Attack of the Acid Wee

Many thanks to our wonderful retailer, Elizabeth Guthrie from Nest Nappies, for this article about acidic urine. Elizabeth is the mother of three little ones and runs an amazing cloth nappy boutique in Brisbane. If you're after fantastic customer service and real life advice and experience, we highly recommend a visit to Nest Nappies. We are sincerely grateful for her time in compiling this post.

From time to time we see customers who haveencountered significant damage to the absorbent components of their nappies,which we believe is attributed to high levels of acid in their baby or child’surine.  

Absorbency that has been affected by acidic urine (sometimesreferred to as ‘toxic wee’) can present in a number of different ways, but mostoften customers bring nappies to us that look as if they have been shredded orscalded.  The severity and nature of thedamage depends a lot on the make up and quality of fibre used (eg cotton, hemp,bamboo or microfiber), the fabric type (eg jersey, terry, stretch etc) and theindividual child. 

We suspect acidic urine is not a new phenomenon butuntil recent times has been almost impossible to detect until the advent ofbamboo in reusable nappies.  Historically,nappies were made of cotton or hemp, both of which are strong and hardyfibres.  Added to which, the quality ofcotton nappies in the past far surpassed the quality we expect today.  We only have to ask our mums and grandmas andthey’ll gladly announce their terry flats lasted a whole family of babies andthen the cleaning rag bag, before moving on to polish the car!  

From cotton nappies we moved quickly into generationsof disposable users.  And there’s no wayto tell what’s going into a disposable. Though from personal experience my acidic wee-ers would produce the mostputrid smelling disposables, which I always thought was completely normal untilI learned otherwise!  In recent years,bamboo has made up all or part of the absorbent components of at least 50% ofour nappies.  Bamboo is a significantlymore delicate fabric and is much likely to be damaged by high aciditylevels.

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Unfortunately there are no outward signs to tell if your baby has acidicurine.  The problem is often discoveredafter damage to nappies has occurred.  From my own experience I know thiscan be extremely frustrating and also expensive.  There’s nothing more deflating than makingthe decision and the investment in cloth nappies only to find that after only afew months the products you bought are unusable.  It’s easy to quickly put disintegratinginserts down to a manufacturing fault only to find you change brands or replaceproducts to find the same thing happening. 

It wasn’t until I started talking tocustomers who were seeing 2^nd and sometimes 3^rd babies inthe same nappies that I realised it actually wasn’t ‘normal’ to get 12-16 weeksout of an insert.  After much testingwe’ve found there are some simple steps you can take to protect your nappiesagainst any potential damage (or minimise further damage).

We have recommend to rinse every nappy immediatelyafter use to preserve fabrics as much as possible.  This can be done inthe sink, the toilet or with a sprayer such as a Little Squirt.  If yourbaby has acidic urine you will often find that within a few hours any urine ontheir nappy will turn brown or even black if left to air dry. Alternatively, you might see a bleaching affect on coloured inserts. 

So rinse, rinse, rinse!  Squeeze excess water from your nappies beforeputting them in a dry bucket.  Wash every two days maximum. 
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If you suspect your baby has acidic urine you may wish to try some (or all) ofthe following;

• wash daily
• use nappies withabsorbency made of fabrics other than bamboo or with higher cottoncontent.  Cotton will take longer tobreak down – but may still show signs of damage over time.  Microfibre is often recommended if yoususpect your baby has acidic wee.  Againit will take longer to break down but will still show signs of significant wear(absorbency often goes flat and can be very smelly).
• use an all-in-two stylenappy with inserts that can be easily replaced if damaged and easily rotated tospread wear evenly at the front and back of the absorbent insert.  Personally we use the cheapest absorbencypossible (cotton prefolds and basic bamboo trifolds) because we know they’regoing to end up in our rag pile pretty quickly. 
• have a higher number ofnappies in rotation to spread the wear (or be prepared to have a small numberbut buy them often).
• Use hardy fabrics suchas cotton or hemp over night
• Wash in bicarb only oran extremely gentle detergent such as Cushie Tushies nappy wash.  Many commercial detergents have a high acidcontent which can aggravate the problem.
• Do not use vinegar!

If you suspect your baby has acidic urine, we are morethan happy to talk to you about any problems you may be having with yournappies and work with you to find cost effective solutions to keep you usingcloth.

NB: we are not in a position to approach our manufactures or distributors forrefunds or replacements on nappies damaged by acidic urine as this is an issuerelated directly to your personal circumstances and not a manufacturing orproduction fault.  

© Nest Nappies 2013

Nest Nappies is located at 15 Latrobe Tce, Paddington, Queensland. They can be contacted on 07 3217 5200 or by Email. Join the Nest Nappies Facebook community.