Cloth diapering is a great eco-friendly and potentially budget-saving tactic many parents are embracing, but what about cloth diapering newborns? Are there more pros or cons to using cloth diapers on newborns?
Everyone says not to cloth diaper newborns.
Now if you’re a super rebellious person, that might be reason enough for ya. 
But if you would like to do the right thing and make life easier on yourself, you might want some better reasons.
Cloth Diapering Newborns – My Experience
With baby number one, I never really considered cloth diapers, or at least I don’t remember doing it. At that phase of our lives, budget was the major concern, so the cheapest diapers that didn’t leak much were our choice. If I did look into cloth, I probably saw the price tag for one cover (they can range from about $12-30) and gave up the quest.
With number two, I was getting more seriously into living an eco-friendly life, but by the time I was wishing I had cloth diapers, she was about 8 months old. I worried that she might potty train by 20 months or so since I always heard that girls tend to train earlier than boys, and my boy had trained completely by 27 months.
I didn’t want to invest in cloth diapers for just one year and feel like I hadn’t ended up saving money as well as the earth (in case we didn’t have any more), so I looked into it and gave up.
Obviously we had a few more, so I wish I had jumped in and learned cloth now, looking back! But you know what? Even if number two had been our last, I would have given myself advice to go for it anyway. Even for 12 months, I think a family would spend less on cloth than on disposables, and you’d probably also be able to resell your diapers if you had no more children.
When number three came along, I really wanted to do cloth diapers, no matter what! But we were living with my in-laws (between houses) at the time of his birth, so I had to wait until I had my own washing machine, I thought. He was 5 months old when we finally jumped in, followed these great rookie tips for cloth diapers, and got started!
So I’ve only cloth diapered one newborn, but it was actually a pleasant experience (and I haven’t said that about all the stages we’ve been through with cloth).
Here’s why:
1. It’s a good time to get used to it.
In my opinion, cloth diapers are harder to switch to once you’re used to the convenience of disposables.
So I think that if you want to try cloth, you should just get started right away – after the meconium is out though. It’s worth filling the landfill so you don’t have to figure out how to get that black, sticky mess off cloth!!! EDIT: I just assumed meconium would be awful because it’s hard to wipe off baby’s bum, but readers tell me it’s no big deal, both in the wiping and the washing. Great news!
My cousins, who started cloth right away, think it’s totally no big deal. My husband thinks it’s a huge pain, but he had two babies and a few months more of ‘sposies, so he got spoiled.
He also never saw the money spent on disposables…
2. Newborn disposable diapers are expensive!
Price per diaper is so high for those teeny tiny newborn and size one diapers! They don’t come in megapacks to save money in bulk, and newborns go through sooooo many (I’d guess 12 per day), so the real cost is even higher if you track per day expenses.
Besides that, even disposables tend to have a ton of leaks in the first month, and it seems like you’re constantly changing the baby’s clothes, so why not get used to cloth and start troubleshooting leaks from the get-go?
Some would say that cloth diapers are going to leak more – urine – on newborns because they won’t fit as snugly, FYI. Many also say that cloth diapers have less poopy blowouts because they tend to have elastic around the back and legs that is more snug than disposables.
I would say that’s totally true, and it only really applies to that first 6-8 months when baby’s poop is super watery and explosive.
3. Exclusively breastfed poop doesn’t need rinsing out.
Why waste a month or two of that lovely phase? Since we started with cloth at about 5 months with baby number 3, I didn’t have long before I had to start scraping solids into the toilet.
Let’s just say that’s not the most fun part of cloth diapering.
It’s the poops that result in my husband saying things like, “There’s a diaper for you on the bathroom counter.”
He boycotts scraping. Phooey.
So just like point number two, I’d say the first 6 months of a baby’s life have some unique benefits that make cloth diapering easier, and you might as well maximize the easy time. (Note: I don’t really know if this applies to formula-fed infants. Sorry!)
4. You’re home more often.
Being home means doing diaper laundry is much less of a hassle.
