Newborn cloth diapering

Last week, I packed up the set of newborn cloth diapers that I had rented and sent them back.  Now that he can fit into most of the one size diapers we have, I don’t need them anymore.  (BTW, I went through Earthy Crunchy Mama — highly recommend the program as you can select the types of diapers you want to rent, and the customer service was fantastic!)  Andrew is 3.5 months and we only really started the cloth diapers when he was about a month old, mainly because he was such a tiny guy that he could barely fit into the diapers I had (plus, we were just exhausted so I wasn’t ready to take on cloth diapering).  I never had the chance to try newborn cloth diapers with Natalie as I didn’t decide to CD until she was 3 months old…and by then, she was big enough to wear regular one-size diapers.  Anyway, I thought I’d write a post about my experience with the different brands I tried (the nice thing about renting was being able to try out different brands). 

Everyone will have a different experience based on the size and shape of their baby – Andrew was 6 lb 13 oz at birth and it took him a month to get back to his birth weight, so he was on the small side (not preemie small) for a baby with skinny legs.  Keep this in mind if you want to compare, particularly if you tend to birth chunkier babies, since the fit would be very different.

Here they are, in the order I liked them:

Bumgenius XS AIO
I actually own these and these were the only newborn diapers I purchased, as I saw them on a clearance sale in the spring…and I’d heard these are great.  I totally agree!  They fit really well and even now at 3.5 months, I’m still using them regularly…though they probably will stop fitting in a month or so as the velcro tabs are attaching only at the ends right now.  Because they’re so small, they dry really quickly and they don’t take up a lot of bulk in the diaper bag.  The only bummer is that they just come in simple solid colors, but that’s fine.

Rumparooz Lil’ Joeys AIO
Love love these . They’re nice and thick and these were the first diapers to fit Andrew (I think the sizing goes down to 6lbs).  They also come in all the great, cute prints that the Rumparooz diapers come in (my favorite is Dexter)  They take a little longer than the Bumgenius diapers to dry since they’re a bit thicker, but all in all, loved these!

Prefolds + Covers
This was my first time trying prefolds and covers, and I was a little hesitant at first…but I grew to really like it once I got the fold down pat (I like the jelly roll fold!).  I got both cotton and hemp prefolds…and I don’t know if it just happened to be the batch I had that didn’t work, but I could only get the Snappi to grab ahold of the cotton and not the hemp, so I pretty much rarely used the hemp prefolds.  I did feel like Andrew was a strong pee’r so he wet these pretty fast…but I did like how easy they were.

Fuzzibunz XS Pockets
I thought I’d like these a lot since I’m used to Fuzzibunz, but I grew to really get annoyed stuffing pockets of NB diapers.  It was just harder.  One thing I did like, naturally, was that these were usually the first to be ready since they could dry faster with the inserts being separate.  As for fit, I had leg gaps for awhile until he got bigger, so I didn’t reach for these much at first.

Kissaluvs Fitted diapers
I used these along with the covers obviously.  These also took awhile to fit well with leg gaps…and were an easy alternative to using prefolds.  My only complaint is that everytime I changed him, this diaper was *completely* soaked through.  Because of that, I preferred the cotton prefolds which seemed to have higher absorbency.

Kissaluvs AIO
I pretty much rarely used these and only grabbed them if there were no clean diapers.  I could never get these to fit, even at 3.5 months, as they were just huge leg gaps.  I would think these would work well with a baby with chunkier legs, but for my lil’ chicken legged baby, they didn’t fit well….plus, as an AIO, it felt pretty thin, compared to the other 2 AIOs I had.

Overall thoughts on style:

I preferred AIO over pockets or prefolds.  Just easier during this stage.
I preferred velcro over snaps.  I’m normally a snaps girl but you don’t use newborn diapers for long, so the velcro is just fine..and it’s easier at this stage to get a better fit as a result.

As for a price comparison (i.e. are newborn diapers worth it?) – I can only compare to when I used disposables with Natalie for 3 months, which cost about $275.

For this particular program, for renting for 3 months, the cost is either $85 (if using store credit) or $145 (if getting cash back) which is a heck of a deal IMHO.  So yes, renting newborn diapers *can* be cheaper than buying disposables for 3 months! (of course, we ended up buying more disposable diapers since Andrew was born than I was planning…)