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Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Old-School Cloth Diapers


Happy in a clean diaper 
(which he's still wearing as I type this)


Old-school prefold diapers intimidated me so much when I first started cloth diapering. Pocket diapers are a lot more straightforward to put on...and I had a wriggly child. But with the new baby, I was determined to try prefolds. After diapering a bucking bronco of a toddler, an infant doesn't seem nearly as hard.



Prefolds are an inexpensive way to cloth diaper. You can customize your fold to your child. And best of all, the diapers can be used for all sorts of things...including a great burp cloth. (Like this one, which may be yellowed with dried spit up...but was right by my computer so I snapped a quick pic.)

The prefolds I use are NOT the thin Gerber ones you might find at a big box store. Those make so-so burp cloths, but are not good cloth diapers. Most of my prefolds came from a Little Lions coop, but there are many places you can buy good, thick Chinese prefolds like mine.


The diapers haven't changed much, but fastening has. Some people still use pins, but many parents use a Snappi. It's a T-shaped stretchy plastic fastener with hooks on the ends. My diaper folding technique isn't the best, but the covers I use have contained things when the diapers wasn't snug enough on the legs. 

The covers I use are made of PUL, a waterproof fabric. You can also use wool or some fleece as a cover. I'm loving PUL covers with an extra leg gusset to contain poopsplosions and hook and loop fasteners for easy adjusting of size. I really like my Thirsties covers and Bummis Super Brite covers for the newborn stage. 

Gator is wearing a small Bummis Super Brite in the photo above, with an infant prefold underneath. I use this cover with fitted diapers as well, and it fits differently over those. Both fitteds and prefolds require a cover to be waterproof. And with my rudimentary prefold-folding skills, a good cover is a real clothing saver!

1 comment:

ecoGorgeous said...

Looks like you're doing a pretty great job to me! Prefolds are what we use with Zman, and the first few days, were very messy! I too love love love the snappi.