Diapering a Newborn

[Vvivo]

What did you do about diapering your newborn?

I'm pretty sure that I do not want to cloth diaper when my newborn has meconium. I've seen pictures and it's definitely not pretty. But how long does meconium poop last? How many disposable diapers will I need for this part?

And what about the umbilical cord part? Can you successfully cloth diaper without touching the cord stump? I was planning on doing prefolds and XS Thirsties covers. Would that work? I read that Kissaluvs has fitteds with a space for the cord, but I don't want to buy that just for a week or two. Should I just use disposables until the cord falls off?

[srs]

We diapered with newborn sized prefolds and a small Thirsties Duo cover or a Lite Wrap newborn cover from day one with no problems with meconium or the cord. Baby was 7lb 10oz at birth and the newborn prefolds fit for about the first month. We only had a dozen newborn size and 2 dozen infant size, and the newborn size did work much better for that first month. Infant size was huge.

[cristeen]

I had NB fitteds. He still fits into some of them and he's 5 mos.

My little guy didn't have meconium after he was born, he passed it all during birth.

[Ola_]

The experience with meconium varies. Some people find that it stains, others not at all. The sun is great for bleaching out stains also - you just put out a wet diaper in the sun and after a couple of hours the stain will likely be gone. Plus they're diapers, they will likely get some stains anyway.

Thirsties are very popular covers. Have you looked into their Duo covers? They only have two sizes and are adjustable. The XS covers tend to be a little big on newborns (depends on the size your babe will be, of course) but the size 1 will fit smaller when snapped down and then will go bigger also. Just another option in case you weren't confused enough.

[Cersha]

with my DS we used prefolds and covers (proraps) until the cord fell off, then moved on to pockets. Never had a probelm with the cord stump or the meconium. I'm proud to say that my DS has NEVER had anything but cloth on his booty.

[kirstenb]

DS2 wore NB prefolds and Kissaluvs 0 for the first few days after he was born, but we did have some problems with them irritating the cord stump, so we switched to disposibles for the first week or so until it was healed. We didn't have any problems with meconium though. The NB prefolds fitted for the first 8 weeks, and now we use them as a doubler in the infant prefolds. He is just starting to outgrow the Kissaluvs 0 at 4 months.

[Michigan Mama]

I took cloth to the hospital (left them in the car!) but ended up using sposies because I just didn't want to have to carry more stuff.

After that we primarily used nb prefolds and we loved them with a Thirsties cover. The covers were a smidge big at first (baby was 7lb11oz) and rubbed the cord a little if we weren't careful, but the cord fell off in just 5 days, so I'm glad I didn't bother getting different diapers just for that.

Prefolds with either the original Thirsties or the Duo wrap was totally my fave! Once he hit 5 months, though, he started getting so wiggly that I avoid pf's now and go with my fitteds or pockets.

If I have to do it all over again (hopefully! ), I'll go with prefolds for the nb and infant sizes. I'm going to convert all my regular sized prefolds to prefitteds because I love using them for my wiggly baby!!! Now that I've converted some, that's really my preferred dipe!