I'm seriously considering using the Charlie Banana resuable cloth diapers with the disposable inserts for baby. I have an 8 year old who I used disposable diapers with. But we had two incomes and the price was no issue. Well now that I'm a stay at home mom, re married so I have my 8 year old and my SS who is 6 and a new baby on the way all with one income. I am wanting to save as much as possible.
So anyways I am really hooked on using this Charlie Banana brand. Reviews on line are great but I was wondering if any mommas know of anyone who is using them or maybe you are using them on an old child. The diapers say they are one size so they grow with baby.
Re: Anyone planning on using Cloth Diapers or already are?
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Yep. We will be using Mother-Ease One-Size diapers. I've used them with kids at work and loved them and have seen them work great with newborns and much older, bigger kids. I keep hearing people say they won't work on newborn baby...but I've seen it down with little tricks in the front fold that make the legs tight on scrawny babies so we are planning to make them work. Worst case we will use some greener disposibles until she gains a few pounds.
Haven't heard much about the ones you mentioned but they sound similar to the g-diaper which I've also used at work and while they are neat they aren't the "best" and needed to be changedevery 1-1.5 hours with thedisposible inserts.
Unless you have seenthem used and have some experience with them I would likely advise buying only a few and trying them out a bit before buying a full stock of one brand.
Ditto check out the CD board.
I haven't used Charlie Banana but we did try gdiapers once (my MIL bought some) and I really disliked them. The whole cover needed to be washed anyway because the insert didn't contain the poo so it seemed like it was just easier to use either fitteds and covers or a pocket diaper.
I quite liked Thirstie's two step pocket diapers(plus if this is your last kid - the size one's should be in pretty good shape and you can sell them when you're done). But I have noticed I usually either double up the thirstie's insert or use a baby kicks hemp insert. The size two has taken us from about six months to 2+ years.
There are places that offer a diaper trial that send you different things.
We're doing bummis prefolds with covers. I also purchased some pocket diapers for our inlaws who are super against cloth diapering. I agree with the pp's that said that the disposable inserts are a waste of time and money. My cousin went with the G diapers and found that with the cost of the inserts and the price for the G pants she was better off just going disposable (in terms of cost). She eventually went full cloth diaper and found the savings, after the stash purchase, to be astronomical.
We've just bought our newborn/infant kit which will cover baby from 7-15lbs for just shy of $200 (I'm in Canada so these things are more expensive here). We've already started buying for the baby/toddler stage, which will set us back in the area of $400.
$600 to cloth diaper from birth to potty training... not too bad.
Ditto what another poster said about not investing in too many of one kind yet. You might want to try to few different brands and types. I have a bunch of newborn sized all-in-ones that someone gave me, then I have several types of BumGenius and Fuzzibunz (all-in-ones and pockets mostly). I think I might try to pick up a few prefolds with covers too, seems like a lot of people like those.
So, my advice is to not put all your cloth diaper eggs in one basket yet. You don't know what will work best and what you will like best.
Charlotte Ella 07.16.10
Emmeline Grace 03.27.13
My advice is look around for the deals. I am pregnant with little one #1 and my husband and I were looking for who had the best price on what we liked. Lucky us, our ACE hardware (it has a baby boutique in it) had their" anything in the bag save 20% sale" so that was our signal to buy now.
I love cloth!
We didn't cloth diaper our first until he was 8 weeks old, and used pocket diapers. For the next baby, we'll be starting with prefolds and basic diaper covers, old school and affordable.
It's more than just money. People were always offering to buy us disposable diapers but cloth are so much better for Baby's skin, and they really helped us potty train pretty quickly.
Mama to Sebastian, born 9/2010
I will be CDing my 3rd kid and by far the very best brand of all the ones I tried with our first, the ones that are making it in still new condition, are my Bum Genius Pockets. I bought CD whenever they were on sale with DD so ended up with around 10 different brands. Some just sucked (think Etsy) and some just didn't make it through even my first kid. Some made it through but are only really great for a certain stage or were only good for my girl. My Bum Genius pockets are my very best.
Fuzzy Bunz are pretty darn good also but I bought their Elites and find that while they are super trim they are SUPER hard to stuff!
I will need more in my stash since this time I'll have 2 kids in diapers at the same time and for sure I will only be buying Bum Genius pockets.
I used Gro Via with my youngest. It's a 2-in-one with shells and snap in inserts. There is also a disposable insert option, which I used sometimes when we were out and it was convenient to trash it rather than lug around a wet bag full of inserts. I preferred to just use the cloth inserts though, but it was nice to have the other option.
I did want to comment on the one-size thing. Gro Via are one-size, but I started using them when my daughter was about 2-3 months old, and they were still pretty big on her. But I was OK with using disposables for the first couple months. With the stress of having a newborn, I was happy not doing the extra laundry.
www.metrobabyblog.com
I plan on using flip but have some newborn disposables on hand because flip starts at "most babies 8-35 lbs"...
I have seen great reviews on the Charlie Banana but know people who use flip and love them... so I took the advice!
Also, if you are looking for some cheap back-ups try econobum in case the laundry doesn't make it to the dryer in time... I've also heard that disposable inserts really suck...