Baby in less than 4 wks! - Review my stash?

[downtown_dweller]

Hi everyone. I stumbled across MDC quite by accident just yesterday, so I'm definitely late to the party, sorry. I'm so glad to have found it, though, and I am sure I will learn a lot here.

However, I'm in a bit of a bind. We're having our first, a boy, in less than a month, and I'm certain I haven't got everything I'm going to need! However, at this point I am so pressed for time to get other things done (birth plan, doula, etc) I can't spend the hours necessary to read and learn so I can figure out what I'm missing. Therefore I'm asking for your help. I promise to do the reading once DS is born, and to help others who ask this same question once I'm knowledgeable!

I am planning on trying prefolds/covers for the duration of the "12-15 per day" period, and have been practicing my folding skills. We will use disposables during the meconium days.

We live in a small condo in our downtown, so I plan to wash half the diapers/wipes every day. I can't let them sit.

DH is not convinced he will do any cloth diapering at all, especially not prefolds, so there will be some use of disposables in our household, unfortunately. If you see diapers in my stash that your think would work for an expected 7 lb. but long newborn and a squeamish dad, please point them out. :-)

I don't yet have a sprayer or biodegradable liners. Tell me if you think I should have them.

I have another shower coming up in less than 2 weeks, and I need to correct my registries now in case there are early shoppers, so I'm all ears regarding filling in the gaps in my stash!

Please also let me know if you think my stash items are too small to be usable given the expected size of DS - they have not been washed and can still be returned/exchanged.

The stash:

• 15 Osocozy organic flannel wipes (and plenty of organic wipe solution)
  
• 12 Gerber organic cotton prefolds, 20" x 14" (is there any good use for these??)
  
• 9 Babykicks hemp/cotton prefolds, Size S
  
• 2 Snappis
  
• 3 Thirsties covers, Size XS
  
• 1 Bumgenius AIO, Size XS
  
• 1 Fuzzibunz pocket, Size XS - with stuffer
  
• 1 Happy Hempys pocket, Size S (does this need a cover?)
  
• 3 Thirsties Duo pockets, Size 1 - each with dual stuffers
  
• 1 Bumgenius AIO with pocket, Size S (is this the 2.0?)
  
• 1 Fuzzibunz pocket, Size S - with stuffer
  
• 1 Fuzzibunz pocket, One Size - with stuffer
  
• 1 Fuzzibunz pocket, Size M - with stuffer
  
• 2 Thirsties hemp/cotton doublers, Size S
  
• 1 Mother-ease "Bamboo" rayon/cotton/poly doubler, no size listed

Again, I am so grateful for your input. I have gestational diabetes so am not supposed to let myself get stressed. Any answers you give me will really help me stay calm.

[chely7425]

First, I would get WAY more wipes. I would guess I have 75-100 with 2 in diapers... I think 30-50 would be good for one baby? Second, I have found the Gerber prefolds to be useless, I would get more good quality ones, I think we have 36 for our NB/small stash. The pockets/aios should be VERY easy for your DH to do.. mine was super anti-CD at first but as long as I stuff the pockets he has no problem putting them on. I might also get some more covers... NBs tend to poo a lot

[is it puppies?]

I don't know about the prefolds you got, but bumgenius are great- and there are others similar. The bumgenius covers (which are pretty good if you do them up right) are good for folding the prefold in instead of snappy-ing- you fold a small dipe in half width wise or a big one in three and place it in the cover- the bumgenius covers as well as some thirsties and certainly others will fit the dipes done this way, then you just dump them out of the cover into a dry bag. You don't need to spray or anything until they are solid poops apparently.

I have about 50 cheapo baby wash cloths for wipes (I wet with water as needed) and 20 various sized prefolds (mostly the big ones, the small ones seem limited) as well as a number of others- BG o/s, good mama o/s, bumboo fitteds sz 1+2, and a variety of covers but you could easily do the first month or more with just 24 prefolds and say 6 covers and 50 wipes doing laundry once a day or possibly every other day. And 2 dry bags or similar set up for putting the dirty ones. They really don't stink unless it's very hot and you wait more than a day or two, and then the smell is pretty mild.

I found when folding the pre-folds ie: bikini fold they would not hold very much liquid and once DD started peeing I started buying inserts but realized that just folding up the dipe worked amazingly well if the cover is done up well and fits properly.

