cloth and thrush...

Willo

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Hi all, so my lo is being treated for oral thrush and as I am breastfeeding I will be treated too. I use reusable breastpads that get washed with nappies at 60 (2 in cloth). Do I need to do anything to kill off the thrush in the pads and nappies and what is it? I'm going to use disposable pads till end of treatment but wondering if nappies and pads will need treating too. Really don't want the kidsin disposables but can do if it is necessary.
 
I was able to get rid of it in our diapers (but I use a 2 part system) by washing the prefolds separately from covers in the super hot sanitize cycle on my machine with some oxygen bleach (Oxiclean) added. That cycle on my washer is actually a steam cycle, though, so it gets very hot. If your diapers have PUL attached to the inners you would need a different method.

Having said that- I just looked around and found this where she had success using grapefruit seed extract and oxygen bleach.

https://theantijunecleaver.com/2013/01/how-to-remove-yeast-from-cloth-diapers/

In that article she also links to this experiment conducted using prefolds, and apparently yeast does not live on 100% cotton prefolds through a wash cycle. Very interesting and a great case for using prefolds!

https://realdiaperevents.org/archives/cotton-prefolds-and-yeast-initial-results
 
Thanks JenX. I use a mixture of fitteds and wraps and pocket nappies so would be a bit wary of bleach and temps above 60. Have been looking into grapefruit seed extract though and it seems to be the most effective at killing yeast so thinking I will try that.
 
Oxygen bleach should be fine on nappies. You can put a scoop in the washing machine or soak them in it for a few hours. Neither soaking or (any kind of bleach) is recommended by most manufacturers but an occasional use won't do much damage, particularly if you stick to the least damaging kind i.e. oxy/eco bleach instead of chlorine. Quite a few manufacturers do actually say oxy is fine. I used to use Dri-Pak's laundry bleach but they stopped making it... it's the same stuff as Violet's but was LOT cheaper. I used it to soak various things including nappies occasionally to treat for stains and it never seemed to do any damage. You could at least soak fitteds and inserts in it (I'd be happy to do outers too, personally), then wash everything in GSE at 60 degrees.

I wouldn't bother switching to sposies while treating but if you wanted time to treat the nappies or extra peace of mind, you could probably buy a pack of 12 prefolds for about a tenner preloved and use them until you're all clear. As well as the really interesting research the US nappy peeps are doing, you can pretty much do anything to prefolds so if you wanted to wash at 70 or even 90 degrees while treating, that would be okay as long as you left out the wraps!
 
Thanks for the advice. I got the gse and did a lot of research and from what I read gse is the best way to treat thrush so I have been using that in the wash and we are still very much using our nappies.
Having read what you were saying about oxy bleach though it has made me less afraid and I might use some soon on some of my inserts.
I keep meaning to get some prefolds too. A friend gave me a loan of some when I was going on holiday and they are great.
 

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