Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Diapers.


Well good morning! (at least for me) After a night of little sleep because the babe was awake quite a few times I lay here (she is FINALLY sleeping, but she fell asleep on me and I don’t want to move!) and am quite refreshed. The only thing that is not good right now is that the wonderful coffee I just brewed is across the room and as I said, I don’t want to wake this sleeping babe in her precarious state of sleep. I have to wait until she is very asleep to move. Should be soon, hopefully the coffee is not cold by then!

The purpose of this blog is actually to review some baby products. I am no great voice in the baby product world nor do I have wonderful insight on any of the matters baby. I have however been using various baby products since the girl was born and I want to review them to give all my preggo friends insight into my experiences thus far. If it can help them know what to buy and what not to buy I would happy. It would mean saving a few more poor young couples some money!

To start, I am going to do cloth diapers. I plan on doing a different product every day until I run out of constructive things to say…it may be Friday it may be tomorrow, who knows!

Here we go.

My wonderful sister Elisabeth got a bunch of people to go in on a cloth diaper sample pack. Amazing! I had no idea what diapers to go with before, the cloth diaper world is a whole new thing. Its no longer birdseye and layered prefolds with a pin and a plastic cover. These things are high-tech! I look up cloth diapers and get phrases like “4 layer micro fiber insert with hemp liner” thrown at me. How am I to know if a 4 layer micro fiber is better than a hemp or wool or cotton…? By sampling them! There are so many different brands and fit but after almost a week of using all of the different brands every day I have decided what brands I am going to go with and I put my order in last night for 10 more dipes.

So, to start here is a link to the cloth diaper sample pack. Cotton babies is a great website but careful, they don’t always have the lowest prices! I found the best prices by looking for authorized retailers of the products. They seem to have better sales and promotions than the mother site, Cotton babies.

The first diaper I tried was a Knickernappies. It’s a fitted diaper, not a one size. The “one size” was another unfamiliar thing to me but basically it is a diaper that can fit a baby throughout the whole diapering process. Most start at 8lbs and go up to 25+ lbs. The work by having snaps up the front of the diaper that can be folded down according to the size of the baby. That is what all those overwhelming buttons are for on the front of most modern cloth diapers!

But back to this diaper. It is a yellow size small knickernappies. The fit was good and it looked cute on the babe, but my liking of it ends there. The snaps are hard to get on a wiggly baby with the way they are placed. The sides go underneath the front with to me seemed impractical and made the buttoning process even harder. I also had leaking problems when I used it and my baby is only 4 weeks old so its not like she’s got serious volume issues. The insert just tends to slide to the sides when she moves. I have used it without leaks but that was just for BM not for a big wet dipe. It did contain the BM well though!

Next, since we are on the knickernappies role, the one size. I ordered the one size one my own, it did not come in the sample pack. Bad idea! This diaper is ridiculous. First of all the advertisement says it should fit a baby that is 8lbs. Lil babe is 9 ½ lbs but it was absolutely ridiculous on her! I wouldn’t even leave it on her long enough to see if it would leak. I’m not going to break this diaper out again until she is A LOT bigger. Like my nieces size who is 18 months. It also feels kind of strange, the lining on the inside of the dipe is super fluffy. Seems like stuff would stick in it a lot more? So to knickernappies I would break it down like this (for the sized, their one size is not going to get any stars!):
Fit- 5/5 Style- 4/5 Ease of use- 2/5 Function- 2/5

Now onto Grovia. I really liked the feel of this diaper and thought it would be a winner. The material is super nice and stretches nicely. It feels very well made and up to the task. The snaps were easy to use and it was easy to size down (it is a one size) for the babe even though the sides snap in under the front panel like the knickernappies do. The snaps themselves are better quality on the Grovia dipe and easier to use. Unfortunately it did not fit well. When babe moved her legs up there were slight gaps in the middle, which could be cause she is still only almost ten pounds. I did like how the inserts are built in so that I do not have to place them myself. The insides were very heavy weight, not sure if they would allow for ANY air movement. It also looked really bunchy and uncomfy on her. This was definitely the heaviest of all the diapers. Overall, I would never buy one of these as they are the most expensive cloth diaper and definitely not worth the extra money.
Fit- 2/5 Style- 2/5 Ease of use- 5/5 Function- 3/5

Next the Kissaluvs one size. This diaper was pretty middle of the road to me. Everything about it was decent, nothing negative just a criticism. It was super poofy and made her look like a bubble butt. It was easy to put on her, it fit her reasonably well, it didn’t leak, I just don’t like how it looks. Babe is getting fat on her own she doesn’t need the assistance of a poofy diaper to make her bum look big!
Fit-4/5 Style- 3/5 Ease of use- 5/5 Function- 5/5

