Advice for choosing cloth nappies

[Arimeh]

Mel had her Miss M in NB for quite some time and she was a heavier bub.

Yup Miss M was nearly 9 pound born - but she was long and skinny - and stayed that way. I went straight from the mother-ease newborn cover into the medium with her - but a chubbier bub might be fine in the smalls for ages. You never know unless they are here really!

Oh - and cushie tushies promote themselves as an AIO, but are technically an AI2 because of the snap in layer

[tenar]

On the cost issue, just wanted to point out that yes, MCNs are expensive (scarily so, some of them), but they win hands down over disposables really fast. So if you can manage to save the money for a small stash of them, you'll be saving a lot of money inside a few months (that you can then spend on more fun baby things! )

We are using bumgenius and baby beehinds, plus washable wipes.

The wipes (which I spend some $75 on, in a kind of hormonally-induced state of "must buy stuff for the baby - in retropsect getting a length of fabric from Spotlight and cutting it up would have done fine) will have paid for themselves compared with using your average disposable wipes in two months.

The nappies, which we've spent a few hundred dollars on (we have 18 nappies currently), will have paid for themselves compared to disposables by the end of September (that's 5 months of baby). That's washing daily, mind you.

I just throw the nappies in with all the other baby stuff (that has been spewed on or whatever) and wash it all together. Everything comes out clean at the end, and I don't think there's any problem with doing this (with a breastfed baby, anyway, not sure about if your baby is formula fed) as long as everything is dried properly after each wash. It's a long wash because you have to wash and rinse and rinse again, but the nappies only make up an extra say 1/4 of the load, so the extra work isn't much more than I'd have to do daily anyway, with this baby (she's quite spewy).

I'm very pleased with how it's all working out, especially the saving in landfill and cost.

[Neenee Jellybeanie]

Wow thanks for all the info.

I wanted to have all the nappies ready for when bub is born as money is going to be very tight afterwards. Is this unrealistic? Should I just get a few AOIs and use disposables? Or should I get some fitted nappies and covers to use when bub is little and get AOIs gradually as bub gets bigger?

[Arimeh]

I'd start putting aside a bit of money each week now so you do have cash when the time comes and have more of an idea what will suit

[Ryatha]

Neenee - the others all suggested to me to get fitted nappies / prefolds and covers while bubs is newborn and then slowly build up my stash of other AIO, pockets and AI2. Financially it is working for me at the moment as my mum is helping a bit with the costs. :-)

[Neenee Jellybeanie]

It's more expensive to get fitted nappies though isn't it? Because you need to buy all the bits seperate? That's what it looked like when I searched for them online. I really don't want to get the ones you fold yourself, I hated those!! When I had DD in those they leaked constantly even when I changed her every few minutes. Those were the terry towelling ones, I don't know if the other folding ones are better?

[Arimeh]

The only seperate bits of a fitted is that you need to buy a cover as well. If you get something like the baby beehinds bamboo it works out pretty cheap as they are a OSFM. I use them on both kids

[tenar]

What I decided to do was to buy several nappies to start with, of a couple of different kinds, and then see what worked best and buy more of those.

I used a prefold+cover exactly twice. I didn't like the way they got so soaked and seemed to me to be going to rub DD's legs raw any minute. Though it's clear that prefolds work for lots of people with small babies, and they are certainly cheap. We're now getting good use of the prefolds as change table liners to catch spills, so not wasting them, but I'm glad I didn't actually buy them myself (they are loaned from my sister), as they wouldn't have worked for me as actual nappies.

I bought a "trial package" of baby beehinds that included a couple of their bamboo fitteds and a minkee magic all-in-one. And I bought a handful of bumgenius AI2 to try too. I've ended up buying more of all of those nappies, as they all work well for me, for different situations (night nappies need more absorbancy, nappies to take out in the daytime need to be easy, clean, and fast to handle in strange change situations like public loos or the park, etc).

Some of the things I did right (for me, YMMV) were:

- have a couple of different kinds (we actually have 3, counting the two different BBHs), but not more than that, because it's too confusing, especially for DH

- buy nappies in large enough amounts to get a discount, small enough to have not committed enough money to be really upset if they don't work out

- buy nappies that have excellent reviews, rather than trying to save money on something that might not work as well

- wait to see how many I really needed before buying lots more. For a newborn, washing daily, 18 is enough nappies for me. I didn't need to buy as many as 30, which was suggested somewhere I read about them.

- use disposables at first (because you'll probably be in a state of shock about the whole baby thing, at first, and whatever saves you time is worth it for the first couple of weeks). I was particularly glad of this as I had an emergency caesarian that I totally didn't expect, so a more difficult recovery than if the birth had gone better.

- Disposables are also a great idea to have to hand if you run out of nappies in the first few weeks because the newborn just pooed that many times that day (which they can). They get a lot more regular, and need fewer changes, after a few weeks. We only used 7 nappies yesterday (that's a record low, so far, at 7 weeks).

I reckon that buying some nappies to use as trials at first, and also putting aside whatever you can each week so you have money to hand to increase your stash when you know what works best for you, is a great idea, if you can manage that. Also the prefolds + cover are worth a try, especially if you can borrow some from someone, or buy a small number not a huge bunch. Both my sister and my best friend swore by them (I'm actually puzzled by how they don't seem to work well for me).