We finally gave up cloth with number three in the late summer when we were traveling a lot, and we just never went back. Life felt so busy in September, we loved being out of the house during the warm days, the older kids had school functions, ETC.
I felt lucky to have a winter baby this time, only because it gave me a good excuse to hole up with the newborn and not go as many places. That makes cloth diaper laundry sound a lot more attractive than going shopping (although of course you can order online, but that’s a whole new layer in the “eco-friendly” issue IMO…)
As long as I don’t feel behind, I don’t mind the laundry one bit – and because I like to hang my covers and add another load of regular clothes to the inserts in the dryer, cloth diaper laundry ensures that I keep up on the rest of the family’s laundry much better, too. (Here’s my routine for doing cloth diaper laundry.)
5. (Maybe) Baby will love diaper changes.
I only have a data set of n=4 kids, but this little Gabriel, who was the only one to use cloth diapers right from the beginning, is the first baby to be happier on the changing table than otherwise. Most of them have screamed bloody murder, especially in the newborn phase, when it was diaper change time.
This one?
He loves getting changed.
This could totally be personality, but because cloth lets the baby feel when he’s wet, I felt like a few things happened in the newborn phase:
a) Gabe was likely to cry or fuss when he needed a change. I don’t remember the other kids ever caring about wet diapers one bit!
b) We were more tuned in to his needs. When baby obviously feels better after a diaper change, Mom and Dad are definitely more likely to try changing a diaper when baby fusses.
The Downside of Cloth Diapers on Newborns
If you’re going to invest in cloth diapers and spend the money, you want to maximize your investment, so I’d say to use them as many months as possible.
The flip side of the money question is that many cloth diapers don’t size down far enough to fit newborns, so you’d have to buy a handful of covers just for newborn size. That can be a big investment with a little return, or so it would seem.
My thoughts:
- Since newborn diapers are so expensive, you still might break even. (And then the other benefits make you come out ahead overall.)
- If they’re not worn very long, you are more likely to be able to re-sell them and recoup your money (and/or use on subsequent children). As much as I’d love to say that you can resell cloth diapers and use them for multiple children, not all brands last that long before they simply wear out. (I’m sharing what we found about that next week – the brands that stretched out, leaked through, or otherwise died after one kid, plus the one brand I invested more in with baby four – the one brand that also resizes down perfectly to fit newborns!!!!)
- You can always buy diapers that will actually size down, plus all the way up to age two. Here is my TOP recommendation and updates on all the others.
More Cloth Diapering Information:
- MASSIVE cloth diaper review – we actually tried over two dozen brands all at the same time!
- My best tips: getting started, laundry, finding a routine
- 7 Tips for the Cloth Diapering Newbie
- Do you Need Wet Bags to Cloth Diaper?
- Cloth Diaper Absorbency and Speed
- How to Make Cloth Wipes
- 5 Cloth Diaper Problems that Didn’t Make me Give Up
- The Final Decision: What do I Really Recommend?
- The Longevity Reports: What cloth diaper did I buy with baby two? BEST cloth diaper, newborn to toddler!
Buy Softbums here:
- Softbums main site ($2.95-8.95 pods) and their money-saving packages
- Sweet Bottoms Baby ($2.95-15.95 for the various pods)
- Squishy Tushy ($4.25 Bamboo Mini Pod, $8.95 Large Bamboo Pod)
- Amazon (Not seeing single inserts on Amazon)
Do you want to give the Vitamin K shot or not?
More from KS on raising natural babies…
I love cloth diapers. And my little one is so happy since we switched. I had intended to cloth diaper from newborn, but as a new mom, all those diapers changes and laundry on top of sleep deprivation and getting to know this tiny human alll felt so overwhelming. I did not have the experience of breast milk poo being easy to launder and after several loads of not clean diapers I gave up. We returned to cloth when my daughter was 14 months old because the disposables were cutting into her legs and giving her a rash on her belly. My only regret is we didn’t switch sooner. The next babe will be in cloth for sure. I have felt guilty at times putting all those chemicals from disposables against my daughter’s sensitive skin. Thanks for your reviews!
