Diaper addenda

So, a bit more on the diaper front from the perspective of the other parent, the one who was less gung-ho about the prospect to begin with.

I haven't yet said, "OK, I give up, let's use disposables" (though someone else might have done a few times!).

Why the change of heart? In part because we just spent $350 on diapers, and as the person who goes shopping, that's a equivalent to a huge number of disposables when purchased with a coupon. We are nowhere close to breaking even yet. Additionally, we will soon have our own washer and dryer. (In our house!!1! Accessible without going outside and without waiting for the neighbors to finish with the single dryer!!!1!) Thus it really would be great if we could get cloth diapers to work, since the logistics are about to get a lot easier. So, in for a penny, in for a pound. I really think having committed to this course of action, however reluctantly, we should get these to work as diapers, and not just as butt-padding in the event that Jolyon should be dropped.

However, I am also not doing the middle-of-the-night changes, and during the day it's a lot easier to remain level-headed about the fact that the diaper is failing to actually function. I really feel for Stephanie: she was so excited about cloth diapers, and if she's broken down and said she can't take it any more on multiple occasions, that's saying a great deal, because she's not even prone to hyperbole like me. (Note: I would probably not really deforest an acre of rainforest with a machete.)

I want to add a few more points of clarification about the nature of our failure, in the hopes that one of our cloth-diaper-loving friends can help us figure out what's up.

Although some of the diaper-fails have been as an immediate result of peeing in a new, dry diaper, more of the epic diaper failures have been happening at night. Perhaps this is because we are using disposables when we are out and about, which is most days, but this could also be a result of more frequent changing during the day. We've already established previously that Jolyon is an unusually long sleeper.

However, I am really loath to wake a sleeping baby to change his diaper. Although he sleeps through pretty much anything, changing his diaper is the only exception, because he haaaates it. This morning I did a diaper change when he fell asleep right after eating, and he howled with absolute ferocity, but fell asleep again afterwards... but that's not usual.

I always make sure the diaper is properly adjusted, and spend a while fussing with it to make sure it's properly secured. We learned that lesson early on: we make sure it's as tight as we can get it, because otherwise, it is guaranteed to leak (this was the case back in the early days when the infant insert was enough absorption, even). The downside is that the cloth diapers therefore leave major welts on his legs. They definitely can't get any tighter without removing circulation to his legs.

And yes, we are making sure his peeing apparatus is angled down, too.

The diapers are very carefully pre-stuffed so we are sure that the insert is properly flat in the diaper and not bunched up, so that's definitely not the problem, either.

We are using the recommended washing and drying techniques to the letter: 5-star-rated detergent in the reduced amounts, just as recommended, then drying the inserts in the dryer and hanging the diapers to dry so that the velcro doesn't die.

So, some theories as to what could be going wrong:

It's possible that he's just not wide enough for them to fit properly yet. He is now 10 lbs, which is above the minimum weight, but he's 90%ile height and 30%ile weight, so he's really spreading a low amount of weight through a longer length. Thus, I suspect our Jolly might be less wide than a lot of 10 lb babies, and therefore, the usual rules might not apply. That could suggest that we just need to wait a bit for his thighs to get girthier and his belly to chunk up. However, the fact that they used to work better than they do now does make this unlikely. Plus, BumGenius is supposed to be best at fitting newborns of all the one-sized diapers, and he's now a 7-week-old.

Perhaps he has just been sleeping longer stretches and that causes the diaper to fill up and leak. This would be a dealbreaker for us - we're not willing to wake ourselves and him up more regularly in order to battle with cloth diapers. We can try to do the gigantor-stuffing for nighttime, though... and perhaps there are more absorbent inserts we could try, in addition to the microfiber?

Perhaps his bladder has gotten bigger and he is therefore peeing more at once, so that a single pee can exhaust the capacity of the diaper. Again, not much to do about this, except stuff in more inserts (or perhaps more absorbant ones, though I've heard the microfiber is really the most absorbant, and also, it's not like we're dying to spend more money on cloth diapering right now).

Alternatively, our diapers need to be stripped, but really, that shouldn't be the case yet after such a short period of time and limited use. But still, is probably worth a shot, in case our water quality is somehow weird.

All in all, I would recommend that new parents trust their instinct about disposables being easy and convenient before they shell out lots of money for a cloth diaper that is the best of the options, but still not actually very useful... but since we have spent $$$ on these, I'm game for troubleshooting them to try to get our money's worth.

On the plus side, the fact that we received a bunch of 0-3 month outfits as gifts right after we went shopping, means that we have way more clothing in this size than we had intended, and at the moment, we've been needing all of it. Right now we actually ran out and he's wearing a 3-6 month sleeper, fits decently in the torso because of the enormous double-stuffed diaper that goes to his knees (literally, I'm not kidding)... but of course the arms and legs are ridiculously too long, still.