I am going to make an announcement today. A revelation that might not make me any friends and may hurt my credibility as the Most Awesome Mother ever, but it’s time to stop living a lie. I cannot deceive you any longer.

I have failed at cloth diapering.

To be honest, the only reason I tried it was because it was trendy and cute and I convinced myself we could, I don’t know, take a trip to Paris or something with all the money we were going to save. Although if we DID save enough money to go to Paris I certainly wouldn’t want to carry around crap-filled pants the whole time. That right there should clue you in on how dedicated I was to cloth diapering. It was more “awwww, look at the polka dots!” and less “I love being environmentally responsible and making wise choices!” I’m kind of shallow.

It’s a shame, really, because I DO think cloth is a great way to go. I loved not having to buy disposables all the time and gloated a little bit at every person I saw with a whole cart full of Pampers at the warehouse store. Using cloth prevents so much trash and waste from going into landfills. You avoid all the weird chemicals in disposables, especially the kind that gave Little Evan a horrible rash. Using cloth does save money, especially when you use them for multiple kids – which, hey, sounds perfect for me! I have multiple kids!

But. The poop. OH MY GOD SO MUCH POOP.

My slow slide away from cloth started with the morning sickness. Getting pregnant directly coincided with Little Evan weaning, which meant no more nice, easy breastfed poops. Instead, my toddler started producing GIANT SMELLY MAN SIZED CRAP. The kind I could barely stand to be in the same zip code with, let alone carry around until I could shake it out into a toilet. And if it was…sticky? Forget about it. Anything that required the diaper sprayer also required 20 minutes of heaving into the toilet thanks to my insane sense of smell and hair-trigger gag reflex. AREN’T YOU DYING TO HEAR MORE ABOUT THIS?

So we used disposables. Then the night time peeing got totally out of hand and going back to cloth would have resulted in even MORE soaked PJ’s and sheet changes. We bought another box of Luvs. And another. Then my cloth stash started to smell sort of…weird so I had plans to strip them all and sort the ones I could use with the new baby into her dresser. I totally Googled “how to strip your cloth diapers” and everything. But I was tired and still didn’t feel so well and wasn’t really interested in doing anything that would create more laundry for myself so I never did.

Do you want to hear MORE excuses? KIDNEY STONES. Boom. Hard to enforce the cloth diaper use from the hospital.

Now, with two in diapers and no end to that scenario in sight, I feel like all I do ALL DAY is look at dirty butts. Pooping is Caroline’s only real skill right now so she’s decided to dedicate herself to what she’s good at. It is not at all uncommon for her to poop immediately after a diaper change, only to do it AGAIN after the next one. That’s three poops in less than 5 minutes, which, multiplied by 5 times a day means I would need approximately EIGHTYBAZILLIONTEEN baby-sized diapers to avoid several loads of laundry daily. It doesn’t help that Little Evan is apparently competing for the title of Poop Champion and is no longer on the twice-a-day schedule.

So. Much. Poop.

I think once Caroline gets a little older I might switch her back to cloth. I really did like it for the 4 months I did use them. And when we start *ACK* potty training Little Evan I think the cloth might be a good transition between disposables and underpants. Because I still have all these diapers. And they do save money. And they are super cute. And I do like being a cloth diaper mom.

But for now, please accept my apology for not being quite as crunchy as I used to be.

If you follow me on Twitter you’ve already heard the 140 character version of this story and I apologize for making you hear it again.

Since the weather is still mild-ish and the toddler is still grumpy-ish, I dragged us out of the house for Stroller Strides this morning, even though I don’t usually make it on Mondays. But I have way too much to do today to deal with a napless child and Stroller Strides + playground = guaranteed afternoon nap >2 hours. BAM. Baby algebra for the win.

Unfortunately I forgot to factor in 8 months pregnant + bottle of water – bathroom facilities at the park, so by the time we made it home I was doing the don’t-pee-your-pants shuffle while dragging Little Evan, the diaper bag, the wet bag, jackets for both of us, a blanket, two sippy cups and a half-deflated football (because this: BUHBALL!! BUHBALL!! NOOOOO!!!! BUHBAAAAAAALL!! is what happened when he saw me trying to leave it in the car) into the house. I dumped everything – including the child – on the kitchen floor and sprinted to the bathroom just on the other side of the baby gate.

