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| Loveybums Wool Jersey Cover |
Out of all our cloth diapering options, we chose what I think is the least expensive route: prefolds with waterproof/water resistant covers. Prefolds, whether you buy them individually or in a pack, only cost about $2-$4 each. Depending on how often you do laundry, you could get away with buying as little as 24 diapers in each size (more about sizes in a future post), which works out to 12 diapers a day, or a clean diaper every two hours.
Warning to Potential Cloth-Diaper Users: I do realize that the following ramble makes it seem very complicated to use cloth diapers. It doesn't have to be as complicated as I've made it out to be. It can be as simple as buying 24 one-size all-in-one diapers that your baby can wear from birth to potty learning. I, however, made it a bit more complicated by going the least expensive route (prefolds) and experimenting with different covers.
The First Two Months
Our main daytime system was a cotton prefold, fastened with a
Snappi, with a
Loveybums wool cover over it. We only had two wool covers in the newborn/small size, so when those got pooped on and needed to be washed (or re-lanolized), we used Bum Genius pocket diapers as covers, just without the inserts.
Another system we tried were the gDiapers (a friend wasn't using hers, so she let us borrow her stash). These looked super cute on our boy, but he leaked right through them. I liked them for use at night (when we were changing his diaper every 2-3 hours for night feedings anyway) because I wanted something that was close to the convenience of disposables. In my half-asleep state, I definitely didn't want to mess with folding a diaper and using a Snappi diaper fastener. I would assemble the diapers before bed, and we were good to go. The only major draw back was that the gPants are not waterproof, so having a small stash did not work. We would have had to buy more little pants for it to work for us. Enter the
Thirsties Duo Wrap cover, a cover made with PUL or polyurethane laminated fabric. (
Made in USA!)
Two Months to Around Four Months
While browsing
Green Mountain Diapers, I happened upon the Thirsties Duo Wrap diaper covers and decided to try them out. I was looking for something similar to gDiapers that would hold in any leaks. With these covers, I could fold the diaper in thirds, lay the diaper inside the cover without a fastener, and I had a quick way to change Hunter's diaper in the middle of the night. If all he did was pee, I could reuse the PUL cover many times before needing to launder it. Another feature that makes these covers so great is the leg gussets. Even though Hunter would get poop on the inside, the gussets did a great job of keeping pee and poop off his clothes. This system quickly became my go-to for when we were out and about or leaving Hunter with my mom. It makes changing a cloth diaper as easy as using a disposable. You just have the diapers pre-assembled in the cover and go!
We were also still using the wool cover system, but Hunter grew out of the first two we had, so we moved up to the next
Loveybums size (medium from 9 lbs. to 22 lbs.). Since wool covers are expensive, I decided not to buy a second wool cover and instead used the Thirsties covers more often. By the way, I only have four Thirsties covers, and Hunter is really good at getting poop all over the inside, so I went to a used diaper swap and bought two more PUL covers similar to the Thirsties brand (one
Bummis and one
Happy Heinys, both good products).
It was around this time that I tried out two All-in-One systems and one pocket diaper system. The Bum Genius Elementals and the Grovia diaper are both made with organic cotton, but I found that they could not contain Hunter's pees and poops as well as the Thirsties covers. Also, the Thirsties Duo Diaper did not work for us because the inserts that it came with were not absorbent enough for us.
Four Months to Present
These days we still use the
Thirsties Duo Wrap covers the most, although this week Hunter has pooped through them. I don't know if this is a sign that he needs a different size or we need a new system. The two times it happened, he was on his tummy kicking his legs as if he were crawling, so maybe his leg movements made the velcro closures loose, not sure...
Since Hunter is sleeping longer stretches of sleep at night, I use the wool cover for the first stretch instead of the Thirsties covers. He only needs one diaper change now, so before bed I prepare a Bum Genius with one insert and then lay a preemie size prefold on top for extra absorbency. I think I have finally found a system that I am comfortable with: prefolds all the way with PUL covers during the day and wool covers at night.
If I had to do it all over again, I would use
Thirsties (at least 6 in each of the two sizes) from birth and wait until Hunter was sleeping longer stretches at night to use the wool covers. (Those newborn poop stains were a PAIN to get out of wool!) My wool cover of choice is the
Loveybums Wool Crepe Cover, but the pull-up style looks so cute on a little baby butt!
I may actually include three more parts to this series on cloth diapers. I think part 4 will be all about my experience with sized prefolds, part 5 will be other cloth diapering accessories and products, and part 6 will be a cost comparison of what we paid for cloth versus what we would have paid for disposables, so stay tuned for those posts.
And by the way, I realize that I completely forgot about Earth day this year, but it being the last day of April, it's still Earth Month 2013, so I find it very appropriate that I published my next cloth diaper installment today!
Here are my Earth Day posts from 2011 (because in 2012 I also dropped the ball)...
