Product spotlight: Diapering

lovesclimbing

How about if we discuss diapers this week?

What do you like/want to try? What do you not like? Cloth diapers or disposables? Brand name or store brand? Diaper genie or stick 'em in the trash? Natural/chemical free/green/eco-friendly or whatever is cheapest? 

Discuss!

Remember, all past product spotlights can be resurrected at any time for further discussion. They can be found by (on mobile) going to the search bar (scroll all the way down) and tapping search. That will take you to the advanced search. Type "product spotlight" in the "title" box, and that will pull up all the product spotlights posted so far. 

indigoheightsblog

has anyone tried honest co. diapers? aesthetically they are adorable prints but they are on the pricy side... wondering if they're worth the spend! 

chocolatelemons

@indigoheightsblog I’ve tried them, but for us, Pampers were best. I don’t think the Honest ones contained blow outs well enough. Also, I could be wrong on this, but I’m pretty sure they don’t have the wet indicator like Huggies and Pampers. I found that super helpful during the newborn stage since it can be hard to tell sometimes if they’ve peed.

lovesclimbing

I'm a cloth diaperer. We use fitteds I sewed myself and Thirsties Duos covers. We use Gerber prefolds folded in thirds and then in half (or a fitted folded in half if I run out of prefolds, as I don't have very many) as a doubler in the front for nights and naps. We use cloth wipes I also made - cheap Walmart wash cloths cut in fourths and then zig zagged on the raw edges. 

If you want to learn more about cloth diapering, I recommend the Cloth Diapering 101 series by Jaimee Gleisner on Youtube. It's a great overview, and the videos are short. 

We CD because it's cheaper, but there are other benefits. They contain blowouts, and none of the multiple disposable brands I've tried have been unable to contain poop going straight up the back. They also do not smell. Now that my daughter is on solids, I can smell her poops, but I can never smell pee and never her breastfed poops. Disposables all have icky smells when pee meets the absorbent material in them. 

We use disposables for the first week or two of having a newborn and then occasionally while out and about if I know I'm going to be out for awhile and may not have a good place to change (disposables do hold way more pee than cloth) and on vacations. I've tried a lot of brands. Huggies, Pampers, Luvs, Fred Meyer store brand, Walmart store brand, Target store brand and others.

I like Huggies sort of. I like that Huggies have actual elastic in the back, although it doesn't really do anything for up-the-back blowouts. However, if your baby is in a diaper for more than a couple pees, like overnight or a road trip or something, they seriously leak little bits of absorbent polymer onto their bottom that you have to pick off. Kind of gross! Currently, we have Luvs, and I like them fine. In lurking other BMBs, they seem to get a bad rap, but I don't know why. They aren't horrible in terms of the disposable smell, they don't leak polymer like Huggies, they fit fine, and they're on the cheap end for diapers. Mostly, we use whatever store brand - mostly Fred Meyer/Kroger, and those are fine. 

mamakate1616

@indigoheightsblog I used them for awhile because yes, they are so stinking adorable! I found them to be a little stiffer than pampers/huggies and they also seemed to be more narrow. We had a few leaks out the sides once she got bigger so I stopped the subscription. 

My preferred is pampers swaddlers for the first stretch and then we used huggies little movers once she got to like a size 3 all the way until she potty trained at ~22 months. 

@lovesclimbing that sounds so gross! What line of huggies was it? They are definitely not all equal. 

lovesclimbing

@mamakate1616, it was the Little Snugglers. I've never used any of the other lines. 

lelkcot

@indigoheightsblog the honest diapers are SO cute. I was gifted some, plus they’ll send you a free sample pack. As others mentioned, they’re kind of stiff and we had a lot of issues with leakage in them.
We were staunch pampers swaddles users, they were the brand we had the least issues with leaks and blowout and also the least issues with diaper rash. My son has super sensitive skin, so diaper rash was an issue. Natural wipes, pampers, and quick diaper changes were our best bet for limiting it.
Edited because words are hard...

mamaoftwomonkeys

@lovesclimbing LUVS were not for us, I think because our daughter had small legs early on. Poop and pee would leak out the leg holes and I never bought any more when it became apparent that the issue was happening repetitively. I’m so impressed with anyone who cloth diapers! My DH has to take a shower after putting any laundry in the washer so I quickly decided cloth diapering was not for us, haha

