Cloth Diapers

[emcamm]

I agree with the previous posters than flats/prefolds with covers would be your best bet if you're laundering on the ship. That way they clean and dry really easily and you don't have to worry about spending extra money (and time) getting them clean.

I cloth diapered my daughter from newborn until she potty trained just before her 2nd birthday. I miss it more than I thought I would! We had so many cute diapers!

 

I also suggest gdiapers. They are made out of different stuff since they are flushable. Maybe buy a trial pack to try out before your cruise to see if your LO can handle them.

[highbridge5]

We used cloth at home by choice. When we were out, we used disposables. I can't fathom being in your position of not having a choice.

 

Carnival has coin operated laundry on most ships. On the Carnival Pride,

they had one laundry room on about every OTHER deck (deck 3, 5, 7)

and the price was $3 each appliance (so $6 for a load). This was January of this year (2010). I seem to remember there were 2 washers and 2 dryers in the one on deck 7. One dryer was not operational.

 

Even at home, I found that my cloth diapers often needed 2 cycles to get dry. The ladies that I ran into noted that it took 2 cycles to dry their clothes. You should plan on 2 dryer cycles for diapers.

 

You are now looking at serious time (and $$) in the laundry room (and not enjoying your vacation). I hope that the special needs department has a better solution.

 

If you have enough diapers, you could just store them and launder them at home.

 

Or, as wasteful as it seems, perhaps there is an inexpensive kind of cloth diaper that you can use, washing out the urine only ones and just toss the poop ones.

 

Or toss the poop ones and store the others. Count the replacements as

part of the cost of the vacation.

 

Or find some really inexpensive underware (like boxer briefs) that you can put on under a disposable to prevent the diaper from touching the skin and for the urine-only diapers, toss the disposable and wash out or store the underware. Less bulky than cloth diapers.

I'd try this at home first. The underware might wick so much

liquid out of the diaper that you'll find the leaking more of a

problem than it is worth.

 

If you have a toddler, you might have a fairly predictable schedule and can try and use one approach or the other depending on what is expected next....

 

hb5

[yogi2929]

................... Maybe buy a trial pack to try out before your cruise to see if your LO can handle them.

 

Only toilet paper and body 'stuff' can go down a cruiseship toilet. Diapers would have to be put in the trash.

[lkbphysther]

We occasionally use the gdiapers with DS and was going to suggest those but with caution. The flushable liners are fabulous at home with our sewer but was curious how ship's system would handle them. Anybody tried them on a ship yet?

[Ula]

We occasionally use the gdiapers with DS and was going to suggest those but with caution. The flushable liners are fabulous at home with our sewer but was curious how ship's system would handle them. Anybody tried them on a ship yet?

I would not try that. You have to use special toilet paper on the ship. Their system is delicate. You can not even flush female stuff.

Just put them in a plastic bag and the steward will remove.

[~earthmama~]

We sail tomorrow! We will be using Flips and gDiapers on board. I will update in a week to let you know hoe it goes!

[Punchie]

Please let me know how this works for you! We're cruising in Jan and I plan on CD'ing our baby. We use Flips at home, and figured it wouldn't be a stretch to use their disposable inserts. I also plan on bringing some prefolds and BumGenius one-size pockets as back up.

[platinum.wannabe]

Hope you have a great cruise and I'm sure the diapers won't be a problem! :)

[beachchick]

I hope it works for you! We exclusively cloth diaper at home, but we use disposibles on the cruise. Yuck. I hate disposibles! But thankfully my son doesn't react to disposibles, so he'll be fine. Though he does get much worse diaper rash in them - so I guess we'll pack plenty of diaper cream.

 

I was wondering about g-diapers too. Or have you tried 7th Generation or something like that? I wonder if he would react to those.

 

By the way, I don't see the big deal with leaving the diapers on the balcony. We have a dry, open pail upstairs at our house and it doesn't stink at all. I think in general cloth diapers are less stinky than disposible.

 

Good luck!

 

Our DD has used them on her now 20 month old daughter with virtually no sensitivity or skin reaction.

 

We occasionally use the gdiapers with DS and was going to suggest those but with caution. The flushable liners are fabulous at home with our sewer but was curious how ship's system would handle them. Anybody tried them on a ship yet?

 

Absolutely, positively do not flush anything except the special ship toilet paper. The ship's system will not handle them well at all and you will likely end up with backed up plumbing, not just in your cabin but in any number of cabins along the line. It happens often when passengers flush things that the cruise line says are no-no items (which would be everything except the toilet paper).

 

beachchick

[CCH828]

We love cloth! For vacations I like to use flushable liners to flush the poo, and keep my dipes stain/stink free. We rinse everything and store in wetbags (Planetwise makes a nice hanging wet bag now.)

 

FWIW, cloth dipes don't stink if you rinse them and if you let air into the wetbag. I would just leave them in my bathroom, like we do at home. I didn't get to read through the entire thread, but I think some people may be misinformed if they think some great wafting horrible stink is going to come from the wet bag. I mean, you flush the poo, people! :lol With a flushable liner (Bummis, Kushies, etc) it would be quite easy.

 

That said, we are using Earth's Best sposies on our cruise, because we're going to be away from home for longer than I prefer to go between washes, and my stash is mostly all-in-ones, which I will not wash in a public washer. If I had prefold and covers, that would be another story, since prefolds can take a beating and still be fine.

