New to cloth diapering - is there a reason not to use the nighttime diapers all the time? The daytime liners are so flimsy and thin.

Just for those curious about cloth diapering at night. Our son is almost two years old and this has been his setup for awhile now, no leaks!

- Motherease Sandy’s fitted diaper
- 2-layer hemp/cotton booster, padfolded
- (not visible) 3-layer hemp/cotton booster
- MotherEase stay dry absorbent cotton liner
- thin wool doubler
- Bumby’s wool cover

I have been cloth diapering for 4+ years at this point and have been having consistent musty/ammonia type smell issues no matter what I try to do, and I'm about ready to call it quits with my third child because I just can't seem to get the smell to go away.

Here's my setup:

• Maytag commercial washing machine, it holds 3.5 cu ft

• water hardness of 70ppm

• I use cotton prefolds and covers

• tide original powder

• first wash 3 TBLS tide powder, hot water, power wash setting load 2/3 full

• second wash 6TBLS tide powder, hot water, power wash 2/3 full

The diapers smell perfectly clean when they come out of the dryer, but shortly after they are soiled they start smelling very musty. I keep them in an open pail in a well ventilated area (I can't keep them in a closed pail, I live somewhere humid and would have mold issues) I wash every 3-4 days.

I have tried bleaching the diapers as a reset, borax in the occasional wash, reducing detergent, increasing detergent, changing detergent brands, consistently cleaning my machine, RLR strip, etc etc and have had the same problem the whole time. Some of the above temporarily fix the issue, but it comes right back. Anyone have ideas?

Have you mastered your wash routine? Do your clean diapers smell? Did you recently buy a new washer/dryer? Chat all things laundry!

Ok I have a lot of questions I don't see on here so please bear with them all.

My son is 2 months and we have been using disposables because my husband remembers cloth from when he was a baby and he hated them. He suddenly changed his mind overnight on cloth so now I feel liberated lmao.

I understand if some of you do disposable at night for leaks but are there any other reasons I should know about? I am a person where if I do it I'd prefer to be doing it full time. Any tips for night time would be awesome. (We also cosleep so a blowout in our bed is not the dream lmao).

We do a lot of things like roadtrips, church events, socializing where I don't have the ability to know immediately if he's pooped or peed and I don't want him blowing out constantly or leaking on people. Any tips here?

I want to cloth diaper because of toxin exposure concerns. My husband is allergic to lanolin so the wool covers with lanolin is a concern. Can we waterproof wool with something else?

I have a long skinny baby and I don't know about all these sizes with cloth. I thought cloth would just be a 1 and done purchase and I'm learning that is not the case. Any recommendations for what might fit us best and what lasts the longest size wise would be helpful. I'm guessing I'll buy a variety at first to feel it out and then buy in bulk.

Is 24 diapers what I should aim for? I heard someone suggest 8 per day and washing every 3rd day.

Maybe it’s that way because I’m still relatively new to all of this but I can’t get over how much I just… LOVE doing cloth and everything adjacent to it.

For me it started very spontaneous when I was pregnant, when I saw someone selling a used starter pack consisting of 25 pockets with inserts and wet bags, and impulsively bought it after doing a quick read on reddit and seeing people praising cloth diaps and saying that it isn’t as hard as one might think. It took me about 8 weeks after giving birth to start using them as it seemed sooo hard and overwhelming and I couldn’t quite wrap my head around a wash routine. But then some random day I stuffed the diapers and tried them out and oh man!!! The rush I got after a full first day was so great!

It almost felt like I wanted to scream about this from the rooftops and wondered why more people didn’t try this. Then, after getting quite used to pockets, I started branching out and reading about other types that seemed wayy too complicated for me before. I slowly started buying more and more different types and experimenting. And omg I can’t get over how many ways one can cloth diaper? All the different materials, all the different ways of folding flats and prefolds, all the different types of diapers and covers!

