Reusable nappies- how does it work?

[Mamababynumber2]

Hi everyone,

I'm considering using reusable nappies. I don't know very much about how they work and hoping soemone could give me a dummies guide to how many to buy to how to wash them and what sizes to get etc?

Also the same for reusable wipes :)

Thank you!

try thenappy lady

If you have a local nappy library, they can help www.uknappynetwork.org/find-a-library.html

Reusable wipes - I love Cheeky Wipes. You could make your own set but I like that it's all done for you!

The nappy lady has a trial pack. Large deposit which you then get back, or can be used to buy stuff. I think the actual cost is only about £20. I used this and it was great but we ended up being gifted some bum genius which fit DS from about 3 months - 1 year, could probably go longer but doesn't work with our childcare.

We do still use Cheeky wipes and they're probably the best thing I bought for baby.

I bought a sealable clothes bin - actually a recycling bin from Lakeland - and put all dirty clothes and nappies and wipes throughout the day and did a baby care (hot) wash overnight.

The pads take ages to dry so you either need a good tumble drier or enough for about 3 day's worth of nappies. We had 20 nappies and that worked quite well.

I used to use them with mine
I used to prefer shaped nappies and i preferred sized nappies rather than one size as they are already more bulky than disposables and one size can be massive on a little baby. I used to like totsbots and little lambs. Dont know if these are still available. I used to prefer ones without velcro/aplix and i used a nappy nippa on them as it gave a snugger less bulky fit.
I liked aplix wraps though. Motherease were the most reliable.
I used fleece liners when breastfeeding as the poo just went straight through disposable liners anyway and the fleece provides a sort of stay dry layer. Yiu can sluice anything vaguely solid off in the flush of a toilet and then dry pail in a bucket
Nothing needs soaking.
I would wash every day or two at 60.

Your home washing and drying facilities need to be taken into account with what nappies might suit you best, but its worth having a selection.
Prefolds and terry squares are super easy to wash and dry but prefolds arent great with explosive poo, but fine with solid or wee. Terry squares are more reliable and i enjoyed learning to fold them but they can be bulky. One youve got the hang of them theyre great, especially for round the house where bulkiness doesnt matter and theyre a cinch to wash and dry.
Cotton is my favourite. Microfibre dries quickest. Hemp is most absorbant but not as soft and takes forever to dry.

I used to love cloth nappies! So cute and so much easier to use than expected

Seriously give terries a thought - they were the last cloth nappy I tried when dc was 2 and was by far the most reliable, croissant fold was my favourite as it was a slimmer fit :) great containment, use with some funky wraps (Bumgenius Flip were my favourites) and very fast drying of course. Could lay and fold two together for night times. I honestly wish I'd discovered them from the start.

I tie dyed mine as well :D

i actually found shaped cloth nappies with a wrap consistently more poo-splosion proof than any disposable ever.

Terries are great but im not sure id have gone onto them until i had a bit more confidence. I did used to fold mine in advance though once i got the hang, to save time later. Marias boyfold was great for my boys, but i thought the traditional fold, tucked in at the legs was the best all rounder. I found the square shaped bottom quite difficult to dress though, whereas a shaped nippa-d nappy with a close fitting wrap was usually fine with sized up clothes, and even sometimes that wasnt necessary.

We use proper nappies always. On holiday last week we had to buy a pack of disposable and they were so terrible. They really didn’t hold any poo or wee and gave her awful nappy rash.

Our go to system is a bum genius flip cover

A bamboozle inner

A fleecy liner and any number of boosters we want

We also use cheeky wipes which means you can whack a wipe in the dirty nappy and wash all together.

We wash on 60 on a long wash

When DD was in nappies she was in 90% cloth from birth to potty. She was 9lb at birth so we went straight into Bumgenius Elementals and some Tots Bots all in ones from about 8 weeks old. We used a fleece liner with every nappy and before 6 months put the whole thing poo and all in the wash every other day at 40 degrees. We used a scoop of Miofresh sanitiser so hot wash not necessary. Then just line dry. We had about 20 nappies which was enough to wash on alternate days and have a few spares in the drawer. From 6 months we added a paper liner to catch solid poo and bagged and binned them before washing. Definitely not as much of a faff as you think. A lot of people use a disposable at night as they hold more wee but we added a hemp liner to a Bumgenius Elemental and it was nearly always fine. Resuable wipes are brilliant and we also use them for cleaning hands and faces after meals.

