Help- I'm officially a cloth nappy user!!

Hi Huggles,

Thank you for the info I think the best is to do a trail of 10 nappies and use both disposable and cloth and see what works thanks for the tip on where to order the liners that already makes a huge difference for me and I am really leaning towards the cloth nappies

Hi Hopeful

Check out www.alvababy.com - you can buy liners from there for pretty cheap. They flush down the toilet as well which is an added bonus. And it's free shipping anywhere in the world! You can also order nappies from them for much cheaper than locally. The local nappies are nice though, although i've never used the bam+boo brand.
Also, bare in mind that almost no OSFA (one-size-fits-all) nappies will fit from birth. Normally you need to wait until baby is about 2 months before they will fit. My son was born at 36 weeks and the cherub tree nappies (which i think fit the smallest when snapped and folded right) only started fitting him at 7 weeks, and even then they were still rather big, but they were usable.

What we do though is I bought 1m of fleece and just cut that up as liners. I found most of the reusable liners that I coudl buy were too small for my liking. My son does fairly messy poo's so they always leaked all around the liners. So i bought 1m of fleece and cut really big liners that cover the entire inside of the nappy. Then I put that in the nappy, and a disposable liner from ALVA on top of that (to catch poo's).
That way any stains that might happen land on the fleece liner and not on the nappy itself.

A lot of people swear by putting the nappies in the sun to get rid of stains as well.

I used disposables for the first few weeks. We swapped over to cloth at 7 weeks, although I continued to use disposables overnight until he was over a year as I just could not believe a cloth nappy could last the night. In the end he reached a point where he was wetting through a pampers premium at night, every night, and I was desperate. I tried a bunch of cloth combo's and now we use cloth every night as I find it works better than disposables.

When he has had gastro I use disposables, and when he's in hospital I use disposables.
The rest of the time I'm quite happy using cloth. It's sometimes a pain rinsing messy poo out of the nappy (as I mentioned, he has had extremely messy poo's - this is not usually the case), but generally it's not that much work.
I tend to be rather "snoep" when it comes to spendign money so on every occasion when I've felt tempted to swap back to disposables I think of that R300 - R400 I have to fork out to buy them and immediately I lose that thought because I just don't see the point in spending that money when I have perfectly good nappies at home already.

My husband is fine with cloth (although he doesn't change nappies very often), but he definitely finds the velcro cherub tree nappies easier than the ALVA's which close with snaps. He calls any nappy that uses snaps "the complicated nappies". Velcro ones he uses happily.

You don't really need warm water to wash them. Just be sure to do a rinse cycle first (no detergent), then a long wash with only a little detergent, then an additional 1 or 2 rinses with no detergent. It might take a few weeks/months to get your washing method just right, sometimes you need to tweak it here or there until it works for you and your machine.

Hi Ladies, I am newly pregnant with our first little one. I have been considering cloth nappies since before I was preggy but now I have some concerns. My main reason for wanting to use cloth nappies ( probably will go with Bam+Boo ) is the money I will save but I have very attracted to the convenience of disposable. I am sure you ladies have had to answer these questions a MILLION times but please could you help me?

For the moms that have used both, how does the convenience compare to disposable? where there times that you simply wanted to switch back? How do your hubbys find it as this will be another challenge?

Does the nappies stain at all? especially in the first few days? also again when you change to solid foods?
My concern is that I live in Namibia and I cant find the liners that you put in to separate the solids so this will all go straight on the nappy?

I also have a top loader with only cold water? Does this mean I have to soak them in warm water first?

I would really appreciate your feedback in regards to all of this thank you ladies for you patience in answering these questions

Hi Jo,

I use 1 tablespoon Earthsap liquid.

The ladies that use earthsap, how much do you use per wash. Say between 12 and 15 nappies per wash?
Thanks!

Learn something new every day! Thanks for that Huggles. I'd never thought dishwasher tablet could do the trick!

If any of you would like to share your cloth nappy knowledge, please join my Facebook Group for doodlebums diapers. Only if you want to.

Thanks
Amanda

This is also a very helpful article about the normal wash routine from a local mom: hippiesafari.blogspot.com/2013/04/cloth-...utm_content=FaceBook

I found it really interesting how she adds extra water to her wash via the detergent draw. I've been doing that since reading (I usually add an extra 2 litres during the initial rinse and then again with the final rinse) and it really has made a huge difference. The nappies just smell cleaner now.