You hit the nail right in the head regarding breastfed poop. One of major things I look forward to. I personally think doing cloth diaper isn’t worth it if you plan to have one child. If you do plan to have more, cloth diapers triumph in costs. Adding an additional size to your diaper will end up costing more per diaper. I did the math and so far I’m at 16 cents per diaper when using cloth diapers. Even checkhowmuch can’t find the many diapers for that price – http://checkhowmuch.com/baby-diaper.php
It ultimately depends on your lifestyle and what you’re comfortable with. Some people think it’s worth paying a few more cents for disposable. Some people think it’s worth adding the extra comfort on their babies tushy while having a extra work of washing it is worth it. I say give it a shot. At least you’ll know what works best for you.
With my five, I have had on and off relationships with cloth, but I DEFINITELY advocate using it for newborns. When I was pregnant with my second son to be born, I invested in some very expensive all-in-ones from the Born-To-Love catalog (it was made of paper!) in Canada. Though they were expensive, I used them with all four of the children to be born after that.
After trying all kinds of diapers, including making my own, because when I’m pregnant, I get a little crazy in the hippie mama crunchy DIY department, I was really impressed by a friend’s system. A newbie to cloth diapering, she just used regular old pre-folds, Snappis, and some PUL pants. I still prefer wool or fleece covers, but it was the prefolds and Snappis that gave me that “I coulda had a V8” moment. She simply rolled the vertical edges of the prefolds in, toward the baby’s midline, which performed the function of holding in the blow-outs, much like fitteds! Then, she used a Snappi to hold them in place. She was happy.
If I ever have more babies, I will ask for cloth diapers for shower presents, including some newborn pre-folds, which later could be used as inserts, and some covers.
Also, now that all of mine are out of diapers, it’s my old prefolds that are still in good enough condition to be excellent rags.
Oh, sorry, I forgot the main reason it’s good to use cloth diapers: cloth wipes! After years of trial and error, I discovered that the best way to clean up the baby’s bottom is to, as I am carrying the baby to the changing table, grab some cloth wipes, wet them with the faucet, and give one or two a pass over some very lovely, gentle, baby friendly, organic, unscented soap. Then, wipe the baby’s bottom with the soapy wipe, which if you made it yourself, or bought from some nice WAHM who made it just the right size, is sufficient to clean the whole poopy mess with just one wipe! Maybe, maybe, a whole ‘nother one will be necessary. Then, use a couple of nice wet, with plain water ones to rinse off the residual soap.
Out and about, I discovered the squirt of oil (olive or Weleda calendula) trick, although the bar of soap and bottle of water trick works, too.
Lastly, you can fill a Thermos with hottish water, so you don’t have to stand there with the water running a long time, to get it hot. Just wave the hot wipe in the air a bit, to let enough water evaporate to sit will cool off sufficiently to be just warm. I have also microwaved wet cloth wipes, to warm them up. Definitely, wave them in the air and touch them all over thoroughly, to make sure there are no hot spots.
All you young mothers are so fortunate to have so many choices!
I wonder how you fasten cloth diapers nowdays? I suppose diaper pins are a thing of the past.
Cloth diapers were the only choice available for me and my mothers/ grandmothers. Disposables hit the market after my kids were trained.
I had about 5 dozen Curity brand birdseye diapers that lasted through 3 babies. I still have some “survivors” that I use for dust cloths. Cloth diapers must have been of a higher quality 50 yrs ago. If I had it to do over, I would choose cloth because of the environment, cost, and I agree about babies learning the feel of “wet” and potty training.
Dreft soap was the best for laundering because it prevented the bacterial build up causing diaper rash. According to my grandmother, if the diapers emitted an ammonia smell as soon as they got peed in, the only thing to do was boil them to steriilze. I never had to try that.
