Cloth Diapers at Daycare
What happens when your daycare refuses to use cloth diapers? You’ve made the costly investment in all the gear, found the most efficient way to wash them, and heartily enjoyed the whole experience…until you have to go back to work and send baby to a sitter.
When we found out that our childcare center wouldn’t use cloth, it became part of our decision to switch. It actually had a policy prohibiting the use of cloth diapers! That daycare wasn’t a particularly good fit for Roscoe anyway, so it wasn’t a difficult choice. But what happens when you find the perfect care center for your child, except for the fact that cloth diapering isn’t accepted?
Rebecca’s daycare provider had never worked with cloth diapers before but was willing to give it a shot. Her sitter sends dirty diapers home in a wet bag and has been happy to find that using cloth diapers with Rebecca’s daughter has cut down on her overall garbage bill.
What has your experience been with cloth diapers at daycare? Have you found that specific types of care providers such as centers or in-home daycares are more willing to use cloth? Are daycare providers more willing to use certain types of cloth diapers like all-in-ones over prefolds? Please share your stories!
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November 17th, 2008 at 6:42 am
I have a one-year old and have recently switched to cloth diapering at home. I asked my day care if they would be willing to do cloth. It is a traditional, locally-owned day care center. Before asking, I researched the state regulations regarding cloth diapering so that I would be prepared to counter any “health regulations don’t allow it” type of refusal. To my surprise, the day care owners replied that they have been looking for ways to be “greener”, and would look into it. They have researched the state regs, talked to their consulting nurse, and are still trying to figure out how to make it work. However, right now their answer to me is no. They reason that if they allow this for me, they must make it available to any other parent at the day care that wishes to use cloth, and they can’t figure out how to provide a cloth disposal solution for multiple children that is sanitary, meets state regs, and can be stored in the space currently available. So right now, he is in disposables at day care and cloth at home.
Because I wasn’t sure whether they would take cloth when I switched, I have a very small stash of cloth diapers (about 10 diapers); that’s just enough to get us through 5 weeknights of changes without doing wash. I find that even that small amount of time in cloth has significantly cut down on the number of disposables I buy, although it probably won’t be enough for me to break even on my cloth purchase.
November 17th, 2008 at 8:22 am
I use cloth diapers on my daughter and babysit for a friends daughter in my home two days a week. I actually wish that they used cloth! I have to have a separate diaper pail for the disposables, which IMO is smellier than a pail for cloth. Plus I have diaper trash.
November 17th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
When looking for daycare for my daughter, I was shocked at how many places refused to even entertain the notion of cloth diapers. While it wasn’t a deal breaker for me, I was lucky enough to find a place that was willing to do it. We provided a pail w/ baggies and at the end of the day, she’d give us a bag of dirties.After a few weeks she told me that she was really pleasantly surprised at how easy it was and not any more work (in fact less since she didn’t have to deal w/ my trash) than disposables. I think a lot of daycares just decided that it’ll be too much work even when it’s not.
November 17th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
I work in a daycare with infants and we’ve only had two people do cloth diapering in the three and a half years that I’ve been there. The first baby was only in cloth for a month or so, and they didn’t use cloth on their second child at all. I don’t know if they decided to do cloth at home and disposables at daycare or what. We have a boy in our care currently that uses cloth because he has very sensitive skin and can’t use disposable at all. He even has cloth wipes that need to be sprayed with water.
November 17th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Our experience has been similar to Lori’s. Freddie loves our church’s childcare center and Fiona is scheduled to start part-time in the spring. With toddlers, they were open to the idea of putting on two pairs of “big boy” pants and dealing with accidents. But they’re wary of making cloth diapers work for (potentially) eight infants in a relatively small space.
The good news is that lots of parents have asked - times really are changing!
November 17th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Mine will use cloth just fine thankfully. I happened to notice some in the changing room when I visited and made a comment about it, and they were amenable for me to bring in mine as well. I bring in the clean ones with liners and they send home the dirties in plastic bags (which I also supply). It works for us. Plus they don’t have as much diaper trash that way.
I had to show them how mine “worked” since they are different to the AIOs the other child has, but so far I’ve not had any complaints.
It wasn’t a deal breaker for me but I was very pleased they would do it, and also glad that a previous parent had “broken” the ice so to speak!
November 18th, 2008 at 8:13 am
I appreciate getting the point of view of daycare providers. The state has tough regulations to fulfill for using cloth at daycare and our original care center would have had to pay a few hundred dollars to get certified to use cloth. It seems that in-home centers have a bit more flexibility than bigger centers. Am I right?
November 18th, 2008 at 8:57 am
I don’t understand the issue with sanitation. What is more sanitary about a dirty disposable diaper in a bag than a dirty cloth diaper in a bag? I assume daycare providers are flushing the solid waste in either circumstance if they are following the instructions on the disposable diaper packages.
Lori, Joy linked to the bag I used with our daycare provider. It seems like if you and the other cloth-diapering parent each had one of those, they could just put your babies’ cloth diapers in their respective bags. This would take hardly any space at all; I mean, your one-year-old probably goes through no more than four diapers during daycare hours, right? I assume they always change babies’ diapers in the same little area, so they could even hang the bags on hooks. The only thing that would be slightly more work is remembering where to put the dirty diapers.
They would probably find, as others have mentioned, that it is no more difficult and that they will reduce the amount of trash they need to haul out.
November 21st, 2008 at 6:00 am
I think 90% of disposable diaper users don’t realize that they’re supposed to rinse poopy diapers and flush the waste even though it says it on the package. Considering that many daycare providers are extremely busy I can see how rinsing diapers isn’t a priority. I feel good that our provider just places all my son’s used diapers (soiled and otherwise) into the waterproof bag. We clean the diapers when we get home and it makes her job more manageable.