Cloth Diapers: Rachel’s Definitive Recommendations

Before the babies were born, I did ludicrously exhaustive research on cloth diapers, changing my mind many, many times about what I thought the best options would be for us. Now that Matt and I have been using cloth diapers on Julian and Eloise for about nine months, my opinions have crystallized about the single best, most effective, and most economical diaper system. I find myself moved to offer these opinions up to others who might want to skip the research and go with one extremely smart person’s* recommendations. So here they are: (Suggested quantities are estimates for ONE baby.)

The essentials:
18-24 Cloth-eez prefolds (hands down the best prefolds)
5-6 Thirsties covers
3 Snappis fasteners
3-4 BumGenius one-size pocket diapers

The advantages of this system are many. In spite of their plainness compared to much more elaborate diapers, prefolds have many benefits. They are cheap; they are every bit as effective (if not more so) than the fancier options; they are very easy to use after a day or so of practice; and they are a breeze to care for. When paired with Thirsties covers, they are about as good a diaper option as you can find.

BumGenius diapers are incredibly effective and absorbent, and we have had very few issues with leaks overnight. Because they’re one-size, they should last from birth to potty training. Presumably if you had a good bit of money to spend (though still less than the cost of disposables!) you could do an all-BumGenius stash, and I know plenty of people who do this. I just kind of hate stuffing pocket diapers.

One huge advantage of this set of diapers is that they can all be bleached. I know some people aren’t fans of bleach, and I suppose it’s something to avoid if your baby has very sensitive skin, but it has never bothered our babies and an occasional bleaching really rejuvenates a diaper stash.

The optional splurgy bonuses:
3-4 Thirsties Fab Fitteds or Kissaluvs fitteds (for friends and relatives intimidated by prefolds — pretty foolproof)
2 Sposoeasy all-in-ones (for the diaper bag)

Neither is necessary, but both are nice.

The accessories:
-Diaper pail (this one works great)
-2 pail liners (we use these)
-2 wet bags (for the diaper bag; we use these)
-24-30 cloth wipes (Thirsties work great for us)
-Spray bottle (for wetting wipes)
-Baby Bits wipes soap (one box will last months)
-Strip of velcro loops (optional, for hanging covers to dry — put it on the underside of a table or shelf — possibly Matt’s best invention ever)
-Toilet spray hose (for dealing with non-breastmilk poo)
-Diaper detergent (we use Country Save but I’m not convinced it’s the best; many people like Charlie’s Soap and Allen’s Naturally, but I haven’t tried either (yet); consult this list)
-RLR laundry treatment (use every couple months to remove detergent build-up from your diapers — the number one cause of stinkiness)
-California Baby calendula cream (use this or another product on this list for simple diaper rash — for serious diaper rash, use serious diaper cream with disposable diapers for a day or two)

And there you have my unsolicited opinions. I hope this is helpful to someone. I’m always happy to answer questions — I think after I convert 10 people to cloth diapers I get a toaster oven.

Julian and Eloise say: We love our cloth diapers!

*Everyone knows this is a joke, even if I don’t use an emoticon, right? I’m trying to wean myself off them.

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Fitted Diapers

(Be sure to check out parts 1 and 2!)

So, if I manage to keep the time between cloth diaper posts to a month, that’s not too pathetic, right? Right? Eesh.

Fitted diapers, as the name implies, are fitted: they’re shaped like a diaper, they have elastic around the legs, and they have a built-in fastening mechanism. We have two different brands, which are rather different in style: Thirsties and Kissaluvs.

The Thirsties are made out some kind of soft micro-fleece that is supposed to wick moisture away from the skin, with a more absorbent internal cloth part. They fasten with Velcro tabs, and come in a host of shiny colors.

The Kissaluvs are made of a terry-like cotton, which doesn’t have the “wicking” feature but which Rachel thinks is a little more absorbent than the Thirsties. They fasten with snaps, and come in a few colors, but not the same rainbow of fruit flavors that the Thirsties offer.

Neither is waterproof, so in either case we pair the diaper with a waterproof diaper cover.

I’d have to say that the fitted diapers are my favorite style of cloth diaper. They’re incredibly easy to put on and take off, and the fit is less bulky than the prefolds. Of the two, I slightly prefer the Thirsties because I prefer Velcro to snaps: snaps are probably less likely to wear out over time, but Velcro provides more flexible sizing options, since you can only snap where there’s a snap, but Velcro works over the length of the tab. I admit that I am also, like a hummingbird or a small child, attracted to bright colors.

