Cloth Diapers - One Year Later

I wrote a couple posts while I was pregnant about cloth diapers (post 1, post 2, post 3), determined to make them work.  Faced with the myriad choices, I decided to buy a few different brands, then stock up on the one(s) I liked the best.  Here's what I found out.

I'm happy to say that overall I've been very satisfied with my choice to use cloth.  Until my daughter started eating solids, they were super-easy to just use, throw in the diaper pail, and wash every few days.  In fact, as a newborn and before I found a great brand of disposable diapers, cloth diapers smelled better than disposables and leaked less.  I did, however, find a couple of problems with various brands.  The interesting thing is that the best diaper for a newborn is not necessarily the best for a one-year-old or any age in between.

My stash over this year included the following:

1. Six used Prorap diaper shells (size newborn), which worked well with regular organic cotton prefolds
2. Four Bumgenius 3.0 one-size all-in-one diapers
3. One Fuzzibunz all-in-one diaper (size small)
4. Three GroBaby (which apparently has changed its name to GroVia - for good reason, more on these later) one-size diapers
5. Three Flip one-size diapers
6. Three Bumgenius 4.0 one-size diapers (with snaps)

Just a couple of things I want to share in general before reviewing each one.  First, buy a diaper with snaps.  They hold up better in the long run and as of right now, Alison hasn't figured out how to take the snap diapers off yet.  Secondly, get a one-size diaper.  Given how fast babies grow, it would be stupid and expensive to go out and buy new cloth diapers all the time.  Third, no matter what brand you use, double-up at night and cut-up a piece of microfleece fabric (I bought 1/2 yard for $2) and place a strip on the top of each diaper to help pull moisture away from baby's skin.  Otherwise, babies will get bad diaper rash when they finally start to sleep through the night.  Fourth, things tend to get a lot harder once kids start solids because then you need to either soak the diapers or get a diaper sprayer.  I bought this sprayer and it works fine.  However, it's still kind of icky to have to use it.  Fifth, never ever buy GroVia diapers.

Proraps
 
Photo Credit: cottonbabies.com

The Proraps we had worked great for Alison's first six weeks until she outgrew them.  They were specifically fitted to her small body (she was about 8 lbs), didn't leak, and seemed to keep her happy.  They were easy enough to get my husband hooked on using cloth diapers, which made this whole experience easier.  However, the pocket diapers tend to work better as babies grow because they are better at getting the moisture away from baby's skin.

Bumgenius 3.0 (velcro)

Photo Credit: diapers.com


These were my favorite diapers until I bought the Bumgenius 4.0 with snaps.  They generally don't leak, are easy to use, and grow with your baby.  As I mentioned above, older kids learn to take off velcro diapers (which isn't a problem since we put pants on right away), but the velcro on these diapers wears well and still works after one year.  I do have to clean out the lint and hair occasionally to keep them sticky.

Fuzzibunz

Photo Credit: amazon.com


I got the small-sized Fuzzibunz as a gift and actually really liked it.  At the time, I thought they didn't make one-size-fits-all and that's the only reason I didn't buy more.  I've since discovered that they do have one-size Fuzzibunz, so they might be worth checking out.  Fuzzibunz tends to be thiner than the other diapers and, while the small size held in moisture just find, I wonder whether the larger sizes would hold up OK to more output.

GroBaby (GroVia)

Photo Credit: amazon.com


Maybe I was too harsh on them above, but these diapers have worked the worst compared to the other brands.  It's not that they DON'T work, it's just that they tend to leak more often and are falling apart already.  The velcro is almost gone at this point and they barely can hold themselves together.  In spite of leaking more often, the inserts are pretty absorbant (in fact, they always need more time in the dryer than the others - a minus if you ask me), but the overall construction allows for leaks and can also make it impossible to spray out solids sometimes.

Flip

Photo Credit: amazon.com


Flip seems to be BumGenius' grab at the shell market.  They worked really well for a while, but as Alison has gotten older, they've started to leak more.  The non-organic inserts don't fill the width of the diaper, which allows for some bunching.  I'm told the organic inserts work much better, but I haven't tried them.

Bumgenius 4.0

Photo Credit: amazon.com


Hands down these are my favorite diapers.  They're snaps so they hold up better than the 3.0's.  They don't often leak and seem comfortable for Alison.  They are quite big so you may have to shop for some larger pants, but so far, Alison doesn't seem to care.

Do I use the cloth diapers 100% of the time?  No.  When we travel, we take disposables because it can be hard to find laundry machines every two days and the stash would take up an entire second suitcase (the extra $50 cost on most airlines these days should buy you as many disposables as you need).  I sometimes resort to disposables if I forget to start the laundry on time or go out for the day too.  Surprisingly, brands like Pampers and Huggies don't work as well for me as the generic Target and Giant brands.  Those two are pretty solid and if they would biodegrade in say, five years instead of 500, well, I might just be tempted to use them.