Using cloth nappies in childcare

Clean Cloth Nappies member Russell reflects on his positive experience using cloth at his son’s childcare centre.

Before our son was even born, we had decided we wanted to use cloth nappies with him from birth. After he was born, I was lucky enough to have 11 months at home with him, and very quickly got us into a routine that was working for us. I have never stayed as up to date with our laundry as I was during those 11 months.

Like all good things however, it had to come to an end, it was time for me to look for work and to choose a childcare centre to send him to. A non-negotiable for us was that they would have to be supportive of us continuing to use cloth while he was in childcare. Oh, and one other thing to complicate matters, this was early 2020, when a little thing called Covid started to make itself known. So when we enquired with centres, often by phone as many weren’t allowing visitors, we always asked how they would feel about us sending cloth nappies with him.

We found centres varied, with some being completely open to it, some who already had children in cloth, some who said it wouldn’t be possible, and then there was the one we ended up choosing. They told us they had never had a child in cloth before, but were always supporting families to be more sustainable, and looked forward to working with us to make it work.

I had found the Clean Cloth Nappies group on Facebook before our son was born, and I had seen members reporting various levels of success using cloth in childcare, with all kinds of diagrams, charts and the like having been tried by members to make it as easy as possible for the educators. They already do such a great job looking after our children, the last thing parents want to do is make more work for our children’s educators, and I was determined to make it as simple for them as possible.

I tried to put myself in their shoes. I know I don’t pick up new things well just by looking at a picture, I like to have someone show me, so I figured I would try the same approach with his educators. This would have the added bonus of giving me the opportunity to meet the people who would be a big part of our son’s life for the next couple of years.

I spoke with the centre director and asked if I could come in on his first trial day and demonstrate to the educators how easy it was to change a cloth nappy. They gladly accepted this offer, so on the day of his first trial visit to the centre, off I went with some spare nappies, and a mask (it was 2020 after all) and I did a couple of nappy changes with the educators. Whether it was the novelty of these fancy cloth nappies they hadn’t seen before (I made sure to bring the cutest prints of course 😉) or a dad getting so excited about nappies, either way, they watched intently. They especially liked that they could just put the dirty nappy straight into a wetbag, as I promised I would deal with whatever was in there when he came home.

After this, whenever he went up a room, or new educators started, I went back in and did another demo to make sure they were quickly up to speed. Even though he occasionally came home with interesting nappy fits, there were never any complaints. Better yet, after our son had been going for a while, we started to see other children at the centre also in cloth. 

Every child and every centre is different, but here’s what worked for us, and may work for you as well if you want your child to remain in cloth nappies when they go to childcare:

• Talk to the centre director and educators about why cloth nappies are important to you
• Go into the centre and show them in person how to fit your child’s cloth nappies. There are so many different styles and shapes of cloth, even a centre that is fully supportive of cloth use may have never seen your particular nappies before
• If possible, choose one brand/style of nappies for your childcare nappies. It makes it easier for the educators if they are all the same for your child
• Consider nappies where you can stuff, or otherwise secure, the nappy inserts. This makes it less likely that the educators will have to worry about inserts falling out

I am happy to report that our son made it through childcare, until he toilet trained, using exclusively cloth nappies. I am thankful to all his educators for everything they did for him, and for how open they were to supporting our use of cloth nappies for his time there.