A Tale of 2 Newborns!

I decided to cloth diaper before my first son was born, and – librarian that I am – I did all kinds of research, including attending a cloth diapering workshop, before deciding that prefolds or fitteds and covers were the way to go for the newborn stage. I decided I would use pockets once my little guy was big enough to fit into the one-size diapers. Well, as you may well know, there’s quite a learning curve with the first baby, and I resorted to disposables more often than not until he fit into his BumGenius 4.0s and his Fuzzibunz. It was months before I would be comfortable enough to leave the house with him in a cloth diaper and not a disposable. But the day came when I had half an unused package of disposables sitting in his closet until he grew out of them! Once I got used to it (and acquired a few wet/dry bags that made transporting everything really easy), using cloth full-time was no big deal.

When I learned that baby number two was coming along, I determined to cloth diaper him as soon as he came home from the hospital. I began frequenting online cloth diaper swaps and keeping an eye out for sales and Kelly's Closet coupons, and I added to my (still mostly-unused) prefolds and covers to build up an impressive assortment of newborn diapering options. I had Kissaluvs Fitteds, Thirsties Duo Diapers, Rumparooz Lil Joeys, BumGenius newborn AIOs, GroVia newborn AIOs, XS Fuzzibunz, and a few random diapers they don't even make anymore. I also had one adorable newborn Simplex AIO that a friend had given to me as a gift. I thought I was all set.

And then baby number two decided to come along 10 weeks early. He was in the NICU for five weeks, and when he came home he was a whopping five pounds, five ounces. I was so glad to have collected a stash of newborn diapers since it would be months before he could fit into his brother’s one-size diapers. I found that the Lil Joeys especially are great for preemies. Most of the other diapers I had worked fairly well size-wise, but my preemie outgrew the absorbency of many of them before he actually outgrew the size of them. The only diaper that worked for an extended amount of time was the Simplex. It wasn’t long before I sold the rest of my stash so I could buy more Simplex. The size range is 6-16 lbs., and I found that to be pretty accurate; they were a great fit for my little guy, and I loved all the fun prints. I was so sad when he finally outgrew them in October (he came home in April), but I was cheered by their great resale value.

And what about those prefolds and covers? I did end up using them quite a bit when all the Simplex were dirty. Prefolds weren’t as hard as I thought they would be when using a Snappi or just tri-folding, and if you are looking for the most economical route, they're certainly the way to go. But if you want to make it easy on yourself, I'd recommend the Simplex. And when you have two in cloth at the same time? Well, that's another post.

Bio: Laurie Walters is a children’s librarian-turned-SAHM who keeps her storytime skills fresh by reading to her two boys, one and three. She blogs at lauriewalters.blogspot.com.


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