HTH

[Marissamom]

I have one very good use for gerber prefolds. putting them under the baby during changes during the newborn stage, when they pee during half their changes. that way the pee doesn't go everywhere. also for cleaning up messes.

[NewMoonMum]

Originally Posted by downtown_dweller

The stash:

• 15 Osocozy organic flannel wipes (and plenty of organic wipe solution)
  
• 12 Gerber organic cotton prefolds, 20" x 14" (is there any good use for these??)
  
• 9 Babykicks hemp/cotton prefolds, Size S
  
• 2 Snappis
  
• 3 Thirsties covers, Size XS
  
• 1 Bumgenius AIO, Size XS
  
• 1 Fuzzibunz pocket, Size XS - with stuffer
  
• 1 Happy Hempys pocket, Size S (does this need a cover?)
  
• 3 Thirsties Duo pockets, Size 1 - each with dual stuffers
  
• 1 Bumgenius AIO with pocket, Size S (is this the 2.0?)
  
• 1 Fuzzibunz pocket, Size S - with stuffer
  
• 1 Fuzzibunz pocket, One Size - with stuffer
  
• 1 Fuzzibunz pocket, Size M - with stuffer
  
• 2 Thirsties hemp/cotton doublers, Size S
  
• 1 Mother-ease "Bamboo" rayon/cotton/poly doubler, no size listed

-Gerber prefolds-I personally never heard one Mom say her babe could use these as diapers. They are perfectly fine as burp cloths, or as a pp suggested, putting under your baby during a change.. Don't count them as diapers!
-Wipes-ITA, you will need WAY more! Keeping in mind you intend to do laundry daily, maybe allow for the possibility of skipping a day, whether you intend to or not, since life with a newborn is pretty much chaos. I'd go for at least 4 dozen, and just FYI we always used plain water(cold from a spray bottle) and it worked great.
-prefolds-maybe my son just produced a great deal of waste, but we quickly got to the point where we were changing him like 20 times a day. Esp. since you can't use those Gerbers, I'd invest in more good-quality prefolds. If I personally were shooting for daily laundry, I'd still have a good 25 prefolds on hand. I'm sure other Moms would feel they need less-but you never know if you'll have a heavy wetter. As I imagine you know, you need to "strip" the diapers before using them. To do this, we boiled them in small batches in a large stockpot, then washed on hot and dried until drops of water flicked onto the diaper surface would quickly absorb. Boiling is not necessary, but it really reduced the number of wash cycles we needed after.
As for folds, there are SO many to try for different situations, we found the "jelly roll" fold was the best for keeping in explosive poops, and it's really easy to learn. Just google "jelly roll fold".
-Sprayer-we could not live without. No smells lingering around, no poop in the washer, no stains.
-liners-we tried these, and ultimately found them more of a hassle than spraying. But lots of Moms swear by them-especially when hoping for diapering help from less-than-enthusiastic partners! Ideally you can just drop them into the toilet and have little to no spraying or dunking. Maybe get one smallish pack to try out.
-covers-in the beginning, you'll be dealing with LOTS of poops, and probably a fair few explosions! Especially if you are breastfeeding, these poops are super-runny, and even with the most careful folds you are likely to get at least one poopy cover a day. Between that and letting your damp covers air out between wet changes(in case you did not know, you don't need to wash covers that get pee on them after every pee, just let them air dry and wash every few days or if they are smelly) I'd be comfortable with about half a dozen covers. If you use PUL covers, line-dry them whenever possible to preserve the waterproofing for longer.
-snappis-make sure you pre-stretch these as per the instructions, I failed to do so at first and snapped a couple before I got the hint. But I LOVE Snappis-they make a snug fit pretty easy to achieve. You could easily get another pack, and if nothing else they can replace old, over-stretched Snappis in time.
-doublers-is more of a personal/find what works for your baby kind of thing. We used these overnight/during car trips. Plenty of Moms use an extra prefold, trifolded, as a doubler and it works fine. We needed the doublers(we used hemp) and have about a dozen for doing laundry about every 3 days. A disclaimer here-we did not use doublers much until he was sleeping for pretty long stretches overnight. Obviously, if you use one at night while they wake up often, you'll be changing the doublers far more often, hence you might need more.
-pockets-no useful advice here I am afraid, as we have never used them, we only used prefolds.

I hope some of that helps, and the best of luck to you..for a great finish to your pregnancy, a wonderful labor and delivery, and a healthy baby!!

