Treating Baby Stains

I wanted to write about this because I was inspired to share some of my "wisdom" on how to get stains out of baby clothes after I had to deal with a diaper blow-out yesterday. (A diaper blow-out is the term often used to refer to a major poop that blows out the sides and back of the diaper, getting poop everywhere and requiring a change of clothes for baby and often mamma too!) During the first weeks after Samuel was born, I was treating his clothes with Spray and Wash, and it seemed like everything was getting permanent stains on them and getting ruined. So, I actually called a baby hotline type thing, asking them how to treat these stains because I was so frustrated by it! They seemed to think I was crazy calling in for this, and I don't remember them having a particularly helpful answer...

But then my friend told me that Shout works really well, so I switched to that, and it did the trick! But here's a whole list of tips I've learned:

1. rinse the clothing with water as soon as you can, or soak it in water
2. use Shout on the stain, and try to treat it as soon as possible
3. you can add OxyClean Free or OxyClean baby to the wash
4. you can make a paste out of OxyClean and treat the stain that way (although I haven't ever done this, because I just use Shout)

For those of you who are about to have babies, I want to prepare you for the large amount of stain treating and laundry you are about to be doing! There is some strange phenomenon about newborns and all the fluids they produce (in the form of spit-up, poop, and pee), and it tends to go all over at first (they seem to love going potty when their diaper is off!). But take heart, it calms down somehow after the first few weeks.

Here's a little story on that for your entertainment: when we took Samuel to the doctor for one of his first newborn check-ups, they had us take the diaper off so they could weigh him, and on the way to the scale, he started pooping and it sprayed all over Jason! (It is amazing the force behind their excretions for such tiny people!)

One other piece of advice related to this topic: while breastmilk doesn't stain, it does "spoil." So just because it seems harmless, be careful to do laundry often enough to keep things from getting gross from curdled breastmilk, that can lead to mildewy clothes. Also, use an open laundry basket, not a closed bag or anything, so the clothes can air out while they're waiting to be washed.