little feet, big sky

I’m still using cloth diapers on Spice, but only at home and during the day. I was getting frustrated with lugging a small suitcase with me when we would go out and felt she slept more soundly at night in disposables. (Though lately, she can nap for hours in a cloth diaper, so I might go back to using them at night, too.)

The recent challenge is that she’s starting to outgrow her current cloth prefolds. I usually do a bikini twist or newspaper fold and secure it with a Thirsties wrap-style cover. I’ve started knitting my own covers, though, and I’d need to snappi the prefold in place.. but Spice is a little too big to snappi them on anymore. I went online to look up the next size prefold and got a little distracted by the pretty fitted diapers. I think I could appreciate them more now, considering all the runny breastmilk poop. The downside is that they’re so expensive at about $13/each, compared to prefolds at $1-2/each. Thankfully, they’re fun and easy to make and are an excellent way to use up the tons of cheap flannel receiving blankets we had lying around.

DiaperJungle has an excellent page of free and $$ diaper and cover patterns, including Ottobre’s PDF pattern. I mainly followed Dianna’s How to Sew a Fitted Cloth diaper post, which was perfect since my sewing skills generally suck. :-)

I used old flannel receiving blankets for the outside. Most of ours were Target Dwell Studio ones, which make for cute modern-ish diapers. I used old flannel pillowcases and sheets for the against-the-skin fabric, and old Ikea cotton ones for the inside fabric that you stitch the soaker pad onto. For soaker pads, I used these Gerber prefolds I had picked up at Target before I knew any better. They were lousy as diapers for so many reasons. I used them as burp cloths at first and after the fishy breastmilk incident, I promptly forgot about them in a drawer. I trifolded them and cut them to fit, then stitched the trifold lengthwise to the right width. Oh, and SewShoppe sells diapering Aplix.

The end result was pretty neat – simple aplix-closing fitted diapers. I can leave off the wrap for more breathability, use a wool wrap for a little wetness protection, or use a Thirsties for completely dry. They’re on the generous side, so I imagine they’ll last a few months. And considering the first few have used up fabric around the house, they’re practically free.

So the gDiapers with cloth inserts didn’t really work out for Spice. In fact, the gDiapers themselves haven’t really worked out, sadly. They’re okay for wet ones and super trim, but leak consistently with poopy breastfed blowouts. The worst part is the cleaning; toss the insert, either handwash the liner and wait for it to dry, or wash it with cloth diapers and have it be out of commission until the next load. God forbid it leaks, ad then you have the cover out for wash, too. None of which sounds impossible for the average cloth-diapering parent, until you factor in that you should have about 4-6 covers on hand and that they cost about $12 – $18 each… about the same or more than a quality cloth diaper cover! (A bumGenius one-size AIO is $18.)

I now have a great stash of Thirsties and Litewraps which are working out fantastically. I have a ton of gDiaper inserts left over, so I cheat and line a cloth diaper with one at night for better absorbency. I noticed that lots of people trifold the prefold and just lay it in the wrap, but this ALWAYS ends up in a poopy wrap for us, so I do a newspaper fold and snappi, then put the wrap on. If I’m good with my folding, I only have to wash a cover every 2 days. :-) Maybe later today I’ll try a jellyroll fold. I have two steel stepcans next to the changing area, a small one for the gDiaper trash and a large one for the cloth diapers. We have a large stash of cloth wipes, a wipes warmer and use Kissaluv’s Diaper Lotion Potion, with good results. Cloth is just so much easier! Spice hates being wet, so frequent changes happen anyway.

If you’re thinking of trying cloth diapers, I can’t stress enough the need to try out different brands of wraps, pocket dipes and AIOs. For example, Bummis are really well reviewed everywhere, but I hated them; they felt plastic-y on the outside and the velco was rough and dug into Spice’s legs. The Proraps were almost as bad and just felt cheap. On the flipside,Imse Vimse is the softest one I have and the Litewraps second. Getting one of each let me try them and figure out which to get more of. I also wouldn’t recommend buying up sizes in advance. The bumGenius 3.0 (one size) we have worked great when her poop was tiny, but it’s leaked twice with blowouts, so it’s at the bottom of the stash right now. I’ll try it more as her pooping schedule lightens up later. My sister gave us some Kushies she had never used, but those also leak a little on blowouts. I’m learning not to trust anything that doesn’t have a leg gusset!