bibs

I'd pretty much avoided bibs up until this point. I used them occasionally if we were going somewhere and I wanted to protect clothes until we got there, but usually I just changed clothes if they spit up all over. It happened a lot and I was fine with changing them 3-5 times a day. Well, things are changing. Now we've switched from breast milk to formula and formula spit up apparently stains. <_< Also, they are starting to get drooly. And we've started solids and spit up is becoming orange and green. Pleasant. So I finally get to my question: Do you have two sets of bibs? Bibs that you use for solid feeding and bibs that you use for them to wear at other times of the day to protect from drool and spit up? I've got plenty of feeding bibs, but don't really have any for wearing around. Where do I get those?

Now, a few laundry questions. Do you just let all their food bibs get stained orange and green or do you pretreat them before you put them in the laundry. Seems like a lot of work to do that. What about their clothes? As you take it off of them, do you spray it with something before you you throw it in the hamper to prevent the stains? We usually do a load of baby laundry every day, but if things are super busy it might have to wait an extra day. I'm starting back to work next week and I can see that laundry might go two days before getting done.

As always, thanks for your responses.

 

I have 1 large stack of bibs. I prefer the bibs with the plastic backing so that nothing gets onto the girls clothes. I use those bibs for when we are eating something orange or green. But I just have one big stack of bibs that I keep near the highchair, and after each bib is used I put it on top of the washing machine so I can throw it in with the next load of wash. No pre-treating here, I don't really care about stains. I just buy the big cheap pack of bibs from Wal-Mart, if a bib gets too stained I just throw it away.

ETA - I don't know about bibs for wearing around, my girls never spit up. But what I do have came with the outfits that they match.

 

I use whatever bibs have been given to us. I leave them by the highchairs also. I used to pretreat them, but it is a lot more work and I figure I can get inexpensive new ones if I need to. I also have only had bibs that match clothes if they came with outfits. It seemed like that came more with outfits from 0-3 months or 3-6 months.

 

my cousin's wife told me about Totally Toddler, a pretreater spray you can get at BRU, and she loves it. i haven't tried it yet, tho. anything that is really stained (bibs or clothes or bedsheets if they puke in bed) i just use regular detergent instead of dreft. when they were younger i'd do that then wash it again in dreft, but now i just wash it in regular detergent and i'm done with it. regular detergent gets the stains out!

 

We used the cloth bibs from Carters until the kids started eating baby food. That was a lot messier so we went out and bought some of the Bumpkins bids for baby food and now solid food. I loved both the Carters bibs and the Bumpkins bibs.

As far as laundry, I would pretreat with Spray and Wash or Totally Toddler. We keep a dirty clothes hamper next to the washing machine for the kids clothes and I just sprayed the dirty item down and threw it in there till I did their laundry.

 

I have more bibs than I know what to do with and I don't use them. If I put them on them when eating when I am feeding one baby the other baby is chewing on his bib making a huge mess. Never thought about using them for really any other time.

Dianna

 

We have spitter-uppers too. We started with "nice" bibs and old bibs. They were all different materials, sizes, and I was pretreating some. I got tired of digging through the laundry basket pretty quick. Around 3 months we just bought a ton (seriously like 30) cheap bibs from BJs and that is what we use for everything (unless going somewhere special then we get out the nice bibs again). I don't pretreat them because I don't care, and it's been so much easier since then. Oh yeah mine just try to eat the plastic backed bibs so that hasn't been an option yet.

As for clothes, I do try to pretreat clothes, sheets, etc. with a laundry stain remover. Sometimes it happens when they get dirtied and others it happens as they go in the wash. It seems to help a lot with the amount of ruined clothes.

 

Oxyclean is great stuff...I used to keep a little "tub" of it to soak bibs and stuff before washing and I had hardly any stains. I also use it in the wash and let the wash soak for a while before starting it and it seems to get most of the stains out of their clothes. The spraynwash stain stick works well too...but that's pretreat and I don't always "catch" the stains before they make it into the wash.

 

I use plastic (or maybe they are nylon?) bibs for solids and wipe them with a damp paper towel when they are done. My boys eat solids in diapers and bibs only to avoid the staining on their clothes. I use cloth bibs for bottles and usually for a good part of the time after bottles to catch some of the spit up and drool. That has helped reduce the number of times I've had to clean nastiness off the exersaucer, which is such a pain. The veggie residue generally comes off the plastic bibs pretty well, and I don't pretreat. I don't do baby laundry every day--probably every other day, and I have big spitters. So far, we haven't lost anything to bad stains. They outgrow everything before a stain can set in anyway LOL. A friend of mine does swear by the Oxy Baby (Oxyclean marketed for baby laundry) pre-treatment. She has two messy boys also.

Good luck!

 

At home, I just undress them for eating...they get food everywhere so a small bib is almost useless. If I do use a bib, when we are finished with mealtime, I rinse the bib in the kitchen sink so it does not have time to let the stains set in, and then when I do wash I jsut wash them at that time. Mine have only ever used bibs during meals....although some of the outfits they have came with matching bibs, so I could have used those.

 

When they were just starting solids and not getting too messy I would just use the fabric bibs and I would pre-treat them with Baby Oxyclean and let them sit overnight before washing. This usually took care of the stains.

