Tag: nappies

What I’d do differently

This was a dinner conversation: if I was having Vincent with foreknowledge (as opposed to having a second child) what would I do differently? (This is all stuff in reach of our current budget, not fantasy stuff like “have a nanny instead of daycare so that we don’t get sick all the time” or “buy a king sized bed” or “move to a bigger place”.)

  1. got a new washing machine and a car before he arrived (although, an older baby is way less trouble on public transport because they don’t constantly eat and poop, he started getting better just as we got the car).
  2. got a new GP before he arrived
  3. put his name down for childcare before he arrived
  4. gone to the breastfeeding class at the hospital (he was only 12 hours old, I was really tired and wired, but there wasn’t another one until I was discharged)
  5. not relied primarily on Kaz Cooke’s Kidwrangling for information: we don’t need two nappy buckets, and the first two weeks did not involve me calling parenting crisis lines while crying constantly (I know that can and does happen, but she portrays it as universal)
  6. gone straight to our current system of nappies (one-size pockets)
  7. got groceries home-delivered for at least the first six weeks of his life
  8. had him this summer (which is probably going to be cooler than average on Australia’s east coast) rather than last summer (heat records tumbling every which way): ok, that’s a bit fantastical
  9. worked out the cost of daycare more clearly in advance and put the baby bonus away for it
  10. not bothered with purchasing a manual breastpump: double electric all the way baby
  11. got the baby fences sooner

The most important one though was not realising how quickly babies become more manageable. I thought this happened when they stopped being babies. It turns out that in fact those first six or eight weeks are actually much harder than the months after that just in terms of the sheer amount of constant work that went into babycare. Feeding needing to happen right now OMG starving, nappy changes even more urgent than that, meltdowns after half an hour in an unfamiliar location, that was all little V stuff.

So I’d much easier on myself for the first few months, because I didn’t have to steel myself up and learn to cope in the long term with that precise situation.

Andrew added that we probably would have introduced expressing and feeding milk earlier than we did. I’m not sure. With foreknowledge that he’d adapt to a sippy cup fine, I might have done it later.

Cloth nappy stuff

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.