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How To Save Baby’s Clothes After A Poo Explosion (And Get Them Good As New!)

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When you become a parent, regrettably dealing with your offspring’s poo explosions is a part of the package. I’ve come across lots of mummies both in real life and online bemoaning the fact that their kids have had such a severe poonami that they’ve had to throw their favourite clothes straight in the bin. We’ve also found that since starting weaning, our baby seems to suffer poo explosions more frequently than before!

What a waste! The thing is, you can easily get those clothes looking good as new, and no-one will be any the wiser that they were once quite literally covered in crap. Some of Little Man’s nicest outfits have been coated in turds three or four times (when we started weaning, it had quite the volcanic effect on his digestive system for the first month or so). So for all the other mamas (and dadas) out there, I thought I’d share how I deal with cleaning clothes after a poo explosion. I’ve never come across a poo stain this couldn’t deal with (yet…)

How To Save Baby’s Clothes After A Poo Explosion

1. Initial de-pooping

As you’re getting baby out of the poopy clothes and nappy, use an extra wipe or two to wipe down the outfit and get as much poo off as possible.

2. Soak in cold water

Get the clothes in cold water for a soak as soon as possible. We have a bucket on hand for this purpose (for god’s sake don’t use the kitchen sink! Unless you want to give the whole family dysentery). You can soak for half an hour, but can also leave overnight if e.g. it’s not practical to put a wash on straightaway.

With your rubber gloves on, give the clothes a gentle scrub in the water, to get as much of the remaining poop off as possible.

3. Vanish pre-wash spray

Not an ad, I just love this product! Vanish pre-wash stain remover is great for these kinds of stains, but also for mucky bibs and muslins etc. as well. After removing the clothes from soaking, wring them out and generously spray the affected area of fabric on either side with Vanish spray. Leave the poopy clothes to soak in the spray for 5 – 10 minutes.

4. Normal wash cycle

Then in your washing machine just run a normal 40 degree wash and voila – your poopy clothes should be good as new. If the stain hasn’t completely gone in one wash, reapply the spray, leave for ten minutes and wash again… But you probably won’t have to!

Your poo explosion top tips!

Do you have any other tips for dealing with a baby’s unwanted poo explosion (okay, let’s be honest… they’re all unwanted!)? Let me know in the comments if you think there’s something I’ve missed!

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Baby Clothes Nonsense

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I have long complained to my husband about the fact that ladies’ clothes so rarely have pockets, or – even more annoyingly – have fake pockets with zips or buttons that make you think there is practical storage available, but in fact has no actual pocket space.

So imagine my outrage recently when Little Man graduated from Newborn size clothes into 0 – 3 Months size (he’s still a dinky little chap!) and I realised that several of his new outfits included pockets. Not fake just-for-fashionable-purposes pockets. ACTUAL POCKETS. The people who design clothes, and apparently refuse to believe that adult females have any possessions they might want to store on their person, have simultaneously decided that my baby son – who is too young to understand the concept of ownership – might be in need of functioning pockets. What is wrong with these people?!

So of course this got me thinking about some other ludicrous decision-making that has gone into the baby clothes we own, and which I now screen all clothes for prior to purchasing…

Baby Clothes Nonsense

Elasticated ankles

On the face of it, this is a smart idea. We were gifted a really cute babygrow which had elasticated ankles, to ensure that baby’s feet stay at the bottom of the trousers

Except when we went to dress Little Man, we discovered that the elastic was so tight that we couldn’t actually get his feet in there (and if we had, presumably it would have totally cut off the blood supply to his legs).

Eventually the problem was resolved and the suit rendered useable by my husband breaking the elastic. This does, however, rather defeat the object of having it there in the first place. Consequently I’m now avoiding suits with elasticated ankles like the plate.

Ten Thousand Tiny Buttons

I mean, does this really need explaining? I often struggle with baby clothes that have a lot of poppers, especially at night because my hands often get a bit stiff and clumsy thanks to my rubbish joints. But when I discovered that some of our baby clothes have, instead of poppers, teeny tiny fiddly little buttons instead, I just had one question for the manufacturers: what the hell were you thinking? Those clothes have to be unfastened and refastened every time bubba needs a nappy change or just vomits all over himself. So seriously what the hell were you thinking?

Zippers are the future, incidentally.

The Blue / Pink / White / Grey Options

This deserves a blog post on its own, but – oh my god. The absolute BORING VOID OF BLAND GENDER NORMS that is most children’s clothing. I have a boy baby. But I don’t want to dress him in blue, blue, blue – or if I’m feeling racy, perhaps white or grey. THERE ARE OTHER COLOURS, PEOPLE. Whether I had a boy or girl I knew I wanted to dress them in lovely bright colours – red! Orange! Yellow! Green! Purple! So why is it so difficult to find nice jolly baby clothes that aren’t from some wildly expensive online boutique? Honestly I think baby clothes designers need to sit down, read some gender swapped books, and challenge their preconceptions that boys must wear blue and girls must wear pink and never the two shall meet.

Moreover: why are white clothes so popular, when they’re the clothing choice most difficult to clean up as good as new after a poo explosion?

Inconsistent unfastening design

This one was suggested by my husband, and I totally agree with him. There are so many variants of how baby clothes are fastened, and often if you buy multi packs, you have no idea what the fastening scheme is until you get the clothes home. Which means you have no idea whether you are buying something that’s going to drive you insane every time you change a nappy. If only there were a couple of set designs and you could clearly identify them beforehand, it would help avoid those awkward clothes that look cute but require ten minutes of wrestling to actually get the baby into.

Your experience of baby clothes nonsense…

What baby clothes nonsense have you experienced? Let me know in the comments!