If you have a baby or toddler of diaper-wearing age, and you want to take them swimming, you may be worried about how the diaper will hold up in the water. Well, a regular disposable diaper will completely fall apart, and the diaper will become weighted like a boulder hanging from your baby’s behind. Also, you will unpleasantly discover that when you take your baby out of the pool, even if they haven’t “used” the diaper, it will be leaking tiny white particles from makings of the diaper itself. Regular disposable diapers just don’t cut it in the water – they are not designed to withstand that much wetness. Cloth diapers are no better; in fact, they are worse. They will offer virtually no protection if your baby has a call from nature while swimming and it will be difficult to even keep a cloth diaper in place under water. Therefore, specially-made swim diapers are definitely needed.
Swim diapers are available in disposable and non-disposable styles. Most moms prefer the disposable ones for the same reason that most moms use regular disposable diapers rather than clothe ones: you don’t have to wash a disposable diaper. If you are very concerned about environmental safety, though, you can certainly opt for the “green” non-disposable variety of swim diapers. Regardless of whether you opt for disposable or not, you should look for swim diapers with chlorine-treated elastic so that the waistband doesn’t have an adverse reaction to pool water. If you don’t have a chlorine-treated elastic waistband, the elastic could become distorted and it could lose its flexibility, which is especially a problem for non-disposable diapers because it will render them useless after a couple of swims. Latex waistbands are not as durable in the water as chlorine treated elastic waistbands. Swim diapers are designed so that they don’t break down in the water like regular disposable diapers do. There are swim diapers that have Velcro closures and there re also pull-up styles. If your child is not at all potty trained, you should definitely get the Velcro closure style because you are not going to want to have to pull down a dirty and wet swim diaper. If your child is semi-potty trained and regularly wears pull-up diapers, then you should opt for the pull-up variety.
Swim diapers are not going to prevent all accidents from spilling into the water. They should retain most solid waste, but unfortunately, you really can’t trap in urine. It is going to escape into the water regardless of what you try to do to stop it. Also, diarrhea is not likely to be completed trapped in a swim diaper. If your baby has diarrhea, he or she should not be swimming. There is a chance that the diarrhea will contain germs that could be harmful to other swimmers. If you are at a public pool, you should be very careful not to put other swimmers at risk for some sort of fecal contamination. Make sure that you check your baby’s swim diaper regularly and make trips to the bathroom at least once an hour, if not once a half hour, when you are swimming. If your baby goes to the bathroom with a swim diaper on, you will be able to prevent the big mess that you would have without a swim diaper. However, swim diapers should be disposed of or cleaned as soon as they are soiled to minimize excrement leakage into the water that you are swimming in.