Less than 2 minutes later, I came back through the gate to find Evan standing in the middle of the kitchen, holding a weird yellowish rock in his hand, looking at it in a puzzled manner. I walked over to see what it was, thinking “Wow, it was so nice to pee without someone watching me for once. Maybe I’ll do that more often!” when I realized what exactly he was holding.

POOP.

A GIANT PIECE OF POOP.

I screamed so loud he dropped it (OMG) on the kitchen floor (OMFG) and stumbled backwards against the cabinets.

“POOP!” I shouted, as if this would somehow activate an emergency response team trained to handle just such a situation. “THAT’S POOP!!!”

It only took another second for me to realize I was alone in my kitchen staring at the horrible turd and no hazmat team was imminent. Also, the dog had jumped off the couch and was starting to sniff around and as bad as the current scenario was, if the dog…No. I’m sorry. I can’t even finish that thought.

About 400 baby wipes later, I had safely transferred the poop to the toilet, wiped up everyone’s hands and felt disinfected enough to drag us both to the sink for a thorough scrubbing followed by half a bottle of Lysol applied to the floor. Crisis averted, it occurred to me this was really more of a mystery than a horror movie. WHO did the poop belong to? WHERE did it come from? WHY was the baby holding it? WHEN did my life turn into this?

Ok, that last one isn’t such a mystery. But back to the weird parts. Little Evan was fully dressed – diaper, corduroy pants buttoned at the waist, socks, shoes, shirt, sweatshirt. He looked exactly the same as he did when I dumped him on the floor 2 minutes earlier. I did change his diaper after I stopped hyperventilating and it was dirty (TMI ALERT) with several smaller poops that seemed to belong to the same, uh, family. But HOW did he get the one giant one OUT?! Was it from an earlier diaper? How long had it been…loose?  Could it have been hanging around for………No, seriously, I can’t think about this anymore. I’m not strong enough.

My sister-in-law has a similar story about a mystery poop, found in the middle of the nursery one morning while a fully dressed toddler slept in his crib. Before kids, I thought she was probably exaggerating.

I KNOW BETTER NOW.

Even though I never did make the switch to cloth diapers (although I’d still consider it if someone wanted to send me a bunch for free ARE YOU LISTENING INTERNETS?) it doesn’t mean my baby laundry is entirely poop free. Oh yeah, you read that right. Poop. Now I’ve said poop twice (three times!) so please feel free to move on, childless friends.

For those of you for whom poop is just a way of life now, I have a totally un-sponsored, un-paid for, un-compensated suggestion for you: BioKleen Bac-Out . I LOVE it. It’s like having your own set of tiny elves who climb into your machine and scrub off all the disgusting stains. The real reason it works is because it’s full of itty bitty invisible crap-eating monsters enzymes that suck the smells and gross stuff right out of your laundry. Plus it’s all, like, natural and stuff so you don’t have to worry about the baby’s skin peeling off bleach or nasty chemicals. AND it smells really good, not patchouli-ish or hippie-dippie at all. Clean. And a little bit like limes.

So far I’ve used it to remove blood, puke, green poop, yellow poop, globs of poop, pee, spit up, and cat urine. (Just for the record, the cat pee wasn’t on the baby’s stuff.) I used to spot treat every article of baby clothing but with the Bac-Out I just squirt some in the machine and set it to 15-minute soak (or you could do what I did with my less fancy machine and just open the lid for a few minutes once it’s done filling). So far it’s saved me about a billion dollars in baby sleepers, as my child is unable to make it through the night without leaking various fluids all over himself and if I had to replace them every time my Target credit card balance would be even closer to the National Debt than it already is.

Go buy some! Buy some for your friends! Buy some for anyone who has a baby, a dog, a cat or a hamster, anyone who gardens or does housework or eats food. Buy some Bac-Out for your friendly neighborhood vampires and serial killers (it works great on blood) and they will thank you for you. And also possibly spare your life.

You’re welcome.