We used huggies. Don't know much about other brands. Didn't look into it as the long term plan was to go cloth.

As for how many.. I heard up to about 12 per day for new newborns. Depends how often they feed I guess. If it's on average every 3 hours, that's about 8 nappy changes. BUT.. I found myself changing him a few times at some nappy changes.. coz he'd poo straight away, or he'd wee all over everything as I was putting a clean one on. I didn't really know what I was doing LOL so I probably went through more than was really necessary.