Night Nappies: Fleece or PUL wraps?

[HermyaLovesLysander]

Hi,

I'm about to start experimenting with night nappies. I'm going to start off with a bamboozle stretchy and see how that holds up, would it be better with a fleece wrap or a PUL wrap?

Thanks

Depends on how old your baby is, under 6mths id recommend PUL as baby doesnt move around as much and you will get leaks. Over 6mths i still prefer PUL but fleece does work well if baby moves around a lot and you get a good wrap.

Wool - once we tried it we never looked back; keeps baby cool, which helps with avoiding rashes, and allows moisture to evaporate so nappies don't get so soggy. We use it day and night most of the time now.

You can get cheapish 2nd hand wool shorties/soakers here if you want to experiment without spending too much. Loads of good info on that site re wool care including lanolising.

I second the wool suggestion, took me ages to try it but haven't looked back since. With wool or fleece covers, make sure you boost the nappy very well as a very wet nappy will make the cover less reliable.

If you really don't fancy trying wool then I'd go for fleece, much nicer on baby's legs and bum overnight

Regarding the wool suggestions, I've seen the longies and shorties on CNT. Where would I start with experimenting. My DS wears a grobag at night and a sleepsuit, what do they wear if they wear wool?

Could someone give me a bit of an idiots guide to it?

CNT is a great place for advice about wool, that's where I got all my info about wool from when I started using it!

We use wool longies so DS wears a pyjama top, nappy + wool longies on the bottom then a grobag over the top. If using a wool wrap then you could put a sleepsuit over the top as normal although I guess you may need a bigger size if you aren't using cloth at night at the moment.

HTH
Z x

How old is your DS? We started using wool at about 3 months, and our DD used to wear a vest on her top half, but with poppers undone, with a nappy and shorties on her bottom half. She used to start the night in a grobag, and end up co-sleeping, so that was plenty warm enough The vest as opposed to t-shirt made sure she didn't get an exposed midriff (as my gran would have said)!

If you feel the need you could get some extra big sleepsuits or vests and do them up over a wool soaker (you want to avoid constant cotton-on-wool compression, otherwise the moisture could 'press' though and make the cotton damp, hence the extra large sizes. You could also go for something like this which would be more slimline under clothing, but as I say we were fine with vests & shorties/soaker.

Other than that, here's my brief guide:

Buy some wool (shorties or soaker best for night, I think) - make sure you measure your baby OVER the nappy to get rise (top-centre-back of nappy right around between legs to top-centre-front of nappy), waist and hip measurements. Wool is better loose than tight.

Take delivery of wool, and with luck your seller will have washed (certainly! ) and lanolised the item before sending.

Dress baby for bed in WELL-BOOSTED NAPPY - You may have to experiment to find out what you can get away with at night-time; it'll depend on how much your baby wees

See how you go

If you need to wash/lanolise your wool it's not hard, you just need a bucket, wool wash and a pot of lanolin / spray. Not expensive. Follow instructions on product and refer to CNT / the cloth nappy contingent on MN if you need help.

Enjoy

Oh, just to make clear (I got confused at this) these are the basic types of wool:

Longies = like trousers
Shorties = like... shorts
Soaker = like knickers
Wrap = just like a pul or fleece wrap; slim with aplix or poppers, but rarely hand knitted and usually more expensive.
Skirtie = usually a soaker with a flirty skirty bit knitted on.

All but the 'wrap' type tend to have a drawstring knitted cord to tighten around the waist - this is particularly good for preventing unwanted fiddling resulting in unfortunate nocturnal nappy-removal escapades