Probably the washer got them really clean and the dryer killed bacteria. I really enjoyed this post, thank you, Katy
I don’t envy the pins! I would hurt baby and myself so often! Now they have either snaps or Velcro. It’s super easy. 🙂 Katie
I agree completely! Both my kids were cloth-diapered from birth (except during their jaundice treatment, when the hospital needed to weigh their diapers so they had to use the hospital-provided disposables) and it was great. The ONLY blowouts either of them ever had were from disposables.
About the laundry: I work full-time outside the home, yet I’m the parent who washes the diapers. The key is sticking to a 4-day laundry plan which requires a relatively large stash of diapers.
I took your advice on the Bumkins wet/drybags and they’re great! So much easier than the jar full of grocery bags I was using. Hahaha!
I use Flip diaper covers with snaps, cotton prefolds, and a Snappi as the babe starts to get around, and Flip cotton inserts, as well as a handful of Flip pocket diapers with microfiber inserts, I prefer the cotton, less leaks and less smell.
Two things I love about using cloth: I never have that “have to get to the store” feeling as long as the laundry is done (we use disposables at night but at one per night, it’s hard to run out and not know it), and it seems luxurious to put nice soft cloth next to our baby’s skin and snap a nice bright cheery cover over it.
This third child of ours really enjoys being in a dry diaper, so if he’s grouchy and not tired or hungry, a diaper change is often an instant fix.
I’d like to know what sort of laundry detergent/soap/homemade concoction that you folks all use. Did you start out with what you use currently for laundering diapers, or did you have to switch it up to find the best thing for your situation?
Parsley,
I know diaper laundry is SUPER dependent on what kind of water you have, but right now I’m happy with Molly’s Suds for cloth diapers (they’re a sponsor, but I bought it myself – % off code in the sidebar!) and I’ve also used Rockin’ Green. I wouldn’t mess around with homemade for diapers b/c I wrecked some covers using an Etsy-bought “homemade” detergent with an ingredient that didn’t play nicely with PUL!! Very sad.
🙂 Katie
We use soap nuts and love them. Very economical and they work.
What exactly are soap nuts? Are they actually a nut? Because I have a couple of people here with tree nut allergies.
Here is where I buy them. I have been very happy with them. I just use plain old soap nuts, not any of the fancy liquids. I don’t know if they are considered an actual “nut”. http://www.naturoli.com/soapnuts/
Soap nuts are actually berries, Parsley
We use them too for regular laundry, although not for cloth diapers (for no reason other than that I didn’t want to experiment at that time when I got started). 🙂 Katie
Thank you, ladies! I’m intrigued by the soap nuts. And I’ve just asked Molly Suds if they would send me a sample to try on the diapers. On the soap nuts: how long do they last? How often do you purchase them? Can you tell me more about them?
Parsley,
I think they last a really, really long time. I’ve used some that I’m sure I had for 2-3 years. So I purchase them when they’re on sale and I’m low!
Here are some articles about them:
http://www.kitchenstewardship.com/2009/09/30/my-favorite-non-toxic-laundry-option-soap-nuts-review/
http://www.kitchenstewardship.com/2012/03/13/how-to-tell-if-laundry-soap-nuts-still-have-cleaning-power/
Enjoy!
🙂 Katie
I love that your totally on the cloth diapering band wagon 🙂 I think it’s because I’m naturally thrifty, but we ended up doing cloth diapers with both our sons from birth. With my second, I was busier, so I did some newborn disposables as well, but I found the cloth worked so much better with the runny breastmilk poop(and believe me, my second son was a champion pooper as a newborn… Save it all up and then, watch out!!!!), that we ended up doing mostly cloth. Cloth actually worked better at night too.
Now, at almost two years of age, we do cloth during the day, or underwear, and a disposable at night. I found when he got older, that the cloth diapers I had simply did not keep him dry enough at night, and I’m not a big fan of changing diapers at night unless I have to 🙂 We did do nighttime cloth until he was about 18-20 months.