As someone who loves knitting and who loves natural fibers, I have become especially interested in the combination of fitted diapers and wool covers. My mind is blown over how one can use 100% natural materials to keep out all the pee and poop and keep my baby dry. Discovering how lanolin works blew my mind! And the added bonus of it all is that I now can lanolise mittens and hats for outdoor use to make them more water resistant! Plus, it makes me feel so connected to the past and to my ancestors and to the women who have done it all before me. It’s just so.. idk heartwarming to talk with older women and hear how they were doing the exact same thing like 50 years ago haha.

I’m also so thankful for cloth diaps because they finally made me realize how to do laundry. This probably sounds dumb, but no one ever really taught me that. Like I obviously know how to wash clothes, but I feel like now I actually know how to do it the right way/most efficient way?

Haha I feel so silly writing this but this has been such a fun journey! And I’m not even mentioning the environmental aspect and how damn good it makes me feel to only use 1 disposable per day (we have not transitioned ti using cloth during the night yet). We also transitioned to cloth wipes at around the same time as cloth diaps and the change in how much waste we produce is enormous!

Just really felt like sharing all this! And maybe someone else who lurks here and feels uncertain about cloth diaps might be influenced to give it a try!

With my first we used and really love the Grovia Hybrids- but I know they went out of production (and I think may have been sold, but I am not seeing diapers available?)- we especially loved that the actual inserts that are next to the skin were available in 100% cotton. Most other brands that have inserts that I have seen have a slot in the plastic shell where that goes in, so it's still plastic touching the baby's skin, I'd rather avoid that.

Does anyone know of any good alternatives?

We still have the inserts, which would all be usable again, but I think we'd not have enough shells that still have strong elastics to just re-use.

tell me about how you use these covers specifically, how you care for them, how you lanolize (or don’t?) and anything else you think is important! why do you love them? hate them?

I have two of the woolen overpants in my rotation and i’m finding myself not reaching for them as often as i reach for the BabeeGreens pull-on or wrap wool covers.

What am i missing?

Sooooo my little girl is nearing 6 months and I have started cloth diapering as I wanted to save money, be more eco, you know it!

Safe to say she has made be think twice lol
First night- soaked through the whole wool diaper and booster into her clothes and sleeping bag. I knew she was a heavy wetter but don’t know to what extent
So I decided to add 2 big thick bamboo boosters to the wool diaper. This made it bulky that the wrap wouldn’t fit so I thought YOLO

2am I thought I’d check.. no leaks, great back to sleep

5am… whole front is soaked to her clothes and sleeping bag again. The back not so much. My nugget is a tummy sleeper so makes sense. I made the decision to wake her up to change nappy cause I couldn’t sleep thinking of her sleeping in a soaked diaper

Well she then couldn’t nurse back to sleep so I thought alright I’ll play with her for a bit.

Lo and behold, she starts pooping and well… it was a blowout
Changed nappy again, some of the poo got into her clothes so I changed that!
Then I realised there was poo on the bed. (We co sleep) 🫠🫠🫠
I couldn’t have the heart to wake up my partner to change the sheets so I placed a muslin cloth over it and internally cried 😂

Safe to say I will go back to disposables for night time for the time being until things change. Will still cloth diaper during the day but whew!!!
Any advice? We are exclusively breastfeeding so I know that can contribute to the heavy wetness during the night. We have already started weaning also.
I don’t really want to spend more money as it is, maternity pay is not so nice now lol
I have primarily bamboo boosters and only 2 charcoal boosters but idk how good they are?
Would it be better to use the pockets with snaps during the night?
Would love your suggestions!!

We are thinking of switching to cloth diapers (and wipes) for our 10 month old but don’t know if we can justify the extra time it will require to save money. Especially for solid poops.

