Sweet Jesus - Maggots in diaper pail??

OMG, cloth diaper gurus please HELP!!

I'm at work and DH called and said when he put the diapers into the washer there were little worms. We have 36 prefolds and 6 FB so we go about a week in between doing loads of diapers. We use a sterilite trash can that has a flip top lid with a bummis liner for a pail. OK, so...

1. What do we do about this current situation? Should we use bleach? I know you aren't supposed to with the FBs.

2. How do I keep this from happening again? We usually rinse the poopy diapers but occasionally if there's not a lot I don't bother. Will adding baking soda or something to the pail to keep the odor down help? The smell was getting pretty bad.... Should I get a new pail with a lid that seals better?

Oh God, I am so embarrassed to have to post this but I need help! Thank you!

I think you shouldn't go a week between washing. We go 2-3 days, 4 at the very most. However, it only takes a day from laying eggs for them to hatch.

I think at this point you may have to do a more intensive routine for a bit to break the cycle. I would start by washing every night. After your DC goes to bed, wash the diapers and pail liner. When you get to the hot part of your routine, run the faucet nearest the washer until it is as hot as possible. Then add boiling water to the washer and run the hot cycle. You could add tea tree oil or grapefruit seed extract to rinse to help sanitize. Disinfect the pail every night. A bottle of sanitizing spray, such as lysol sprayed on and left for 10-15 minutes then washed with hot soapy water. I would also wash all the covers as often as possible and as hot as possible.

I think 4-5 days might be enough. Make sure the lid is sealing on your pail. I know ours doesn't always seal with a liner in - I have to push down on the top to seat it down. We have a metal step can, not the sterlite pail. You might consider replacing it after a few days, just to make sure, if it isn't too expensive.

Good Luck! I am hoping this is one problem I never run into!!! :-)

Sounds like you had some flies/bugs that got in there. So hopefully it's a one-time problem. But I'd get a system that seals closed better - perhaps even a diaper pail like the Dekor or Champ (what we use for cloth). I don't think that rinsing the poops or not will make all the difference since even after rinsing, there is still something left to attract the buggers that left these presents for you.

I personally would throw some bleach in the wash. It isn't going to hurt the FBs this once. Just make sure it is diluted (fill the machine with water, then add bleach to the water).

I'd also try to launder at least twice a week. The longer you go in between, the harder it is to get the diapers clean (smell, stains, etc.).

But yuck!!! Are you not GLAD that it was your DH who found that, instead of you?

I don't know anything about worms, but is there any chance your DH made a mistake? Like maybe it's rice or some half chewed food coming out in the dipes? Or clumps of baking powder, if that was in the pail? Have you had flies or bugs in your house? If not, how could the worms hatch there? Perhaps a grosser question, but any chance your DC has pinworms and that's the source? It's not uncommon.

In my limited experience, I have not heard of this. It doesn't sound like you're leaving tons of poop there, and some people just shake what shakes off and ignore the rest, so plenty of people have more poop in their pail. And diaper service customers usually only pick up once a week, and their customers usually don't do ANYTHING to the diapers, so plenty of people are washing at the same interval with even less pre-treatment.

You may still want to take other posters suggestions, but I don't think anything you did was so wacky or gross. If it was what it seemed to be, I think you just got unlucky.

I don't think DH mistook something else for worms. He said they were moving (shudder). They were apparently really small and only in the one dirty diaper that I didn't rinse because there wasn't much poop on it. So now my husband is blaming it completely on my not rinsing one diaper thoroughly and I just don't think that's the case. I am not an expert, but I did do some research (mostly on here) before deciding to go with cloth and it seems that lots of people don't rinse, use a dry pail, and use the same trash can as a pail that I'm using and it doesn't seem like very many people will say they've ever had this problem, so I don't know....maybe we just are extremely unlucky. I think there was one lone slow-moving fly that got into the house recently. I guess one is all that it takes. He doesn't think we need to wash more freqently, just rinse the diapers all thoroughly. I haven't heard of many people who go so long between washings as we have been, so I'm inclined to wash more frequently from now on.

I've had a fly or two lay eggs in my kitchen, I don't even know in what...but we definitely didn't have any dipes in the house at all...sometimes these things just happen :)

I try not to go more than 2-3 days between washes, because that urine/ammonia smell gets pretty raunchy if I go any longer :P

:)
Julie CPS Tech and mom to 3 in seats
http://www.cpsafety.com/articles/RFAlbum/SarahMA.aspx

Yikes!!!! This is freaking me out. I have NOT been putting the lid down on my can lately - because it gets so full I've just been leaving it open. And I wash every two days. I have noticed a couple fruit flies in our house. Now I'm freaked. Could something like this happen to us if we don't keep the lids of the diaper garbage pail shut?


Tammy,
mom to Lauren (March 2003)

The whole time I used cloth diapers, I only washed once a week. And my pain doesn't seal tightly.

Frequency is not going to make a difference for this issue. If it is a fly laying eggs, they hatch in one day.

Honestly if he only found the worms in one diaper, and they were inside where the poop is, it's unlikely that a fly laid eggs in there. How would the fly crawl all the way down in the pail and get inside the folded up or bunched up diaper? I hate to say this, but you might want to have your baby checked for pinworms.

Do a search on the web for pictures of maggots and pictures of pinworms and see which one looks more like what he saw.

I'd like to know this too. Maybe I should be embarrassed to admit that because I don't have a pail with a step-on lid, I don't use the lid at all. I just can't figure out how to bend down, lift the lid with one hand, put the diaper in with the other hand, and keep DS from squirming off the changing table with the other hand...yeah that's where the third hand would come in handy (hyuk hyuk). Also, it seems to me like on the rare occasions that I've tried to use the lid, I had more issues with ammonia stink.

But a few weeks ago, we had a fruit fly outbreak in our house, and this thread has me wondering if I need to find a way to use the lid. 'Course the lid on our pail doesn't seal very well at best, so I'm not sure if it would really make any difference.

I wash every 2-3 days.