On the potty training subject, now that I’m on my second boy, I realize that it may not be so much the diapering situation, though I’m sure cloth helps. I have found that simply exposing my boys early to the toilet,(like 7-8 months) using a little toddler toilet seat, and making it a positive experience, has been very helpful. My first son potty trained right at 2, and nighttime trained at 3. my second is 23 months, and he’s well on his way to potty training, if taken frequently. I am actually not sure whether this is due to the diapering situation or to the fact that we encouraged early toilet training. Maybe both. I know it doesn’t run in the genes, since my husband and all of his large family potty trained quite late 🙂
I have four kiddos and have only cloth diapered. I wanted to chime in also on the idea that meconium is hard to clean out…I had always heard that as well, but it’s not true. It washes right out- no special treatment needed. As for diapers lasting for multiple children, I have found the best luck with prefolds and covers with snaps. Pocket diapers in various brands just don’t last or I’ve had to sew new fold over elastic on them to keep them in business. Covers with velcro also don’t stand up to lots of use. But prefolds and covers with snaps just keep going. Cloth diapering is truly so easy and I would guess we’ve saved thousands of dollars. I will confess too that I just wash them mixed in with the rest of our clothes (solid poop rinsed out of course!), so it’s not even extra loads of laundry. Thanks for spreading the message!
Interesting! I am wondering whether you have a really good, efficient system in place for getting laundry done in general, and whether that system still ran while you were recovering from childbirth without too much assistance from you. 🙂 My husband is very helpful but no matter what we seemed to get behind on regular laundry when a new baby is in the house. I would hate to be worried about whether or not there was going to be enough clean diapers at any given point for baby in the first few weeks.
Sarah,
Nope, no system here! Just “uh oh, there’s a lot of laundry there…better do some!”
The thing with diapers is that when you notice you’re down to 2-3 covers, you do laundry. And if you run out, you have some disposables there, no problem, and then you finish the laundry because putting that disposable on reminded you to switch it over or whatever. It’s a low-stress thing for me (which is amazing b/c I’m a high-stress person!) 🙂 Katie
Thanks for your reply, Katie! How many diaper covers do you recommend having for newborns and for bigger babies? Perhaps part of my problem and frustration with the laundry issue is that we did run out of clean covers too soon. Maybe I was trying to be a little too thrifty with too few covers, especially at times when I had both a baby and toddler still in diapers.
Sarah,
I think for newborn we had about 6-8 covers and a ton of inserts (borrowed). The trick is that if it’s not poopy, we hang the cover and reuse about 3x! We lucked out with this one who only pooped every few days (a little freaky, but nice for laundry). I think a lot of people recommend 12 covers in general, but for newborn I had less – although if you buy Softbums they size down and up so nicely! 🙂 katie
It helps a lot if your laundry is only truly dirty items. Kids can wear clothes for days if there is no food spilled on them or actual dirt from outside. Same for adults, as long as the armpits don’t stink. Underwear, of course, gets changed every day. We use towels for more than one shower and pajamas once a week, sheets every so often (maybe once a month).
I never heard not to cloth diaper a newborn. I am currently diapering my 4th newborn! What I can’t do is (excuse me) undigested foods (pea hulls, corn, etc.) in my washing machine! I quit at that stage. I wish I could hear some advice on that one!
Christi,
I keep a 50c garage sale spatula next to my toilet (with the toilet brush) and scrape everything once they’re eating solid foods – I never found corn in my washing machine, so I must have been thorough enough on the scrape? Hope that helps! 🙂 katie
Once my kids are eating finger foods, and their diapers show it (ew), I do the “dunk and swish” with poopy diapers in the toilet. It’s gross, but it keeps the solids out of the washing machine. Some people also get special sprayers (basically a mini shower head that attaches to the toilet) to spray off the poop so you don’t have to touch anything.