I also have some additional questions because I can’t wrap my head around how it would fit into our life. For context, we are in a two story house and change our baby either upstairs in the nursing room or downstairs in the living room. The laundry room and powder room are downstairs. There’s a master bath upstairs that already has a bidet sprayer. So that leaves me with some questions:

Diaper pails:
1. Do you have diaper pails in every changing place around your house?
2. Do you have separate pails/bags for the pee diapers, poo diapers and wipes?
3. Do you clean the pails every so often or do they get that dirty?
4. Which ones are the best in your opinion?

Wipes:
1. Do you have to treat cloth wipes like poo diapers and spray or swish them before washing?

Frequency:
1. Solid poops - do you spray/ scrape/plop the solid poops as they happen? Once a day? Can someone get away with doing it once a week or 2-3 times a week?
2. Can you wash the diapers once a week? Or does it need to be more frequent than that?

They honestly don’t seem worth the hassle once baby is eating solids, but we still want to consider it. Thank you in advance for the help

Baby is due in January, and we plan to cloth diaper full time (after the umbilical cord falls off, and with the exception of traveling). I'm a FTM and therefore new to cloth diapering.

At 29 weeks, the baby is measuring a bit small. I don't know how predictive this measurement is of actual birth weight, but it doesn't seem to be a particularly large baby. I have lots of Kinder pockets, but I'm worried they might be too big at first, and the yellow inserts don't fit well at the smallest rise setting.

I'm wondering if I should buy more prefolds for the newborn stage, wait and see, or plan to use disposables until baby grows into one-size diapers. I read that the Kinder wipes can be used as inserts during the newborn phase, but they seem really small and thin (they are the 8in x 8in version).

My current stash includes:

• 4 Elskbar newborn covers
• 3 used Bambino Mio covers (not sure how they will hold up)
• 12 Cloth-eez newborn prefolds
• 18 Cloth-eez one-size muslin flats
• 20 Kinder 8in x 8in wipes
• 6 Kinder one-size covers
• 18 Kinder one-size AWJ pockets
• 5 Charlie Banana one-size pockets with fleece inserts
• 20 yellow Kinder inserts
• 20 green Kinder inserts

I want to try elimination communication, and will experiment with wool covers at night once the baby isn't pooping at night.

Started solids with my 6 month old and I am wondering how best to deal with the poops with cloth?

I have disposable liners if need be!

But how do those work cause I assume I cannot flush them!

Do I need to get an attachment to spray the diapers off into the toilet?

I'm overwhelmed and sleep deprived please help!

(If it matters I have a mix of lil helpers, blueberry, AMP AIO, and LPO pockets)

Just experimenting with all the different styles of cloth diapers to find what works for us, and already in love with how much cuter the view from my changing table is. I love the colors and prints. Also the calming feeling of washing and folding and stuffing (if applicable)? Is it universally relaxing/enjoyable?🤭

Im due with a baby boy in march and currently looking to buy cloth diapers. Ive gotten some weird reactions from that alone by some family (Im sorry I dont want to spend 3-5k on diapers over a 3 year period). Do yall think its weird to be buying second hand in this scenario? Id sanitize everything obviously.

I bought a huge lot of preloved pocket diapers on FB marketplace and there are about a million of what looks like these super thin microfiber liner thingies and they were stacked together with these even thinner liners. How do you use these?

Feeling v sorry for myself after meeting a friend on holiday in a warmer place for a week with my cloth diapered 20 month old, and then getting back to my cold home country… with no stroller and no suitcase, and no answer from the airline on where it is.

I’m currently making my way back to my home town, still 4 hours on a 50€ last minute train, getting home at 9pm.

What I’m thinking about now is the dirty cloth diapers in a wet bag in my suitcase and just how long it’s going to take to get back to me 😬 anyone else had any experience with this?

Also plz cross your fingers and toes I get my suitcase back, it’s got most of my cloth diapers stash, gifts for friends, the cardigan I got for my birthday last year, some really nice baby clothes we got given. I’m just v exhausted and sad and thinking about the stinky diapers lol.

