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Thursday, July 12, 2012

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Diaper a Newborn - Lessons Learned


We started cloth diapering our first child shortly after his first birthday. A few months later, we found out we were expecting baby #2. I was so excited to use the cloth from the start with our second baby. Assuming that the new baby would be as fast growing as the first, itti bitti diapers would not be needed for long so I did not want to spend a ton of money. I purchased some used Kissaluvs fitteds, used BG extra smalls, Thirsties covers and different sized prefolds. I used a gift certificate from my Kelly’s Closet rewards points to purchase a pair of Swaddlebees AIO and a Kissaluvs AIO. I also took advantage of Kelly’s Closet promotions for free sized diapers. My sweet little baby is now 4 months old and we are way past the point of newborn diapers. Here are my reflections.

  • I had some postpartum issues that left me feeling pretty icky for several weeks. We ended up using disposables a lot more than I had originally planned. I would say we were 50/50 on usage for the first 6 weeks. Since then, he has been in cloth for the most part during the day with disposables at night.
  • My assumptions were right. Baby boy weighed in at 8lbs 9oz and he was over 14lbs at his 2 month appointment. I was glad I had not invested a ton in newborn diapers and that my purchases were brands that fit to a higher weight.
  • At first I could not figure out the prefolds. Soon, I mastered the jelly-roll fold & found the prefold (or fitted)/cover combo to be easy & reliable. It was so much easier than stuffing pockets & they dried much faster than the AIO. We never had any leaks with the fitteds/prefolds & covers.
  • The biggest disappointment was with the pockets & AIO. It seemed like they leaked a lot for whatever reason. The AIO diapers also took a long time to dry, not something I liked when I had a smaller stash. I can’t argue the extreme cuteness of these diapers though, which is what sucked me into buying them in the first place. I loved taking pictures of my squishy baby’s fluffy bum & putting him in them when we had company to show them off.
  • With our first, I remember cleaning up nasty poo-splosions almost daily along with lots of pee leaks. I heard all about how cloth would contain these messes & was excited to test the theory. Lucky for me, my new baby isn’t big in that department. Needless to say, he has never had a blow out in a cloth diaper or in a disposable. No complaints here!
  • Newborns go through a lot of diapers in a day. You know that feeling when a newborn immediately dirties a diaper you just changed? When this occurred in a cloth diaper it just went into the dirty pail instead of me calculating how much money just got wasted.
  • I have yet to tackle cloth diapering at night with the new baby. He is an excellent sleeper and I am not one to experiment when things are going well! I know someday we will bust out the Kawaii Goodnight Heavy Wetters that big brother has outgrown.
  • Newborn diapers have great resale value! Much better than any disposable brand I have used (haha)!
  • Despite having great resale value, I have a really hard time reselling the diapers that don’t fit anymore. They are so tiny & give me major pregnancy/newborn amnesia.

We’re not sure if we’ll have another child some day. But if we do, our stash will consist of fitteds & covers, a couple of cute AIOs for showing off & probably some disposables.

Megan is a full-time working mama of 2 little men – 2 & 4 months, who have the cutest (and only) cloth diaper butts on the block.

3 comments:

Beth said...

Thanks for posting this! I am going to be cloth diapering my first newborn in a few months - already been doing the bum genius pockets for my almost 2 year old. I've heard good things about the fitteds with covers, although I realized when I went to buy some online that they are almost double the price of a pocket diaper (considering the fitted diaper and then the cover). Am I missing something? Is this the most expensive way to diaper a newborn, or can the covers be used several times before needing to change it? Thanks for the help!

Unknown said...

@Beth, you don't need to have a cover for every fitted diaper, if that helps since you can reuse covers before washing.

I am cloth diapering my second child and started when we came home from the hospital. I used Swaddlebee's newborn fitteds for the first 12 weeks (through a diaper rental program) along with some other fitteds, small Charlie Banana pockets, and some random OS pockets and AIOs. He was a big baby (11lb 1oz at birth!) and the Swaddlebee's were still fitting when I returned them.

Megan said...

Beth - I loved the GMD workhorse fitteds, but I only had a few. They do need a cover but you can wipe them off & reuse until they get poo on them so 3-4 would be a good number. The GMD workshorses have excellent resale value as well. The Kissaluvs 0 are good fitteds too.