Once they started self feeding I switched to the Bumkins bibs (you can get them a BRU). I love them and still use them. They have short sleeves so they stay in place and they have food catchers at the bottom so when they are just practicing and lots of food is falling you can just reach down into the bib and recycle the food back onto the tray

 

QUOTE(Beth*J @ Aug 20 2008, 08:41 AM) [snapback]938594[/snapback]
I'd pretty much avoided bibs up until this point. I used them occasionally if we were going somewhere and I wanted to protect clothes until we got there, but usually I just changed clothes if they spit up all over. It happened a lot and I was fine with changing them 3-5 times a day. Well, things are changing. Now we've switched from breast milk to formula and formula spit up apparently stains. <_< Also, they are starting to get drooly. And we've started solids and spit up is becoming orange and green. Pleasant. So I finally get to my question: Do you have two sets of bibs? Bibs that you use for solid feeding and bibs that you use for them to wear at other times of the day to protect from drool and spit up? I've got plenty of feeding bibs, but don't really have any for wearing around. Where do I get those?

Now, a few laundry questions. Do you just let all their food bibs get stained orange and green or do you pretreat them before you put them in the laundry. Seems like a lot of work to do that. What about their clothes? As you take it off of them, do you spray it with something before you you throw it in the hamper to prevent the stains? We usually do a load of baby laundry every day, but if things are super busy it might have to wait an extra day. I'm starting back to work next week and I can see that laundry might go two days before getting done.

As always, thanks for your responses.


I have a TON of cloth bibs for formula feeding (we've never bothered with bibs for drool). We have a handful of plastic ones for solids feeding. What I do with laundry is just run some water into the washer, put in some Oxy Free powder, spray stains with Zout and then toss them in to soak until I run a full load - I've never not been able to get anything out. Poop, food, etc. I have used my bleach pen a couple times, but I have yet to throw anything away. There are some bibs that have a yellowish formula stain that I can't get out, but it's because I wasn't doing this when we started.

 

My dd was and still has reflux, but it is more controllable now.

I used the cloth bibs for all day wear especially when bottle feeding. Then, I used and still use plastic type bibs for food.

I still have to spray her clothes, and I do it when I wash it and I only have found Dreft to work for her stains.

 

I didn't read all the replies so forgive me if I repeat...

Once we got into solids I realized that the bib situation was getting out of hand. So I went and bought the waterproof bibs with the food pocket. They are great. We have four and rotate them through the day. I wash them in soapy water after use and hang to dry. This is the best solution for the meal time bib IMO.

For bibs and clothes that have food, spitup, stains, etc, I do TRY to pretreat, but some stuff comes home from daycare and I don't realize it's stained or DH throws it in the hamper without pretreat, so I always end up with items that get washed and still have stains. So about every two weeks a do a small load of these items with Oxy and Tide and HOT water. I let them soak for at least a few hours (overnight preferably) and generally 90% come out clean. I do have the occasional item that gets thrown out due to stains from mildew.

HTH!

 

We have dinner bibs and regular bibs. We don't use the regular bibs much anymore, sometimes for bottles or if they are really drooly. As far as stain, one word, OXYCLEAN!! I don't pretreat anything (I just rinse the dinner bibs to get the chunks of food off) and use half detergent and half oxyclean in every load, and 99% of the time all the stains come out. It's a miracle treatment!

 

I have a set of nicer bibs that we use when we go out in public. At home I use the same bib for all three of their meals (unless it gets really bad), and burp clothes for when I feed them bottles (I slide them under their chin...although I don't do this much anymore). I never pretreat them before I wash them because they are all dark solid colors and the stains never show. I throw them in with the kid's dark clothes and they come out fine. With my older son I use a plastic bib with a pocket in the front that I just wipe off, and now that the babies are on table food that sticks everywhere I am going to switch them to these bibs soon.

As for pretreating their clothes I spray the stains on their clothes every night before I throw them into the hamper. I use Dreft Stain Spray and I have never had a stain that I couldn't get out. Then when I do laundry I just throw the clothes in the washer...spraying the stains as I throw them in the hamper has saved me a TON of time doing laundry!

 

We also use the same bib for one day if it stays pretty clean... I've found that I like the terry-cloth towel like bibs best. We have just started baby food so I don't know if they are as good for that yet or not. But for formula feeding we like the "towel" bibs! We have a TON. We already had several and I went to buy a few more... then days later found 2 sets of days of the week bibs in the back of the closet (a shower gift I had totally forgotten about!) We do have some carter's bibs that are cotton that I would imagine would be good for drool because they don't absorb spit-up and formula very well. I don't pretreat my bibs either.... I figure who cares if they are stained? As for clothes, if needed I put a little bit of a pre treater on it.

 

I have two sets also... regular cloth bibs for feeding bottles, and big plastic ones for solids. And I use oxy clean on clothes to get rid of stains.

 

We also have 2 sets. I bought a couple packs from Walmart with the plastic back. They are cheap and I never pretreat them as they are cheap so if they get bad, I'll throw them away. Then we have bibs for around the house and out. I do treat those if I remember. I go through a lot of bibs in a day because I don't like when they get wet and yucky - I figure they have so many so it's not big deal to change them.

 

I have a huge stack of bibs. I havent begin solids yet,b ut the formula does stain. I do pretreat everything. It saves time and $$ int he long run.