Definitely check out the Nappy Lady.

Also bear in mind it doesn't have to be all or nothing. Don't worry about starting from newborn and don't worry about using the odd pack of disposables. Every nappy you don't throw in landfill is a bonus. Currently DS is in roughly half cloth and half disposable as his nursery is iffy about cloth and we have so much more washing to do with 2 kids.

It's unbelievable how much cloth nappies hold their value. We will probably be able to sell on our stash for at least half what we paid for it when DS is potty trained.

I'm giving them a go - in this hot weather DS is usually in either a nappy and t shirt or just a nappy, and he keeps scratching the 'fluff' off the disposables and undoing them! Because I've only just started, I can't really comment on the newborn stage but they're working really well at 9kg.

I bought a few different styles to try and I'm doing the following:

Indoors, daytime

• Bummis organic cotton prefolds with a pretty wrap (I have Rumparooz and Bummis wraps and they both seem quite similar). Haven't experimented with different ways of folding them yet but the outer wrap lasts for several wee changes (you just change the prefold inner) and managed to contain a massive poosplosion yesterday! There's loads of stuff on YouTube about different ways of folding, this style is v popular in America and seems to be the cheapest way to do it.

Out of the house

• Totsbots Easyfit Star. These are all in ones and really easy to assemble, so great for on the go. A 'nappy professional' told me that Totsbots are the only brand where the Velcro is any good, so these have Velcro whereas all my others have snaps. Fab designs and quite cheap (just picked up one with a London bus print for £11 from Amazon).

Night time

• Rumparooz one size pocket. These have a double gusset and really thick adjustable soaker pad, but they are quite expensive so I've just got a couple I mainly use for night time. The designs are absolutely gorgeous on the Rumperooz but they're not as available in the UK - the best site to get them is kingdomfluff.co.uk.

Where have all my paragraphs gone! Bloody app!

We have used Terries with plastic pants for all five - DS3 still has them at night though we are about to try an alarm with him (he was 6 in January and is starting to ask whether he can sleep without nappies despite being wet every night). We have used nothing other than Terries and old fashioned waterproof baby pants, plastic pants of the type my mother used in us. That said we did make a disastrous brief foray into disposables one holiday - they leaked, we had wet beds, DS1 complained they were much less comfy than "proper nappies". In the day for the boys we used the "neat fold" from the Nappylady site as they seemed to stay up best and had enough thirsty towelling where it was needed. At night we used two nappies from about 24 months and with older children at night we bought some 67 and 75cm terries, one of which we padded with an ordinary 60cm one. (If you are lucky you will not need these but ours were generally "late" becoming dry at night.) We very rarely had wet beds and when we did it was because I - or more usually DH! - had not tucked the nappy in under the plastic pants but left a piece sticking out to leach wetness onto nightclothes and bedding. We used Drapolene when they were little but had no real problems with rashes once they became toddlers. I atill think there is something quite special about a line of Terries in the breeze and they come in smelling really fresh and clean.

I used a variety of all-in-one nappies during the day and a two part system using A Mama Knows bamboo nappies together with a wool or fleece wrap for night nappies. I preferred poppers to velcro - they didn't pick up fluff and DS2 couldn't undo them himself. Never any poos up the back because of the elastic and, once I learned about bamboo and hemp boosters, no leaks. Disposable liners are helpful for poos.

It took me a while to pluck up the courage to trust wool wraps at night, but when I did there was no going back. My absolute favourite was an upcycled cashmere wrap (sadly a one-off from Etsy or I would have had more), plus I used fleece longies.

I must admit, I got a bit carried away with cloth nappies and had a lot more than strictly needed, including a fair few pretties - custom nappies with embroidered designs on them. The nursery staff used to ooh and ahh over them. If you want to, you can get all kinds of beautiful nappies.

