Equivilant to Disposable Pull-Ups?

My 3 year son is in underwear during the day. Wondering what your suggestion is for nighttime with him since he occasionally still has accidents. I’ve been using pull ups for him from the store, but am running low and am looking for a more environmentally safe alternative. He does sometimes wake in the night so I would need something he can pull off and on by himself so he can use the potty and go back to bed like he does now with his pull ups.

There are actually Pocket Trainer diapers which are the most like disposable pull-ups. Here's a link to them on my site http://www.earthangelsdiaperco.com/page/page/4782152.htm They do require the purchase of inserts to go inside them and they can come with or without snaps. Even if you do get snaps they can still be pulled up and down like training pants. The best thing would be that if your son goes all night without an accident then you can just use the pocket trainer again the next night because it would still be clean.

Thinking of Switching to Cloth?

I have a 17 month old who I want to switch to cloth diapers, but my husband is saying they are so pricey. What do you suggest? I’m afraid to buy them and then they leak because I’ll get an I told you so. Now we wasted money on cloth and still have to buy disposables, etc. I was looking at possibly getting the just the basics pre-folds and covers for him. Do those work pretty good? He is a heavy wetter at night time so that is the only concern I have.

As far as your 17month old goes, I would recommend buying one or two diapers or pre-folds and covers, and see what style or brand you prefer before making a large investment on any one kind. You can tell your husband that cloth diapers can be re-sold used when your done with them, and as long as they're in good condition you can re-coup around 80% of what you spent on them. It really is amazing.

Pre-folds are nice because they are the most affordable. The cover usually stays clean and you can just replace the wet pre-fold with a dry one. The pre-fold would need to be changed more frequently than a pocket diaper or all-in-one because they just don't hold as much liquid as microfiber. If you were to only use that method I'd say you'd need about 2 dozen pre-folds & 6-8 covers, laundry would need to be done every other day. I use pre-folds at home during the day and pocket or all-in-one's when we're out or for overnight.

Don't Hate Me Because I'm Fluffy

Welcome to Diaper Discussions. The reason I have created this Blog is because many new and existing moms who are giving cloth diapers a try or are interested in them feel overwhelmed by all the options, terminology, fabrics, and choices in general when it comes to learning about cloth. Having been new to cloth myself once, I realize that it's sometimes even hard to put into words how overwhelming cloth diapers are and form the questions you need to ask in order to help you make decisions about what to do.
So, I hope this Blog will serve as an archive of all my customers diapering dilemmas and the dialog between us. I will also post other useful information as I come across it and links to other helpful diapering sites. Questions and comments are always welcome.

How Do I Choose?

One of our customers recently asked a great question on the Cotton Babies forum. It got a wonderful answer from another cloth diapering mom and with her permission, we are sharing the exchange here in hopes that it helps some parents who are still in that 'what do we pick' phase.
Original Question:

Is it really just a pure trial and error with types of CD and absorbencies until you figure something out? Does that mean I should just buy a few of each kind to begin with and hope something jumps out at me as a "this works, I should buy more?" I'm really struggling with this; I'm one of those types who reads everything I can get my hands on and expects there to be an obvious answer at the end, but I'm getting the feeling CDing is a subject where there is no such thing!

Answer:
Choosing a diaper system is not 100% trial and error. If you read the reviews at places like Diaper Pin, you can get a pretty good idea of what is generally a winner, not generally a winner, etc.
After that, you need to know yourself. Where do you fall on the cost/convenience spectrum, what are your reasons for cd'ing and your priorities, etc. For example, prefolds with one of the many well-reviewed covers are a sure bet, especially if $-savings is your major priority. But for some people, ease-of-use is more important, so another system would be a better investment. Local factors, matter too -- for example I find that in our hot humid summers, I don't want a diaper that takes a long time to dry in the dryer. But a lot of people don't really care about that, and in the winter, I don't either.
Finally, there will be a certain amount of baby-specific issues. A super-chunker and a string bean are going to fill out a diaper cover differently. Some babies are super heavy wetters. Some babies poop a little bit every 20 minutes, some babies poop a whole septic tank, once a week. So you may end up having to tweak things for extreme babies. And that's something you need to be ready to accept, so you can decide how you will handle that.
A major issue here, also, is contentment. On the one hand, diapering products do vary in their performance. On the other hand, many of us CD'ers have a bizzarre compulsion to either get it "perfect", or to just want to have the latest greatest thing.
If you can get over those issues, you are way ahead of the game. In that case, you can just read the reviews and narrow it down to the top three or so proven winners for a child of your baby's age. Analyze your needs and priorities, pick the system that looks like the best bet, and invest about 75% of your diaper budget for the current size (newborn, right?) in that. Then after your baby gets here, tweak according to your baby's needs with your remaining diaper allowance.
And then as your baby grows, you will have the actual child in hand, and can be even better informed as you need to move up in sizes, though in general it is still prudent to leave a little bit of diaper allowance aside for adjustments.

Cloth diaper alphabet soup

One of the most frustrating things for a new mom doing her cloth diaper research online has to be deciphering the alphabet soup of abbreviations floating around the discussion forums. If a line like ‘my DH uses CPFs but I prefer FBs and roos’ makes you go hmmm, this little piece of blogery is for you.

Here are some of the more common terms you’ll see floating around about cloth diapers online:

AIO – All In One diapers (diaper with waterproof outer and absorbent inner all in one piece.
Aplix – hook and loop fastener a-la Velcro
bG - bumGenius: one-size cloth diaper, all-in-one, bamboo fitted and bamboo wipes
CD – Cloth Diaper
CPF – Chinese Prefold
Flats - Birdseye Flats - single layer diaper you fold like oragami for max absorbancy
DD, ‘sposies - Disposable Diapers
ISO - In Search Of
FB - Fuzzi Bunz pocket diaper
FSOT - For sale or trade...
Nappy - Nappy is the European word for diaper.
OSD - One size diaper
Pocket Diaper - A pocket diaper is usually made of two layers of fabric sewn together to form a pocket for an absorbent insert - see bumGenius one-size cloth diaper.
UBCPF - Unbleached Chinese Prefold Diaper
WAHM - Work At Home Mom
DH (or DW, DS, DD) – Dear husband/wife/song/daughter
NB – Newborn
Stash – pile of cloth diapers someone owns
MFI – Microfiber inserts
Fluff – Cloth diaper stuff
Fluffy Mail – Mail containing cloth diapers
OT – Off Topic
Fitted – Cloth diaper with sides cut in so they don’t have to be folded and elastic in the legs
Contour – Cloth diaper with sides cut in with out the elastic
Inserts – the absorbent pad that goes inside a pocket diaper

There are others, but this will help you get started. There is a more compehensive list of diapering definitions over at Cotton Babies if you'd like to read more about the different types of diapers.

Happy Decoding!

Jimmy

Copyright 2005 Cotton Babies, Inc. – Cloth Diaper Alphabet Soup