Enough people have asked me about this now that I will just write it down.
We use modern cloth nappies for Vincent, this is basically jargon for anything that isn’t a terry towelling flat fastened with a safety pin. Specifically we use one size pocket nappies. One size as in, they have a whole bunch of fittings on the one nappy so that it grows with the baby, and pocket as in there’s an outer nappy which is supposed to wick moisture inwards and an inner absorbent nappy.
We use microfibre inners during the day, and for nights we wrap a microfibre inner inside a small sized pre-fold cotton nappy for extra absorbency. (We found pre-folds messy, and so don’t actually use them as nappies properly any more, but they are super handy as both big absorbent wipes, and as extra inserts. So you could do worse than pick up a pack.)
It’s really hard to find a vendor neutral overview of the various types of MCNs with pictures. (I find baby slings have the same problem.) It’s very useful to see what exactly people mean, especially given the variety of systems. Some reviews you may find useful, comment if you know of more:
Some varieties of MCNs are starting to appear in physical baby stores, particularly the Pea Pods. Most you will need to buy online. We use the Bumwear variety. (A lot of them use the word “bum” in the brand, if it’s a word you don’t want your kid using you may look like a hypocrite!) We quite like Bumwear, but haven’t really tried others!
In Australia: in order to decide what variety of MCN to use, you may find OZebaby’s returnable trial packs useful. Our Bumwear nappies came from The Nappy Bucket.
We don’t find the washing too bad: we have 27 nappies, a load can air dry before we need it again. That said, we did buy a new machine; our old one was at least 20 years old and probably more, and its spin cycle was not especially helpful at starting the drying process.
We also have a Little Squirt pressure hose to clean the nappies into the toilet, this has been very handy. In Australia: we bought ours from Mothers Direct, the ABA’s store.
If someone knows of a good one I will link it here.
Maybe these friends of mine?
-Heebie-geebie
the phrase “prefolds” appears to refer to many different styles. So i’m unsure what people mean.
we use these things (if DW will let the photo be embdded here.) a waterproof breathable outer with domes, and a cotton/fleece inner.
I mean things that look like this: http://nappybucket.com.au/item_100/Prefolds-Unbleached.htm
So, squares of cotton sewn into layers.
What you use I would call a pocket nappy.
Thanks Heebie! Looks like a nice blog in general too.
thanks for that — so the advantage is the one size fits all?
we went with those “pocket nappies” because they come in a “4 months to potty size”. Casey fit these from about 3 months old. Before that we used some nice disposables made locally from 98% paper. (NZ pine renewable). They appealed to the greenie in me, but the cost of disposable adds up very quickly.
Now we use disposables only over night.
We eventually went to pocket over pre-folds mostly because of leak problems with the pre-fold covers we were using. It’s possible that better folding and/or better covers might have been enough.
You do have to go up sizes in pre-folds, but they cost about $5 a nappy, so it’s still cheaper than pocket ones, probably.
yup – pockets as $13 each (with 2x inners). Made in china.
The NZ made ones are $35 each… they are superior (hold more, leak less) but expensive, and we’d need to go up a size several time.
we’ve found our cheap ones last about 3 hours at a time.