- Pregnancy
- Baby & Toddler
- Parents
- Getting Pregnant
- Baby Names
- Product Reviews
-
Registry
- Community
-
More
Want a personalized experience?
Download the free app
Cloth Diapering
mrscountry527
member
Do I have an ammonia problem/burns?
mrscountry527
member
DD has 4 red spots on he bottom that are on the vergo of opening. This is the second time this has happened. I've been alternating between triple antibiotic ointment and vitamin a&d and it seems to be somewhat helping and its not getting worse. DS has one red spot now as well. My diapers smell clean when they come out of the wash. Their overnight diapers smell very strong of ammonia and about knock me over. Also my hanging dry bag smells very strong everytime I open it. Do I have an ammonia problem? Are they ammonia burns? It doesn't improve in sposies.
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Do I have an ammonia problem/burns?
the ammonia problem is something every cloth diaperer faces! it's just a fact of life when you're storing urine soaked fibers for days at a time. changing more frequently will help reduce the chance that your kiddo will react to the ammonia. stripping more frequently and/or adding more hot rinse cycles to the end of your washing routine will also help keep the diapers fresher and less likely to hold ammonia stink. i think every CDing parent has to make peace with ammonia eventually, though.
we've just been dealing with a week of raised, red dots with open sores in the middle (they look like chicken pox - specific little polkadots) on the bottom on his scrotum only. CJs butter did nothing for it, nor did A&D. a dose or two of bacitracin antibiotic cream cleared it up quickly, though. we had never seen that before. it just goes to show, the rashes always keep us guessing!
for us, an ammonia rash looks like a generalized even redness in the exact definable shape of the wet part of his diaper. it's not raised, not painful to him, and it goes away before the next diaper change unless something crazy happened and he sat in pee for hours and hours, or something happened in the wash routine and the diapers had a problem with cleanliness.
They get changed frequently and DD tells us when she's wet or dirty. I've been CDing for not even 3mos and I've stripped twice while using BG detergent. I stripped with blue dawn and they smelled the same as when they came out of a regular wash, smelling clean and not of detergent or ammonia. I don't even have hard water! And the dry bag smell is so strong from diapers that I put in just a few hours ago, not days ago.
i hear ya! the ammonia stink is in our house too. i truly do believe it's just a reality of cloth diapering. i have yet to meet a mom who has NO stink issues at all. (but to clarify - rashes aren't an inevitable part of CDing - in fact, CDIng usually produces less rashes!)
believe it or not, your diapers will smell less if you allow them to "breathe" in the diaper pail/bag. ammonia is converted from the urea in urine at a much higher rate in anaerobic (oxygen-deprived) conditions. if you let your diapers get some air by storing them in a container without a zipped top or tightly fitting lid, they will be less pungent on wash day. we use a pail liner in a swing-top rubbermaid cheap-o kitchen trashcan and there's room for the air to escape around the lid. it definitely helps.
i don't hear very good things about BG detergent. you might want to look into country save or rockin green. i don't hear too many complaints about those. i'm planning on trying eco-sprout next. we've gone through (in order): country save, tide HE original, rockin green, nellie's. i never buy a second batch of any detergent, because i'm usually ready to move on by the time the container runs out.
Allergic reactions don't always happen immediately. My allergist said that multiple exposures in large quantities (not small ones like injection therapy) increase the allergy.
In any case, I would take your kids to the pedi and let them properly diagnose. Since it's been many days now, I think that's the best route.