Honestly, I’ve mostly bought the Target brand diapers in bulk due to cost and effectiveness. I’m super picky about wipes, though. I only buy Huggies natural care wipes because like @lelkcot I found other wipes caused rashes 

hummingbird35

We use Pampers baby dry. They're great.

novelblessings

I cloth diapered DD. I used pre-folds with Flip covers. At night I did use disposable with her and we used pampers sensitive baby. She was too small for the cloth diapers until about 4 months because she was born premie sized. I'm hoping to cloth diaper again this time but would be interested in hearing about a more eco friendly disposal option for nighttime/newborn stage.

lovesclimbing

mamaoftwomonkeys said:

@lovesclimbing LUVS were not for us, I think because our daughter had small legs early on. Poop and pee would leak out the leg holes and I never bought any more when it became apparent that the issue was happening 

>snip<

My daughter has been a chunk since birth, haha. We've never had any issues with out the legs in disposables, except occasionally with all the brands with blowouts. I think that's just because they don't have great elastic compared to cloth. 

Kenneylynn3

Thanks for posting this. As a ftm I am looking at CD. Wife is on board. I'm mainly am looking at flats/ prefolds with covers.

ashley14598

We used pampers for the most part because DH works at a hospital and can get them pretty cheap there. Sometimes with couponing I can get Huggies cheaper and we will use those. We tried LUVS but DS broke out in a terrible diaper/red rash all over his bottom anywhere the diaper was touching him so those are clearly out for us. I have found that the target brand A&D diaper rash cream is the best for my son for diaper rash we use it with every change whether he’s red or not. 

I’m also one that thinks it’s amazing for those that cloth diaper. I just knew it wasn’t going to work for us after looking into it some when I was pregnant with DS. 

BuckeyeNut05

Target diapers here!  Big fans, esp great when you're on a budget. 

meggyme

@BuckeyeNut05 I also liked the Target brand. We started with Pampers swaddlers. Eventually we moved to Pampers baby dry (cheaper) but at some point the ones we were getting from amazon started to feel cheaper and didn’t absorb as much.

This time I might go straight to Up and Up since they do subscriptions now.

mschanandlerbong1214

We usually start out with pampers until baby is out of NB size. Then we switch to Charlie Banana All-in-One cloth because we like the way they fit on little babes. Then as they get older/bigger we switch to Kawaii All-in-One cloth because we’ve found they fit better on bigger baby butts. 

We we usually use disposables when we travel though because it’s just easier than having to drag all our cloth diapering supplies with us. 

Lbloom

I've cloth diapered 2 kids and plan to use them again for this LO. My stash is made up of mostly prefolds and covers. I have tried a ton of brands and definitely prefer the covers with leg gussets. We CD because of the cost effectiveness and because I stay home and can wash them, but I have heard of people that work and still CD. For when they get a bit older and start heavy wetting at night I use Mama-made bamboo fitteds with doublers and wool covers. I also throw a few fitteds or all-in-ones in my diaper bags for day trips out of the house.

For travel I use disposables. Mostly Walmart brand. I use disposables for newborns that still have a cord stump as well. In my experience nothing holds a blowout like a properly snug CD with a good cover.

@lovesclimbing gave an excellent resource in CDing in the cloth diaper 101 series. It can all be overwhelming at first, especially with all the brands/types and all the different advice on washing. What I've found over the years is that CDing tends to be very individual. What works for one family doesn't work for another. It can be hard to get advice that way but it is also very nice because it means CDing is versatile. The best advice I can give is to just dive in and find out for yourself what works for you.

swanbrooner

We use Pampers Swaddlers during the day and Baby Dry overnight when DD started sleeping more regularly and/or not pooping overnight.

I am a crazy couponer and was able to stockpile the first year's worth of Pampers during my first pregnancy, so I haven't tried anything else. I would love to have some feedback on Costco/Sam's Club diapers. I'm trying to stockpile diapers for baby number two, but building a stockpile is a lot more challenging when you already have one in diapers to buy for too. 

candypantsls

I'll just come out and say I LOOOOOOVE Luvs diapers for DAY time!  They're affordable, cost-effective and smell baby powdery.  They have caused zero reactions with both boys, and they deliver what they promise.

