It’s happened. The first diaper blow out. Where do you even begin with the mess?

I consulted the experts – my clients and social media followers, for help with answers. The first thing you’ll want to do after cleaning the baby and yourself is to remove the outfit and, if possible, run it under cold water, washing off as much of the poop as possible.

Be prepared if you’re leaving the house.

A good tip for when you’re out and about is to pack an extra set of clothes and a couple of gallon-size Ziploc bags. That way, you can go easily rinse the outfit then stash it away safely in the plastic bag. They sell larger Ziploc-type bags, too, which are excellent for packing for travel.

If you don’t have time to deal with rinsing, at the very least soak it in a pan of cold water to keep the stains from setting.

Then, when you can attend to it, wash the clothes in warm water, adding a scoop of OxiClean or a similar product. I do not have a relationship with OxiClean and don’t make money from promoting the product, but it seems that oxygenated bleach is one of the main ingredients parents have found for successfully removing poop stains from clothing. A generic version might work just as well, but I haven’t tested it. Let me know if you do.

The next step is the fun part.

Remove the clothes from the washer and skip the dryer so as not to set any stains left in the fabric. Then, put the clothes directly in the sun to dry. The sun finishes the stain removal process. I’ve tried it with stains in my clothing and I’m happy to say it works! Plus, I love sun-dried laundry.

One of my cloth-diapering clients said, if any stains remain, dampen the area, and put back out in the sun to dry. “We cloth diaper and have had no permanent poop stains so far.” And that’s enough of an endorsement for me.