costs; time and money. Thirty years ago, when Terry towelling and muslin nappies were the norm rather than disposables, toddlers stopped wearing nappies around the age of two. Nowadays it’s usually three.
The benefit of disposable nappies – they lock away moisture so you can change your baby less often – has turned out to be the curse. Modern disposables don’t give the child any sense of the difference between a wet and dry nappy and therefore no stimulation to experiment with controlling their bladder and develop the specific muscles needed to get them out of nappies.
Disposable nappy pants are a clever product. They give us the illusion that we are potty training our toddlers because our child can pull them up and down. However because they stay dry they don’t teach the child the skill they really need to develop - bladder control.
Cotton nappies by contrast, do get wet. Your baby feels the difference between a wet and dry nappy at every change. It’s not that the wet nappy is uncomfortable it’s just that the difference stimulates your baby’s curiosity to experiment with bladder control. Before you even get round to thinking about potty training, your child has been working those bladder muscles – and you didn’t even notice.
If your toddler has up to now been wearing disposables and you are thinking about potty training please don’t endure the ‘boot camp’ method of potty training everyone talks about on Twitter. Your child can wear cotton nappies as a precursor to pants. It’s better than buying 20 pairs of cotton pants, changing clothes several times a day and mopping up puddles.
At some point in the future you will go to change a nappy and find it bone dry. The next one will probably be absolutely soaking within 30 minutes. Then it will happen again – for a few days in a row. This means your child is experimenting with bladder control.
This is the time to help your child to start using the toilet or potty. Some people are shocked to find out this can be as early as 18 months. However, if you miss it your child will pass out of this developmental phase – and move on to some other developmental phase – and you must wait for it to happen again. Remember the pincer phase? Picking tiny things off the floor didn’t just go on and on. Stopping suddenly to attend to the sound of a bird or plane? How that came and went? This is what I’m talking about.
Poo is a different thing all together. To be honest cloth nappies don’t really help. However if the parent is washing the nappy s/he is more motivated to get the child to use a potty. In countries where cloth nappies are the norm most children tend to be clean by about one year.
Changing your baby’s nappy can be a fun for you and your baby; a time to coo, babble, sing, laugh and blow raspberries on your baby’s bottom. But when the struggle to catch your toddler and heave them on to the changing mat becomes more of a chore than a pleasure – a strain on your back as well as your wallet - it’s a great relief when your child decides to take him/herself to the toilet.
You may find this interesting too: The true cost of disposables
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