Friday, 9 November 2012

It's Poosasterous!

Shit storm
Poonami
Poopacalypse
The girls are going poozerk
Assalanche

It doesn't matter what you call it, it's going to happen.  It's going to happen from day one and continue for years, so if you are squeamish about it, get over it now.  The key to a well contained poosaster is the correct diaper.  Make the wrong choice and find out how far out the neck hole of a sleeper a little girl can defecate.

This is strictly personal opinion, based on my personal experience of dealing with twin girls, so if you've got little boys, then you'll have to do your own experimenting.

The first thing you need to decide is earth vs. personal convenience, cloth vs. disposable.  It's not that simple really.  There are those that will argue both ways, and honestly, I'm not sure how true it is that cloth diapers are all that much more environmentally friendly when you take into account the delivery, cleaning, collection of waste, treatment of waste water (including facility maintenance, electricity, workers carbon footprint, etc...) and finally the transport of the cleansed water to the nearest lake.  Disposable diapers, in my area at least, are composted and used as topsoil on farms and park land.  The choice was pretty simple for us, with twins, the mountains of diapers that the girls would produce, we opted for disposable....f@ck this planet!  (Just kidding, I love the earth).  

First off, bring diapers with you to the hospital.  The hospital, at least the hospitals in my area, don't supply diapers.  We brought Huggies, newborns with us.  We chose that particular brand because of the umbilical cutout.  I had no idea how to strap a diaper, on a baby butt to begin with, so having to give consideration to irritating the stub of cord sticking out of my babies' bellies was just something else to worry about.  Newborn diapers are good up to 8 pounds, so lots of couples will completely skip this size.  I had no real complaints about the Huggies.  As newborns the poops are small but frequent and the diapers held up well.  Just so you are ready for it, the twins went through 44 diapers in one 24 hour period (that was a record for us).

We moved on to size 1 when the girls were right around 8 pounds.  I'm usually pretty brand loyal...actually it has nothing to do with loyalty, I'm too lazy to look for or try anything new...if it had been left up to me I probably would never have tried a new brand, and I would have experienced more wrecked pants, soiled sleepwear and poo hairdos then I could have imagined.  Luckily, loving relatives and friends often gifted us with diapers when they came to visit the girls (actually, when asked if there was anything that they, the visitors, could bring me, I always said a box of diapers).  We ended up with several brands including:  Huggies, Pampers, President's Choice Green Diapers, Shopper's Drug Mart Life Brand, Huggies Natural, Pampers Overnights and Pampers Sensitive.  We tried them all, so below you'll find a review of what we discovered.  Remember, this is a personal opinion, of our experience with two little girls.  I've heard differing opinions when boy parts get involved.

Huggies/Huggies Sensitive:  Once we were in size 1 we found these diapers just didn't hold up.  Very often we would end with collateral damage, in the form of wrecked clothing, from the poosplosion.  If the diapers were put on too loose, crap would blow out the leg holes.  Cinching the diapers up a little tighter, closed up the leg holes, but created a perfect escape route for a poo stampede out the topside.  Not many things worse than finding crap in your little girl's hair, except maybe the trail that leads back to the source.  One box of Huggies Snugglers we had, contained several misshapen diapers.  I contacted the Huggies corporation by email to complain.  I included several photos of the malformed diapers, and they immediately sent me a coupon for a free large size box as well as a coupon for $8 off any second purchase.  I was appreciative of the customer care, and it gave me the opportunity to test out the Huggies Sensitives as well as get more crap on my hands from overflowing diapers.

Shopper's Drug Mart Life Brand:  The only crap collector worse than the Huggies was the Shopper's Drug Mart Life Brand.  If you are looking for an excuse to bleach everything your children wear, then this is the diaper for you.  Typically, when one of the girls would finish her latest masterpiece (my babies are amazing at everything they do) I'd find more crap outside the diaper than in.

President's Choice Green Brand:  Are, as the name implies, meant to be marketed to those parents that want to be earth friendly, but are not willing to put up with the inconvenience of cloth (not to mention that bulky cloth diapers makes your baby's butt look fat in those $100 baby jeans that they will wear 1 time in their whole lives).  These diapers are supposed to be eco-friendly according to the website.  It doesn't say how, whether in the manufacturing, or in the materials used.  But they are fragrance free, which is a big plus (one of my wife's passions is researching chemicals in everyday products) and they do have well designed securing strips.  I found that this brand did a really good job of pulling moisture away from my girls' skin and was proficient in corralling solid matter as well.  The only problem I had with this brand was that you could only buy it in small packages (66 or fewer).

Pampers Swaddlers/Sensitive/Overnights:  Our brand of choice, for daily use, is the Pampers Sensitives.  They feature a well designed securing strap and can hold a huge quantity of crap.  They are excellent at moving moisture away from sensitive skin (which is extremely important, you'll find, when you battle a round of diaper rash).  This brand is more expensive than the Swaddlers, but in my opinion, worth the money.

Now that the girls are sleeping for long periods of time (they will sleep 12 hours through the night if we let them) we've got them wearing Pampers Overnights to bed.  These things work.  By morning (we put them on at 9:30pm and take them off at 8:30am with a check during their dream feed at 5:00am), they are the size of a balloon and weigh as much as a bowling ball...but the girls are never in discomfort, nor have they experienced a re-occurrence of their diaper rash.  Please note, to any terrible parents out there, this is not an opportunity to further neglect your children.  These are meant for overnight use, not all day use.  Change your babies whenever they are dirty...

So that's it.  My recommendation is Pampers Sensitive for day use and Pampers Overnights when your kids are old enough.  Take it for what it is, one guy's opinion.  Feel free to experiment...just keep a steady supply of extra sleepers for those poosasterous situations.



1 comment:

  1. Having witnessed first hand the poop explosions of both my beautiful grandchildren,where my suggestion was to cut off the sleepers rather than risk further contamination of their perfect extremeties or head and face,I bear witness to all of the above statements made by their loving father.P.S. We did manage to work the clothing downward and didn't throw out anything we did however have to wash the soiled articles repeatedly!!!!!!!

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