(With the Velcro tabs on the Thirsties fitted diapers or the covers, it’s important to fasten the tab down to the adjacent laundry tab before washing. That way, you don’t have free-floating Velcro that will pick up lint in the wash, or end up mating with all of your other diapers to form a giant Velcro mass.)

So, if fitted diapers are my favorite, why would we use prefolds at all? A few reasons: First, the fitted diapers are considerably more expensive per diaper—about $12-15 compared to around $2 for a prefold. The fitted diapers are also less absorbent than a prefold, which in practice means somewhat more frequent diaper changes. The micro-fleece fabric is also a bit more finicky than the plain cotton of a prefold: some diaper creams may end up coating the fabric in a way that negatively affects their performance.

In the following extremely dorky (and too-quiet) video, I demonstrate the use of both kinds of fitted diaper:

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Prefolds

Well. That took a while.

Over a month ago, I promised a series of posts on cloth diapers, but then stuff happened. Mostly, Ellie happened. I won’t say that situation is entirely resolved, but she has her eyes closed at the moment, so I figure this is as good a time as any to catch up on some all-important blogging. (You may have also noticed the flood of daily picture posts below… we’re still catching up, but we’re much less far behind than we were. If for some reason two photos a day of our kids aren’t enough for you, you should probably also be watching my Flickr photostream, which has rather a lot of photos in it.)

So! Diapers!

Julian and Eloise each go through between six and eight diapers a day, and the vast majority of those are prefold cloth diapers. Prefolds are rectangles of absorbent cotton that have been folded over several times and quilted together so the thickest part of the fabric is right where the action happens. We use the unbleached version, because (if for no other reason) it seems silly to employ a sparkling white item for such a dirty business.

There is a little advance work you have to do to use prefolds. Rachel put them through three wash cycles before we used them, which shrinks, softens, and thickens them.

Since they’re just rectangles, you have to fashion them into a little baby loincloth when you put them on. We use a slightly different wrap technique for each baby. Ellie, as you can see in the pictures, gets the “twist.” You put the prefold under her butt, twist it around to form an hourglass shape, and pull the front up. This focuses the twisted (and thickest) part of the diaper where her business end is. For Julian, we fold the front into thirds, vertically, and then pull it up, focusing the thickest part of the diaper in front, which is where the peeing happens.

In this day and age, you aren’t forced to hold them together with sharp safety pins. Instead, you use a clever little plastic doodad called a Snappi. It’s a Y-shaped piece of stretchy plastic with little plastic teeth that grip the diaper fabric. You just wrap the diaper around the baby, snap on the Snappi, and voila. Secure and snug, and no pokes.

Of course, that’s not quite it. Prefolds are absorbent (really absorbent) but not waterproof. Since you presumably don’t want pee to soak through the diaper onto your baby’s adorable outfit, you need to enclose the whole assembly in a waterproof diaper cover. Our favorites are the Thirsties covers which have double elasticized leg gussets to hold everything in and double-sided Velcro tabs for a snug fit, and come in a variety of cheery colors… which you’ll never see, since presumably your baby is wearing pants most of the time. Ah, well.

As I think I mentioned in the initial post, we use cloth wipes, as well. We use Thirsties wipes pretty much exclusively. We have a spray bottle on the changing table containing water with a little bit of soap dissolved in it. We just moisten the wipe, and go to down. They’re so soft, I wish I could use them. (Take a moment to enjoy that image, won’t you?)

The dirty diaper and wipe go in the laundry pail, and unless it’s visibly soiled, the cover gets hung to air out for another use. (We basically have four covers in rotation—two for each baby—during a given day.) Since the covers have convenient Velcro tabs, we stuck a strip of Velcro tape under the edge of our changing table so we could easily hang the covers.

To recap: put on the prefold, snap on the Snappi, and Velcro on the cover. That’s it! I honestly think our cloth diapering procedure takes maybe 20 percent longer than a disposable diaper change. That seems completely worth it to me. (Not to mention that the prefolds cost about $2 each, and we’ve probably used each one more than thirty times. Compare that to the cost of disposables!)

Julian helpfully agreed to help Rachel demonstrate in the following video:

(Man, you can really tell from how tiny Ellie looks in the pictures how long ago we took these. Where does the time go? Also, since the babies are bigger now, the diapers fit much better, too.)