So, at NIGHT time, we definitely go with Huggies overnights OR Pampers Baby Dry, A SIZE UP!!!  If you have boys, practice the "pee pocket" once they hit a month or so and aren't pooping at night.  Pull the majority of the diaper into the front!  You will thank me one day, I swear.  Greatest boy-mom hack ever when I discovered that.

thedaint87

We also cloth diaper and love it! We used disposibles for the first few weeks and then made the switch.  The only time we have used disposibles since was our beach vacation this summer.

I was a bit intimidated by cloth at first but it has been great.  We've got BumGenius, Grovias and Flips plus a few cute ones from Etsy in our stash. I also have a couple bamboo fitteds for overnights, plus a bunch of extra inserts.  At home we use cloth wipes as well.

Our daycare uses the cloth that we send in and just sticks them in a wetbag to take home at the end of the day.  That was one of my big concerns because I didn't want to have to get disposibles just for daycare.  It turned out to be a non-issue since every place I interviewed was happy to use cloth.  We only send pre-stuffed pockets to make it easier for them.

Basically I agree with what everyone else said avove about the pros of using cloth.  The only downside is that it does take time to launder them, but we haven't found that to be more than an annoyance.

sejica

@swanbrooner we use Costco's kirkland brand diapers and wipes, and only had issues with their size 2's, but I think it was just a bad manufacturing batch, because size 3-5 have been great.

peacebubblebaby

Another cloth diaper family here. Oldest used ‘sposies in the hospital but was cloth 24/7 once home, 2nd was born at home and only in cloth from birth. 

My favorite brand is Blueberry but I have a lot of BestBottoms because I’m a sucker for the Abby’s Lane exclusive diapers. 

In the first weeks, we tend to use more flats/prefolds with 4-6 newborn covers. I move onto pockets when they stop laying so still. My bedtime solution is quality fitted with a blueberry cover (they recently discontinued their coverall, which stinks...but I was able to stock up with sales).

I might need to replace some bedtime diapers, but other than filling in gaps with cute gender specific diapers for fun and a couple new wetbags, I don’t need anything.

lovesclimbing

I forgot to mention this originally, but has anyone tried elimination communication? I was considering it but just never did with D. I have a relative who did it starting at 5 weeks with her child. And it took pretty much a whole year until their son was reliably communicating every time he needed to go. So for a year, it was lots of work. Still lots of diaper changes and having to take off the diaper and put the baby on the potty every hour or tw. And, until the baby was old enough to sit up well alone on the potty, they had to stay there with the baby holding him upright until he went. 

I think it sounds like a really cool idea, but it almost seems like more trouble than it's worth. I plan to start trying to potty train D at 18-24 monthsish. Who knows, of course, if she'll take to it that early, although CD babies are supposed to potty train earlier than disposable babies. Assuming I can have D potty trained by 2, is there really a difference between having the diapering work compressed into one year vs. spread out over two? 

I'm really interested if anyone else has any experience with EC!

meggyme

“Disposible babies” made me cringe. I agree that sounds like a lot of work, especially since some kids potty train later on in a couple weeks, even a weekend.

mamaoftwomonkeys

@lovesclimbing My friend does elimination communication, since birth. Her daughter is 18 months and not consistently using the toilet at all, in fact we quickly caught up when we started potty training. So, in my experience all that extra work didn’t pay dividends in an earlier potty trained child.  I think maybe it just depends on your child whether or not it’s beneficial.

lovesclimbing

Haha, sorry, meggyme. Idk of a better term!

mamaoftwo, I think it also depends on how seriously you take it and how committed you are to consistently putting them on the potty all day long. And I know my relative was super into it and seriously doing it, including on vacations, and it still took a year. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

peacebubblebaby

I did some EC with my oldest. I started when she was about 8-9 months old. We only had to do diapers for bedtime and when out. She was potty trained by 18 mo. We moved when my second was at that age, so we didn’t do much EC with her but we did potty train before 2. I do think that potty training before age two make the process so much easier....less fighting, easier to say “do this, then we play/eat/leave”. My friends who wait until 2.5 or 3 have a lot more issues with accidents and fighting back and it just seems to take longer. 