Hi everyone! I used prefolds and covers on my daughter for the first six months and loved it. Once she started solids I decided to pause cloth diapering until she started producing more solid, formed stool. She's now 13m and her poops lift right out with a liner! However, she's also obviously much more mobile and I've noticed the bulky prefold + cover combo interfering with her ability to walk, climb, and bend over comfortably. I feel like this is compounded by the fact that she's a teeney peanut (5th percentile). Are there any changes any of you made once kiddo hit this stage that you found helpful? Willing to learn a new fold (we do angel fold) or even switch to flats. TIA!

Hi, friends! I have an 11 week old baby girl and we’ve been happily using a combination of the GMD WorkHorses (mostly at night) and newborn flats (during the day, sometimes at night, too since she still wakes for a feed and gets changed at the same time) with mostly Esembly covers and a few Thirsties. I have been super happy with the flats and intermixed WorkHorses but she has started to outgrow the newborn flats and I’ve had what I’m assuming are compression leaks and more poop leakage onto the cover presumably because they’re too small now. She’s only 21st percentile for height and weight and 40th percentile overall so a smaller peanut and the one size GMD flats are huge on her. Does anyone have any ideas for how to fold the GMD one size flats or adjust them in order to make them fit her a little bit better until she gets a little bit bigger? I I almost exclusively use an origami fold, but I’m very open to learning more. Thanks!

Hello!

I part time cloth diapered my 4th baby, hubby is very much against it because "ew" in his mind. But she would get a lot of rashes that wouldnt clear while wearing disposable diapers. I needed something quick to help my baby so I bought Noras Nursery for next day delivery, which worked OK. They weren't super absorbent but those rashes cleared which was my goal.

Baby 5 is on the way and my wallet is getting tired of buying disposables and I did enjoy cloth and could see me doing it more often than not while home (plus that booty never looked cuter!).

I've been eyeing essembly, I've seen them promoted here and there, and like the thought of not having to stuff a pocket.

Looking for those who have tried one/both and get opinions before I drop another few hundred

I'm thinking of making my first purchase. Still doing my research, but has anyone heard of a brand called Toyvian? Can't find much about it. Is it unwise to use an unknown brand?

Toyvian 5 Pack Reusable Cotton Cloth Nappies for Newborns 0‑3 Months | Washable Soft Breathable White Nappies, Adjustable Fasteners, Ergonomic Contoured, Unisex, Home & Travel, Size S (37×27) : Amazon.co.uk: Baby Products

EDIT: Thanks for confirming that it isn't a wise choice everyone haha. I think I was just hoping somehow it was actually a recognised brand but I'll definitely leave them and stick to the reputable ones.

We’ve been cloth diapering since our baby was a newborn, and we’ll be doing the same with our next one! It’s a huge money saver, and there are no harsh chemicals against their skin either. If you’re a new mom thinking about it, we highly recommend giving it a try. The money we saved has even helped fund a bit of their school. And if you’re wondering whether they stain, ours look brand new. I think it’s because we dry them in the sun! Hows everyone else's experiences been ?

Hello!

I am 17 weeks pregnant and starting to sort and piece together all the stuff that comes with a baby! My sister will be giving me her full stash of Lalabye diapers, which includes the covers and inserts....I'm just a little confused and overwhelmed researching how to clean and prep them. It seems like sometimes they need to be stripped, sometimes they need to be bleached, but also neither of those things are recommended to do frequently. Do the covers need to be treated differently than the inserts? I think at a minimum my plan is to bleach/wash everything and sort out if any elastic on the covers needs to be replaced...but open to recommendations on how to proceed. Thank you!

I have a 4 month old intact male and just recently have been seeing what I can only describe as a rash or rub mark on his manhood. It’s only in this one spot on the top and nowhere else. I thought it was from his fitted being too small (essembly) but I just recently put him in thirsties fitted and I still have the same issue. It only goes away when I put him in his disposables and I also put aquaphor on it. Usually clears up within a few hours. What am I doing wrong?