On to Happy Heiny’s(whats with these names anyways?!). I have these in two versions, one is a one size one is a fitted. I like the fitted but got leaks every time. It looked really cute on her and was even looking like it was almost too small. I don’t think it will fit her all the way up to 14lbs but maybe. It was very easy to put on her, the front closure is Velcro not snaps. Perfect for wiggly babies. Stuffing the liner inside was easy to do but I must not have done it right ANY of the times I have used it. No BM leaks but lots of wet ones. I have not tried the one size because it looks HUGE!
Fit- 4/5 Style- 5/5 Ease of use- 5/5 Function-2/5
Another category for this dipe would be “true to size”. Answer would be negative. It fits her now but I think these may run a little small on the fitted one, not sure about the medium and large but the small feels pretty darn small. I do like it though, wish I could get it not to leak.

Now fuzzibunz. Overall I like this diaper. It fits well, it looks cute, it’s pretty trim and doesn’t give her the bubble look. The snaps are decent. I don’t like the fact that in order to get a good fit it has to be sized. I like the one size concept, especially since babies grow so quickly.
Fit- 5/5 Style- 4/5 Ease of use- 3.5/5 Funtion- 5/5

Saving the best two for last. Bumgenius is a great diaper. I like the Velcro, never tried the snaps. This fits well, doesn’t leak, easy to stuff, has the best colors, and looks cute. I ended up buying 6 more of these. There is not much else to say, they get an all positive review.
Fit- 5/5 Style- 5/5 Ease of use- 5/5 Fuction- 5/5

Now for my favorite, the Doopsy diaper. Don’t be deterred by their websites lame “let doopsy take care of poopsy” motto. This diaper rocks. It is the cheapest one size out there, fits great, and doesn’t leak. It is also the only one size I know of that has an overnight liner that doesn’t cost as much as the diaper itself. I stocked up on the doopsy. It has snaps that are easy to use. When it’s folded down to its smallest size it still looks cute and comfy and the material stretches well. I found this diaper by chance through a video I think, random but fortunate! I would buy all doopsy and never look back if it weren’t for these two things: the Velcro closure and the cute colors on the bumgenius. Doopsy has all very bold colors, I like the bumgenius colors best. I also really like the bumgenius Velcro closure. So easy to us.
Doopsy comes in three option, R (regular) the D (double) and the SD (super duty). I found the SD to be a good buy because it comes with an overnight liner and hemp insert as well as the regular 4 layer micro fiber insert. The D comes with an extra waterproof insert that is specific to the doopsy brand. The R is the same as all the other cloth diapers, just one insert.
The site says that these diapers are good for 10-35lbs but it fits my 4-week-old great already on the smallest setting.
Fit- 5/5 Style- 5/5 Ease of use- 5/5 Function 5/5

Now for the last category: price. Doopsy is the cheapest out there for the quality. Grovia and Kissaluvs are the most expensive. Bumgenius are an ok price for the product, however they run almost 2$ more a diaper than the doopsy ones do.

I bought my diapers here: Twin City Diaper Company
I was able to get the Doopsy SD for only 14.95 a piece (normally 17.95) and 6 Bumgenius diapers for a discounted price of 6 for the price of 5. Total I bought 10 diapers and spent $143.00.

3 comments:

E. Chikeles said...

Awesome.

I think you should redo this review in another 6 months to a year though, your babe is still VERY little and a lot of the "problems" you have with the first few diapers might actually be something you like when she gets bigger. For example:

Unfortunately cloth diapers are just THICK, but what looks weird and thick on her now won't look weird and thick later. If the diaper fits perfect now it probably won't be so hot at 8 months..
Also, if you're not changing every 1 1/2-2 hours it can be bad... you might think she pees less now but that is opposite, she pees more now than she will at 6 months and at Margaret's age I can go closer to 3 hours (if she doesn't have juice!!) for a change. Leaking around the legs also will change quite a bit when she gets to be about 15 lbs... thats when most of the diapers will start to fit like they're supposed to, at least the one size, but I've never liked fitted for that very reason.

Love the detailed review, I am so excited to see these doopsie diapers in action!

E. Chikeles said...

BTW that is just from experience. I found at about 8 months when Megs was moving a lot and ESPECIALLY when she started walking the world of cloth and what I had liked in the beginning completely changed...

dang kids keep you on your toes! :P

Melody said...

ugh I just wrote out a great reply and the internet died on me.

I plan on redoing the review everytime she needs to move up a size on the one size dipes. I expect it to change, however things like the snaps being hard to do and things like that probably won't change much.

Its interesting how differently all babies are shaped too! Megs and her are so different already...I wonder how that will be when they are older?