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Cloth

When we told people we planned to use cloth diapers for the twins, people said we were crazy. Frankly, when Rachel proposed it, I thought she was crazy, but she quickly brought me around. Here are the arguments in favor of using cloth diapers:

• Disposable diapers put all kinds of freaky-ass chemicals up against your baby’s, well, ass. Disposables are incredibly absorbent, but they achieve that absorbency using space-age gels and such. These things might not be bad for your baby, but not using them has got to be better.
• Disposable diapers put tons and tons of crap, literally, into landfills, taking up valuable landfill space and potentially contaminating groundwater, etc. Cloth diapers have to be laundered, which uses lots of water, it’s true, but I think cloths still come out ahead, environmentally speaking.
• Cloth diapers are more expensive per diaper, but in the long run are much cheaper than disposables.

Some commonly asked questions seem to be:

Are you using cloth diapers exclusively? Heavens, no. We’ve only been using cloth for a week or two. We still pack disposables in the diaper bags for the few times we’ve ventured out of the house, and at this point we’re putting them in disposables overnight. We’ll probably switch to cloth overnight when they get a bit bigger and can fit into some of the other diapers we have.

Do you use a diaper service? No. There are probably some places that still have services that take away your dirty diapers and bring you fresh clean ones, but Providence isn’t one of those places. With two babies, we’re basically doing laundry once a day anyway, so an additional load of diapers isn’t too arduous.

Wait, you wash the diapers in your washing machine? With, like, poop on them? Yes. We do the diapers in a separate load from our regular clothes, and I think we run them through an extra rinse cycle, but at this stage in the babies’ development, their poop is pretty liquid-y. Things seem to be pretty clean. Really, it’s fine. Nothing else we own seems to be covered in poop at this time.

How do they work? Cloth diapers seem to have come a long way since the old days of safety pins and rubber pants. What I figure I’ll do is over the next few days (oh, who am I kidding: weeks) is do a series of posts on the different kinds of cloth diapers we’ve tried, and our impressions of each. It will either be fascinating or incredibly boring, depending on your personal interest in diapering. Non-parents, feel free to skim.

OK, so, there seem to be four basic types of cloth diapers. We have examples of three of the types.

Prefolds are the most basic type of cloth diaper. These are basically rectangles of absorbent cotton. You fashion the cloth into a little baby loincloth, and then put a waterproof cover over it. We’ve had good success with these: they’re our default diapering solution at present.

Fitted diapers are absorbent fleecy things that work just like disposables: they’re shaped like diapers, basically, with leg holes and Velcro tabs and all. You Velcro on the diaper, and then put a waterproof cover on it, just like with prefolds. I think these are the most convenient, although Rachel insists they’re somewhat less absorbent than the prefolds. We have two different brands of fitted diapers: Thirsties and Kissaluvs. (So far, the Kissaluvs are a little big for our babies, but they’re more adjustable than the Thirsties, so we expect to get a lot of good use out of them.)

Pocket diapers have a waterproof shell, a fleece lining, and a pocket in which to stuff a piece of absorbent fabric. We haven’t used any of our pocket diapers yet (small babies) but we’ll eventually try out bumGenius and FuzziBunz.

All-in-one diapers are one piece: waterproof exterior and super absorbent interior. They’re as convenient as disposables, except you have to wash them. We don’t have any of these at this point.

Since both prefolds and fitteds require waterproof covers, we have quite a few of them. Our favorites so far are the Thirsties covers, but we also have some Bummis, ProRap, and ImseVimse. After a few weeks of use, we can enthusiastically recommend the Thirsties. They have double leg gussets, which help keep the diaper tucked inside and prevent wetness from leaking out, and they have double-sided Velcro tabs, which allow you to overlap them for small babies.

With prefolds, you generally want some kind of device to hold the diaper in place under the cover. Although it’s possible to just fold the diaper into shape and then wrap the cover around it, we find that the Snappi fastener is extremely convenient.

As long as we’re being environmental, we can’t go using disposable diaper wipes, can we? No, we cannot. Instead, we use cloth wipes that we spray with a little soapy water before using. We like the Thirsties wipes best; the Kissaluvs can be a little rough on sensitive baby parts.

OK, seriously, I’ve gone on about cloth diapers for rather a long while here, and I’ve threatened more posts to come, so I’ll wrap this up. We do think using cloth diapers is a great choice environmentally and financially. We (mostly Rachel) did a lot of research into the best options, so we hope the results of our experimentation can be of use to anyone else.

Oh, crap, gotta go change a diaper.

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