Love my diaper sprayer! It attaches to the water supply for the toilet (clean water) and makes getting the nasty poop off easy with no touching. even my husband will use it and not leave the icky diapers on the counter. I think my sprayer cost about $40 and took 5 minutes to install. Worth every cent and I plan to keep it even when the diaper years are over. I’ve found it really useful for cleaning the toilet from big people messes. 🙂
My boys are now 22 and 24, but I had 3 under 2 so we went with a diaper service. They had rectangular diapers with 14 layers of cotton in the middle third lengthwise, and 7 on the sides. For a newborn, you would just fold the sides over the middle, all the way, and put on a “Ducky” cover that was waterproof with adjustable velcro. My boys were so skinny that the flaps overlapped. But no leaks like with disposables. They also had disposable liners (thinner than wipes) that were flushable! So you just had to shake the diaper over the bowl and flush, throw the dirty in the bag in the lidded hamper they provided. Twice a week, they would deliver me fresh diapers (guaranteed PH levels!) in the bags that went into the hamper. There was a special spot in the lid of the hamper to put in a deodorizing puck….so not much smell at all. My boys NEVER had diaper rash and were easy to change. Sometimes it was three of them side by side in an assembly line on the floor so no one would fall off something. I bought some for rags (50 cents ea) when they went out of business and I STILL HAVE THEM! In hindsight, I should have gotten a loan and bought their inventory. I have seen the new all-in-one cloth diapers and I think the setup I had was much better. The squares dry like towels and the Duckies are pretty much like old fashioned rubber pants, but cuter. And, YES, my boys pretty much toilet trained themselves as soon as they were nighttime dry (enough retention to realize they have to go). I think the continual reminder of wet\poop on their skin day in day out makes all the difference in the world: it allows the brain to register the cause & effect from birth.
Ttwo more babies for your data set… Both were cloth diapered from birth (not 100% on the 2nd though since we were more mobile because of the 2 year old, maybe 85%?) My son (firstborn) did not care one bit if he was wet and wasn’t fully potty trained until he was almost 3. My daughter was completely potty trained before she was 2. So the earlier potty training thing didn’t hold true for us. But, most of the diapers were in good shape even after 2 babies and cloth diapering got more popular (kids born in 2003 and 2005) so I was able to sell them and spend essentially zero on them in the end!
Nice! You must have had a good brand, Jen, because I feel like lots of mine are worn out or wearing out (elastic, aplix, etc) after just one kid!
🙂 Katie
I’ve used cloth diapers for all 4 of my kids. By far, the biggest “con” for me as I considered cloth diapering at the beginning was the whole diaper pail nastiness. Total turn-off. So I went the no-diaper-pail route and instead rinsed (thoroughly) each diaper as I changed it. Baby would get a clean one on his/her bum and I would take the dirty one (poop, pee, or both) and do a “pre-wash”. After I rinsed it well in water I used a white bar of laundry soap (sometimes I even just used Ivory) and rubbed it on the soiled/discolored area. Then I wrung out the diaper well (leaving the bar soap on there) and put it in my little diaper “tub” (a rectangular Rubbermaid container). No smell! No nastiness when it came time to wash diapers! And I had nice white, stain-free diapers, which is great if you are hoping to sell your used diapers when you are finished with them. It only took a few minutes added onto each diaper change and it was SO worth it.
Lindsay,
I just use the dry pail system, so diapers just get tossed in and forgotten until I dump the whole thing in the washer. Easy! No rubbing, soap, touching, or nastiness. But I’m glad it worked for you!
🙂 Katie
We have used cloth for 4 of our six children. Our newborn is 7 weeks old and has never worn a paper diaper. I used some old, old diapers for the meconium stage, but was pleasantly surprised that they washed out and didn’t stain just as well as the later breastfed poop. We use Thirsties covers and a Snappie (or pins) to keep the diaper (flatfold) itself snug around his legs. We have had 3 leaks in the past 7 weeks. I put some xinc oxide based diaper cream on his bottom every night or else his skin will be red after sitting in the wet diaper all night, but otherwise, no rash problems. I LOVE cloth diapers!