Thank you everyone. So i buy a nappy plus a insert plus a liner? Do you have to buy the inserts separately?

what nappies are you looking at when you say inserts?

The way I did it was nappy+ liner(fleece) and then a wrap on top. I never bothered with pocket nappies or all in ones, as they sound great, but they mean you have to change the whole thing every time, rather than just the nappy. If you keep it all seperate, you can get away with only having 2 or 3 wraps as they can be reused again and again, while just changing the nappy inside.

As for plastic pants and terry squares, thats definitely the cheapest way to do it, but i found plastic pants quite sweaty and non-breathable. Fine for spares though. If you can afford a couple of nice wraps, i think its worth it

I really found cloth nappies great. We used a variety of different ones but the easiest ones I found were ‘the pop in’ ones. Some councils have a scheme and we were sent a free one. You’ll find lots of people but a huge set and then never use them or only try one and then they sell them on eBay - I had some great bargains on their.
My DH was brilliant and everything that was in the nappy bucket at the end of the day 9/10 he was the one to empty it (and de-poo it) and wash it. They wash brilliantly in the washing machine and most dry really quick too. I used them as soon as my tiny babies were big enough... around 2 months until about 18 months as we then used pull ups until potty trained at 2. Others may disagree but I think it helped them be more aware of their movements and made potty training them easier.
Plus you can get some ridiculously cute nappy covers. Look at the Frugi ones.
I can highly recommend cloth nappies (and I’m dead lazy!)

Excuse the typos and the their instead of there!!!! I’m old now and brain is addled.

You can buy cloth nappies that have everything in there already so all the inserts are included - Bumgenius were our go-to for childcare as you send them in all ready to use, the nursery staff just put them on like a disposable it just has velcro instead of paper tabs. (Although they did have a new member of staff keep the poo in there for us a few times - all neatly folded up in loo roll. Quite what she thought we wanted that for I don't know...!)

If I had to do it all again I would probably just get a load of bamboo towelling terry squares and some wraps (small and large to cover all ages) for home/nights and some bumgenius for childcare or trips out.

On a lazy note, I found that if you get enough nappies and a big enough bin with tight fitting lid, you can get away with only washing every 3 days too. I had 2 in cloth for a while so when I went down to 1 I had loads of nappies! 4 days is too long though - the smell takes your eyebrows off when you open the lid!!

glossary sorry about the horrible typeface.

I used disposable liners from Boots when mine were tiny because newborn poos obviously won’t tip down the loo so I disposed of the liners in the bin (outside obvs...) I switched to reusable liners from eBay when they started weaning and poo became solid. I used wet wipes at first and again, switched to reusable wipes from eBay when they began weaning.

I like Tots Bots nappies best because it’s all there. If you have a heavy wetter you can stuff them with boosters. They go in the machine with non bio powder and no softener and tots bots dry pretty much straight away.

I have about 15 nappies and wash every other day.

OP, if you buy all-in-one nappies, they will usually come with inserts. Liners are sold separately.

I cloth bum during the day, I use Milovia pockets, tots bots easyfit AIO, close popin, x1 bumgenius elemental. I use fleece liners, with breastmilk poo it’s water soluble so just goes in the washer, once weaning shakenit off down the toilet, let it run in the flush water. I have about 16 nappies and wash every 3 days. Don’t have an issue with clothes fitting really, although I do use a lot of scandi clothes made for cloth nappies. Wash with non bio powder in the drawer and because I am in a hard water area I use violets conditioner. I use wet bags instead of buckets and chuck it all in the washing machine together. I use cheeky wipes which are great, have used almost from day dot and for both babies.
The nappy lady is good. Fill in her questionnaire and will give you an idea what you will need. I would recommend not buying all the same nappies in bulk as they fit different babies in different ways. Babipur is also a great site.
Lots of YouTube videos on how to fit them and differences between them.

Good luck. I’ve never looked back

I dont recommend all in ones at all, although can see theyre handy for a quick change, but theres only one line of defence against poo too. With a seperate shaped nappy and wrap, they are bombproof against legsplosions

I love my aio nappies. Never had a poo leak at all 🤷🏼‍♀️ And my pockets. I tried little lambs with a wrap and had leaks.. horses for courses