Pooka8

I used cloth (newborn prefolds then best bottoms) for my older daughters.  I gave all my covers and small inserts to my sil last year because we were done :-/.  Will probably cloth diaper again with the twins. 

sejica

@lovesclimbing , I considered doing ec, but couldn't get my other caregiver(s) on board, and decided it wasn't a battle worth fighting. I think you're right in that its probably the same resources in terms of time and diaper changes - just compressed instead of drawn out, and I honestly don't know which is worse.


That said, I'm considering it again as DD is likely to begin potty work while I have an infant, so why not just all 3 of us hang out in the bathroom from her 2nd birthday on 'til one or the other of them (or both!) figures it out.

Lbloom

I wanted to mention for those who CD, if you had a huge pile of flannel receiving blankets like I did, they make great cloth wipes. I just cut up a few blankets, used my sewing machine to hem the edges and had a huge pile of wipes ready to go. We never used those flannel blankets, I used my muslin blankets instead. I get a product called Baby Wipes Juice from Amazon, (mostly made up of essential oils) add a couple tsps. to a cup or two of water in a spray bottle and spray on the dry wipe when I need to change a diaper. They get tossed in the wet bag with the diapers and are all washed together.

On potty training, I agree with the @peacebubblebaby that it is harder to train after they are 2. Two and a half year olds give you a lot of push-back and that personality comes into play big time. Both my girls, who were cloth diapered, took (are taking) a lot of time to be accident-free. I didn't know any better with my first and with DD2, we had a move get in the way of the optimal time to train. But I will say with those starting before 2, that the communication skills (on their part) need to be there for this to go over.

lovesclimbing

@lbloom, we actually only ended up with five receiving blankets, so I used cheap Walmart wash cloths, cut them into fourths and then zigzagged the edges. Works great!

I might consider switching to something else this time. My husband thinks they're too rough. 

lucysmom2016

FTM here without a clue. I like the idea of cloth diapering for environmental reasons, but am a little overwhelmed with venturing into something quite foreign to me (I've literally never known anyone who cloth diapered). Thank you @lovesclimbing for recommending that you tube series, it was super helpful for getting my head around the basics of it. One of my concerns is how much time it takes laundering, even on an every other day basis, as she recommends in the video (staying on top of laundry is a constant struggle in our house already). And being out and about- does the bag really contain the smell? I feel very concerned about carrying around a bag of dirty diapers....

STM who CD- have any tips, insight?

lovesclimbing

@lucysmom2016

Laundry - I find this is really easy. In the bathroom, i change her diaper and drop it in a trash bag (I haven't yet invested in large wet bags). If she pooped, it either goes in the bag (if EBF) or it gets sprayed off if it's sticky or "plopped" in the toilet if it's not. When it's wash time, I just dump them out of the bag into the washer and start it. I do a warm rinse and a hot wash. Then, they go in the dryer, or, if I feel like it, I put them on a drying rack. It doesn't take long at all. I don't fold mine. I use fitteds and covers, so I can't really fold them for than in half even if I wanted to. Prefolds and flats, you may want to fold. I do fold my wipes in half, if I'm not too busy, haha. My diapers just get dumped in a drawer. 

Stink - I haven't really had issues with this. I find that smells stay contained within bags pretty well. Now that my daughter is on lots of solids, it is starting to stink more, and I'm considering trying some different deodorizers, particularly once it's getting well into the second day. I know some people, particularly those who go longer between washes, will dump a little baking soda in with to help deodorize. There are also loads of homemade deodorizer recipes if you Google. Then there are commercial things like this - https://www.target.com/p/munchkin-arm-hammer-nursery-fresheners-5pk/-/A-13296359?ref=tgt_adv_XS000000&AFID=google_pla_df&CPNG=PLA_Baby+Shopping&adgroup=SC_Baby&LID=700000001170770pgs&network=g&device=m&location=9033936&gclid=Cj0KCQjwof3cBRD9ARIsAP8x70PrE-jx7beWB8uB8ead19nWTcUV6FfdeLWIqbB7iYi21L0Zk6Scs0AaAg5HEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

zionsmama85

I was a huge fan of Target brands Up and Ups and most likely will try those the 2nd time around. it was 9 years ago so hopefully nothing has changed too drastically because it was definitely my preference. i found like others said that Luvs leaked for me, and i was just too cheap for Pampers and Huggies, although of the two, i preferred Pampers. i have no interest in cloth diapers bc its hard enough for me to keep on top of washing regular clothes LOL. know your strengths, ha! I commend all of you that use them though, they are very adorable! 