That is awesome, Melissa! 🙂 Katie
We’re on our third little cloth diaper wearer. For the newborn stage, infant-sized prefolds or bamboo-blend flats with Thirsties covers have worked well. After that, we’ve found pad-folded bamboo flats (the same ones!) in a “tuckable” cover (like Nicki’s Diapers, Blueberry Capri or Wolbybug) is a quick, easy and effective combination (pretty economical, too).
Diapering a newborn really isn’t that difficult, and the savings is tremendous. Plus, the better blow-out coverage — who can’t appreciate that? It’s even possible to rent a set of newborn dipes for folks who might not be sure about cloth diapering. 🙂
Renting is a great idea to test it out, Marguerite, thanks! 🙂 Katie
I’ve diapered 3 kids, mostly in cloth the whole time. I had really big newborns (all have been 9+ lbs), but the “one-size-fits-all” diapers STILL didn’t fit right for a few weeks. Newborns just have such skinny legs!
That said, with #2, I discovered “two-sizes-fit-all” diapers and covers (I am a fan of Thirsties Duo, but there are others). The smaller size fits from 5-6 lbs all the way up to 16-18 lbs. For my kids, this means that they fit until about 4-6 months, at which point we’ve already begun the transition to “one-size” diapers.
Because we’ve always used cloth diapers, the main learning curve was right at the beginning with #1, where we were trying to figure out what it meant to take care of a little baby anyway. Disposable diapers have their own learning curve (we use them at night to help our babies sleep longer).
I will say – if you get a cloth diapering system that works for you, and you don’t go overboard on buying cute diapers, you can save a TON of money. Between my first 2 kids, we only spent about $1000 on diapers. Over a period of 4 years. If we had gone solely disposable, we probably would have spent that $1000 in the first YEAR! And even though very few of our diapers were still in good condition for #3, I’ve only spent about $200 on his diapers – and other than $10 of disposables a month for nighttime, that’s all I’m likely to spend all the way until potty training. 🙂
Love it, Anitra! We often resort to disposables at night too, sometimes cloth just can’t cut it for that amount of time.
🙂 Katie
Why wait for the meconium to pass? The worst blow out we ever had was when my first baby was a day old, in my husband’s arms at the doctor’s office. Meconium everywhere, thanks Huggies! In cloth with subsequent babies, it never escaped, and it washes out more easily than the regular EBF poo. It’s a total myth that meconium is bad for cloth. Now you have a reason to have another baby, just to test out my experience. 😉
LOL, awesome on two accounts Laura – I just assumed it would be awful because it’s so hard to wipe off the baby’s bum! 🙂 Katie PS – I’ll edit the post for all the new mamas out there.
Just a tip for the future… My midwives taught me with my 4th to spread some olive oil on baby’s bum when putting on their first diaper, then reapplying at every change till the meconium stage had passed. We had a peri bottle with olive oil to just squirt on. It is amazing! Everything slides right off, and any oil on the diapers or clothing just washes out.
Put olive oil on baby’s bum right after birth and every diaper change and meconium is very easy to clean off!
Hi, I’ve raised nine children and only the first had cloth diapers. It was a nightmare, including skin rash and multiple multiple changes. I read that washing these cloth diapers were as bad for the environment as using disposables, so when I got the chance, I switched and never regretted…
Karien, there are so many wonderful options for cloth diapering now, and new information about it, you might change your mind if you tried it nowadays! My first was 17 years ago and it is so much easier and better now – I am cloth diapering a newborn now and loving it. With multiple poops a day, I would have had to change disposable just as often.
Karien,
I am guessing cloth diapers (the options) have changed a ton since your first few, and the soap used can make a huge difference in rash problems. Also I am guessing that the “bad for environment” with the washing might be the cloth diaper services, where they use a lot of bleach and have to deliver?
🙂 Katie
I guess you’re right, but I don’t have diaper children anymore… I have been looking into this stuff, but the cloth diapers were way too expensive, and all the extra work, I just couldn’t handle the thought of this.