[colorbywords]

I just want to add that I've been using the gerber organic 3 ply prefolds folded in half and then folding the sides in inside my covers and they work great. During night time we use gerber 6 ply prefolds because they do soak up more but are more bulky. So the gerber prefolds can work! However I haven't used them with snappis so don't know how well they'd work without all the layers folded together where she needs them!

[hoping42]

I'm in a similar situation but have a few more weeks to go (7-8) and have selected but not yet purchased my stash. I decided to go with prefold fitted diapers so they would seem more like disposables for my husband who is not so keen on the cloth diaper idea but I added up what I plan to spend on diapers, wet bags, covers and what disposables would be for 3 months and the price was the same.

If you want to try fitteds check out Greenmountaindiapers.com (GMD workhorse diaper comes with snaps or no closure) or babybunz.com (snugglebottoms come in velcro or no closure) or gigglebritches.com (GB fitted no closure but a pocket for stuffing) or babyhopesdiapers.com (trinkletraps no closure). I have not tried any of them I tried pockets with my second (this will be my third) and did not care for them and started when he was well past newborn. Best of luck!

[downtown_dweller]

OK, so I went by our local cloth diaper store today and raided the consignment bins. I made sure to test the elastic on covers and smell the cloth. Other than the detergent smelling pretty strong, those I purchased seemed to be in good shape. I assume I should strip them just in case? I will read up on how that is done.

Below is my original stash with updated numbers shown in red to reflect today's purchases.

Originally Posted by downtown_dweller

The stash:

• 15 Osocozy organic flannel wipes (and plenty of organic wipe solution)
  
• 12 Gerber organic cotton prefolds, 20" x 14" (is there any good use for these??)
  
• 9 Babykicks hemp/cotton prefolds, Size S
  
• 4 (was 2) Snappis, Size 1
  
• 2 (was 0) Kissaluvs fitted, Size 0
  
• 1 (was 0) Thirsties fitted, Size XS
  
• 4 (was 3) Thirsties covers, Size XS
  
• 3 (was 1) Bumgenius AIO, Size XS
  
• 1 Fuzzibunz pocket, Size XS - with stuffer
  
• 1 Happy Hempys pocket, Size S (does this need a cover?)
  
• 3 Thirsties Duo pockets, Size 1 - each with dual stuffers
  
• 1 Bumgenius AIO with pocket, Size S (is this the 2.0?)
  
• 2 (was 0) Thirsties adjustable-size covers, Size 1
  
• 1 Fuzzibunz pocket, Size S - with stuffer
  
• 1 Fuzzibunz pocket, One Size - with stuffer
  
• 1 Fuzzibunz pocket, Size M - with stuffer
  
• 2 Thirsties hemp/cotton doublers, Size S
  
• 1 Mother-ease "Bamboo" rayon/cotton/poly doubler, no size listed

I also registered for 24 OsoCozy unbleached Indian prefolds in newborn size, two more Thirsties covers in XS, and 24 more OsoCozy flannel wipes. The sprayer remains on the registry as well, as does a pack of Kushies biodegradable liners. Hopefully someone will understand how important these are and get them for me!

I will be sure to put a Gerber cloth under/over DS while changing him.

Thanks for the many tips on care, etc. - keep them coming!

[sunflower.mama]

One great tip I got was to use the peri bottle they give you at the hospital (for rinsing yourself after you pee postpartum) - for moistening the cloth wipes. I alternate between doing that or spraying water or wipe solution directly on the baby's bottom. So I asked for an extra bottle from the nurse at the hospital and would suggest you do it too. It really gets the wipe soaked when you need to scrub!

[cristeen]

Your new numbers look a lot better. One thing nobody seems to have mentioned is that Smalls and OS dipes won't fit your average NB, so they don't count. My guy was 8 lbs at birth and we were scrambling because none of the smalls fit him. And they continued to not fit until he was almost 3 mos. Even our NB covers didn't fit him, we were stuck using a preemie cover. Even now, I'd be willing to bet a Sm cover would fit in leg and waist - just not in rise.

Liners and diaper sprayer really aren't necessary at first. I bought liners when my guy started solids - hate them. I just bought a diaper sprayer in the last couple weeks, and my guy will be 1 next week. Until they start on solids, poo is liquid - there's nothing to scrape/spray/lift off.

Oh, and a Happy Hempy does in fact need a cover. These are my absolute favorite night-time dipe. Happy Heinys are made by the same company, and those don't need one.