[CCH828]

p.s. just wanted to mention that a g-dipe flushable insert is *not* the same thing as a flushable liner. The liner is thin, like a kleenex or dryer sheet, and breaks down in the toilet quite well and quickly. Liners don't absorb anything, they just keep the poo from adhering to your dipe, so you can lift off the whole mess versus having to dunk and swish. (I do let mine sit a minute or two in the toilet water, but I am extra cautious.) :wink g-dipe inserts are meant to absorb pee, and I believe those have to sit in the toilet for a certain amount of time and be "stirred" with a stick to make sure all the fibers are broken down, before flushing? (not a g-dipe expert, so I am not saying I am correct on this one.)

 

napping toddler waking up....kudos to you, mama, for using cloth on vacation! What a great way to show off your fluff! :) I love the idea of beachy diaper covers! :)

[RizzoLee]

Thanks so much for this thread, and let us know how it goes!

 

We'll be trying the same thing - I had to be cloth diapered as a baby due to my skin issues, which continued into adulthood. Mom just followed suit with my younger brother and sister, so she'll be a source of wisdom for me. And she's coming on the cruise too, lol.

 

I hope we can use some e-friendly disposables and my kids don't have my issues since my bro and sis didn't, but time will tell!

[beachchick]

p.s. just wanted to mention that a g-dipe flushable insert is *not* the same thing as a flushable liner. The liner is thin, like a kleenex or dryer sheet, and breaks down in the toilet quite well and quickly. Liners don't absorb anything, they just keep the poo from adhering to your dipe, so you can lift off the whole mess versus having to dunk and swish. (I do let mine sit a minute or two in the toilet water, but I am extra cautious.) :wink g-dipe inserts are meant to absorb pee, and I believe those have to sit in the toilet for a certain amount of time and be "stirred" with a stick to make sure all the fibers are broken down, before flushing? (not a g-dipe expert, so I am not saying I am correct on this one.)

 

napping toddler waking up....kudos to you, mama, for using cloth on vacation! What a great way to show off your fluff! :) I love the idea of beachy diaper covers! :)

 

That's good to know, but I still would recommend against trying to flush either on a cruise ship, simply because the systems are very "fussy" and designed to only handle the special marine TP. I'm pretty sure that a thin liner would still be a no-no, even though it is thin and breaks down quickly for a regular waste system. Things like kleenex are a no-no and it sounds like the liners are similar. The cruise ship systems are far more sensitive. Now, if the liner becomes one with the poo (that is basically dissolves into it before it even hits the toilet), then obviously it's going to get flushed with the poo. Otherwise, no.

 

beachchick

[CCH828]

This is slightly OT, but I also wanted to add to the topic of "stink" of cloth dipes. In my experience, many disposable diaper users either choose not to or are not aware that human waste should be flushed no matter WHAT kind of diaper its in (read the package!), not rolled up in the diaper (and stuck inside yet *another* plastic bag designed to camouflage the smell...SIGH) and then thrown away. Considering all the chemicals in most disposables AND the fact that most parents leave the poop in the dipe when they toss it, I can see why there is a prevailing thought that diapers stink. Well rinsed cloth dipes that are not in a air tight container are not a big deal.

 

 

Beachchick, I would never flush a kleenex anywhere, even at home! :)

[cnarf77]

We use CD's (BumGenius) exclusively, but I'm considering using disposables for our 9 night cruise in February. I look forward to hearing how you got on.

[~earthmama~]

Okay! Well we chose to take gDiaper covers and Flip covers. I use Berry Plush inserts (awesome BTW) or gCloth or flats for both the flips and gDiapers. I took 1 wetbag per day (5 medium bags). I wipe out and rotate the covers so they will be clean and dry (they are meant for this). I of course flushed poop and threw the wet inserts into the wetbags. There was never any smell in the (tiny) cabin. On the last day (sea day) I threw everything in the washer (just to make it easier to carry since they's be clean) and dryer and with using what I did they dried easily in one cycle. It was never any harder at sea than on land.

 

Easy Peasy

[Ula]

earthmama,

Thanks for the excellent update. Was hoping a report back would come. I do have a none cruise related question. Are cloth diapers less expensive in the long run than disosable? Everyone I know is having babies and would like to discuss this situation with some of them. Growing up everyone used cloth.

[~earthmama~]

I think it depends on the type of diaper you use but yes we are saving money. Especually when you consider how sensitive DSs skin is we'd have to buy the expensive disposibles and then still use liners to keep them from touching his skin.

 

Since cloth can be used with more than one child that reduces cost even further.

[Punchie]

earthmama,

Thanks for the excellent update. Was hoping a report back would come. I do have a none cruise related question. Are cloth diapers less expensive in the long run than disosable? Everyone I know is having babies and would like to discuss this situation with some of them. Growing up everyone used cloth.

 

If you don't get sucked into the subculture of cloth diapering, it can save you tons of money, even w/the increase in laundry. Plus, you can resell diapers after your baby has outgrown them (you can keep them for future kids, but depending on how long you plan on waiting, the elastic can degrade). What I've done w/both my girls is start with prefolds then around 2 months, I started using BumGenius one-sized diapers. W/my first, she wore those from appx 9 wks until 2.5 yrs old when she was potty trained. There was a definite up front cost, but given I got almost 2 yrs out of them, it was well worth it!

 

OP - I'm glad it worked out for you! It gives me confidence for our sailing in Jan! Did you have any problems w/the washing machine onboard?

[~earthmama~]

No I did not, the machine worked VERY well and they dried in one cycle. The BG AIO's might take longer though. One dry cycle is 90 minutes. A wash is only 34 so you may want to run two cycles. We only did one since what we were washing comes clean very easy.

[Punchie]

Good to know about the cycles. We'll probably have to run it thorugh 2x. Thanks! I'll probably do laundry on a port day (hoping that it will be less busy). For my BG's, I usually line dry, so I'll just string them up on the line in the bathroom. :)