Leaking: First things first, take a look at the fit. Are there gaps around the leg, the top? For boys you want most of the soaker or insert near the front. Girls the opposite. For the boys make sure especially that the pee pee is pointed down. If you are worried about putting the diaper on too tight a good rule of thumb is if you can fit two fingers in the side it's too lose any less and you are probably fine. If that's not the problem you may have build-up which will cause the diapers to repel the moisture and leak. This would be time for a good ole' fashioned stripping (please refer to previous post on how to do this). This will strip any build-up from hard water, detergent, urine, etc. Hopefully, that will fix the problem and you can go back to a leak free day :). Other times you might have a heavy soaker. One of my boys is and requires extra padding. With him I make sure if I'm using a pocket I stuff two inserts into the pocket. One microfiber, one bamboo. Bamboo or hemp are great at soaking up a ton, but at a slower rate whereas microfiber can soak up quickly, but don't hold as much. I find the combo of the two work great.
Stink/Ammonia: So you change baby and as soon as they pee it stinks to high heaven. This is usually a sign of ammonia . This means that the diapers are not getting cleaned enough. Take a look at your wash routine. What kind of water do you have? Hard water you need to add more detergent, soft water less. Do the diapers smell after coming out of the wash? They are not getting cleaned enough. Try playing with how much detergent you are using. Do you need to add more rinses? Maybe they are not getting rinsed enough. I was having stinks for a bit and discovered I was going too long in-between washes. With two in cloth my washer was too full and therefore not allowing the diapers to properly rinse enough.
Yeast: Notice little red bumps all over your baby's stomach and hiney that just won't go away. He or she may have yeast. Luckily, I have only had to battle this once. First you need to strip every diaper and put baby in disposables or liners. Make sure you wash your hands before and after each change and lather that baby in cream that will kill the yeast. I got some from my doctor. Now to kill the yeast in the diapers. I sprinkled 10 little drops grapefruit seed extract to actually kill the yeast. Its a natural way to kill those nasty little cells. I use it in my pre-rinse once a week. Some use pine tee oil, tea tree oil, or bleach. I find GSE worked the best for us. I was too afraid bleach would wreck my cute diapers. So again, you strip diapers and once that's done do a hot rinse with the GSE and rinse twice. Once you've done that let your baby totally heal before you use your cloth without any liners or switch back to cloth from disposables.
Hopefully, by following some of these steps you can alleviate the problem. Remember that every baby has problems every now and then (even with those in disposables). It's just the nature of diapering babies :)