Lbloom

@lucysmom2016 - Kudos for wanting to try CDing. I never knew anyone to do it either in my family (except my mom and grandma - but this is not mom and grandma's CDing experience!) 

On traveling with stinky diapers. With young infants that are exclusively breastfed, this is a non-issue 
because they don't really stink the only issue that you run into is messiness. You roll them up into a tight little bundle (just like you would with disposables) and stuff them into a good travel size wet bag for your diaper bag. Smell is contained mostly by the diaper itself. Throw them into your main dirty pail at home. (EBF poo washes out like yogurt). (My experience is only with BF, moms that CD and used formula would need to weigh in for a different perspective). My wet bags (the big & travel size) need to be replaced after 2 kids but they contain the smell pretty well for that day and a half they'll be waiting to be washed.

With a kid on solids who is still breastfeeding, this gets a bit trickier with smells but at least they are starting to not be so liquidy. Again, roll them into the diaper, spray them off with your sprayer soon after you get home (you will want one for the peanut butter stage). I am not on top of it with more than one kid as much as I was with one, so occaionally I would forget a travel bag until the next morning, but once it's all washed, usually not a problem. Once they are nearly weaned/nearly ready to potty train, the stuff will just be easily dumped into the toilet. 

Since you mentioned you want to do this for environmental reasons, this tidbit might interest you: Disposables are not supposed to be sent to the landfill with human feces in them anyway, (usually says so right on the box in tiny print), but obviously nobody realizes this or cares, so you are doing mother earth a favor in more ways than one! 

thedaint87

@lucysmom2016 We do diaper laundry every 3 days more or less. I have a similar system to @lovesclimbing - plop or spray solids, stick in diaper pail until laundry day.  The whole wash cycle takes about 2 hours in our machine, 30 minute quick cycle rinse and 90 minuthe heavy cycle. We run inserts and wipes through the dryer but hang dry covers and AIOs.  Those will dry overnight.

As for smell, small wetbags will contain it for the day while you are out and about and we use a diaper pail at home. Our biggest smell issue was because I didn't realize we had hard water, so the wash was leaving some build-up behind. Once we started using water softener the smell disappeared.

lovesclimbing

Lbloom said:

>snip< 

Since you mentioned you want to do this for environmental reasons, this tidbit might interest you: Disposables are not supposed to be sent to the landfill with human feces in them anyway, (usually says so right on the box in tiny print), but obviously nobody realizes this or cares, so you are doing mother earth a favor in more ways than one! 

Haha, yes! I told my husband this because he is very easily grossed out by D's poopy diapers. I told him that, if you're following the rules, you actually are supposed to dump the poop out of disposables before throwing them out. He didn't believe me, so I showed him where it says on the box!

Lbloom

Cleaning poo out of disposables is hard, trust me, I've tried!! You can't spray them out, so unless the stuff is dumpable, how do they expect you to do it??

sejica

@Lbloom , it's only for poops once they're on solids, and we haven't had any trouble plopping. And no, not everyone ignores this, in fact, most moms I run around with know this and practice it. With disposables, the 'liquid' in 99% of poops is absorbed in the beads just like urine, and so they plop out easy. Now, to be fair, there have been some very messy diarrhea diapers that just got straight tossed, but they are not the norm.

I also wanted to add that even if you're not planning to cloth diaper, I still recommend some prefolds and 1-2 covers. It's nice to know you have a back up for 2 am when you've run through 30 in 5 hrs, the prefolds make great burp cloths/mess addressers, and the covers are great reusable swim diapers, as well as being cute under dresses over diapers.

Lbloom

@sejica that's great! I knew that some moms had to do this, but most moms I see, well don't. 

And I know most of what they want you to dump is the major solid matter. But surely my kids are not the only ones to go through a phase between liquid and all solids. Those are the ones that I was talking about - there's no getting all that stuff out!  

And I ditto your comment about prefolds being awesome burp/spitup cloths!

meggyme

I exclusively use prefolds as burp clothes. My mom used to give them to us as our lovey. When it got dirty she’s swap it for a clean one.