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Sunday, July 29, 2012

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Leak-Free Lullaby

Jumping into cloth diapering has been pretty easy for me. Aside from a few minor rookie mistakes and blunders, I have found cloth diapering to be much easier than I thought it would be…in the daytime. At night, however, I have struggled. Once Evelyn started sleeping through the night, she would wake up every morning with wet sheets. Who knew such a little person could make so much pee? I got so frustrated that I just decided to use disposables at night. One or two diapers a day couldn’t hurt right?

I don’t know what changed my mind. Maybe I’m just stubborn and didn’t want to let the leaks get the best of me. Maybe I was just annoyed with having to buy disposables. Maybe it was just a good excuse to buy some more fluff (do we ever really NEED an excuse?) Whatever the reason, I decided to try cloth at night again. I am a first-time mom and I'm still learning the ropes of cloth diapering, so it didn't make sense to me that the diapers leaked at night. I didn't have this problem with disposables, so why were my pocket diapers leaking? I decided to enlist the help of the online cloth diapering community for recommendations. I asked questions on forums and did a lot of reading. Everyone seemed to have different answers and some of the solutions made me think that I would have to stuff her diaper to maximum capacity and I had visions of my poor baby struggling to roll over with a giant fluffy butt! Then someone suggested fitteds. I had purchased some bumGenius fitteds from another cloth diapering momma before Evelyn was even born, but they were too big for her at the time, so they were just hiding on a shelf in the closet. That same momma also suggested I try her Mother Ease one size fitteds with a cover. As soon as I held the diapers in my hands and felt the soft cotton, I knew I was going to like them. To my surprise, Evelyn woke up with dry sheets and clothes after the first night. And that diaper was completely soaked!

Even though the Mother Ease diapers worked great, I decided to experiment with other diaper combinations at night. What I discovered is that natural fibers like cotton, bamboo, and hemp work much better for me than microfiber. With microfiber pockets, Evelyn would saturate them quickly and I think most of her leaks came from compression. Don’t get me wrong, I like my microfiber for daytime use and my hubby loves the convenience of pockets. We use microfiber inserts every day. But for nighttime and maximum absorbency, natural fibers really take the cake.

Now I have a variety of diaper combinations that I use at night. Sometimes I use the Mother Ease fitteds and cover. Other times I will stuff a prefold and a hemp babies insert into a bumGenius pocket. Sometimes I just stick with a simple Econobum cotton prefold and add bamboo or hemp for extra protection. All the extra inserts sound like they would add a lot of bulk, but the natural fibers tend to be trimmer than microfiber and they hold more liquid. I even recently purchased a wool cover to use at night so her little bum can breathe. All this experimentation means that no matter where I am in my laundry cycle, I can find something clean to put on my baby at night.

Now, Evelyn wakes up dry every morning and I don’t have to buy disposables anymore. And that helps both of us sleep better.

Bio: I am a working mom who knew I wanted to cloth diaper before I was even pregnant. In my spare time, I like to cook, travel, and blog about life and family at a scenic detour.

6 comments:

Megan said...

Very helpful my little guy is always rollong onto his belly at nite and wakes up wet I think due to pressure this my help! Another question I have pocket diapers and am new to cloth do u recomend using the dryer or not I havw gotten mixed answers and I would like your input on it!

Anonymous said...

This post could not have come at a better time! My husband and I use prefolds with covers on our almost three month old son. He is starting to sleep between 6 and 8 hours at night but then wakes up crying and when I pick him up his entire pajama set and bed is wet. I am definitely going to order some hemp and bamboo inserts and play around with them. Maybe then he'll feel so good he'll start sleeping through the night! :) Thank you!!

Liz said...

It's so strange how different things work on different babies! My son leaked terribly over night in disposables, like a 3x a week kind of mess! As soon as we switched over to cloth, just a BG4.0 w/ both MF inserts, we have been leak free. Going on 3+ months now. Glad you found something that worked for you!

The Mama Life said...

I love our BG4.0s. So far, we have gone 2 nights of cloth and used the 4.0s with both MF inserts and no problems, but I do feel they are rather bulky. Which hemp inserts would you recommend? What about a doubler? I'm looking for the best options! :)

Carrie said...

Megan, I use the dryer to dry my inserts, but I hang the pockets to dry. I have read that some people use the dryer once in awhile to "reactivate" the PUL, but I haven't had to do that yet. I would think that with as often as you have to wash cloth diapers, drying them in the dryer every time would wear them out quickly!

Carrie said...

I use Hempbabies inserts :)