Grace is a 31 year old SAHM mom to two boys. She lives in 5-room HDB and does all her laundry on her own. She uses an 8kg top loader and prefers to use a no-frills cloth diapering system that will take her son from birth to toddlerhood. Comfort and cost-efficiency rank above aesthetic value, laundry convenience and ease of use for her. Read on to find out her favourite system and why →
I’d already decided I wanted to cloth diaper while I was pregnant, so I spent a lot of time studying and researching the system I’d use while I was still pregnant. I eventually narrowed down my requirements to the following:
- I wanted to be able to use one product from birth to toddlerhood, instead of having to size up and down constantly.
- The material needed to be soft and comfortable on baby’s bum.
- I needed the diapers to be cost-effective and give me much more savings than if I were to use disposables.
- I would prefer for the diapers to dry quickly.
- The ability to bleach diapers was very important to me - I’m time-starved with no help at home and I felt I might only have time to do one wash every 1-2 days. Bleach would help me to not only sanitize my diapers, but also give me the ability to stretch my main wash to about 4 days in our humid climate.
After doing intense research, I ruled out the following systems:
- AIOs and fitteds — they would simply take too long to dry, and while the colours were beautiful, they would compromise my ability to bleach them when I was in a time crunch.
- AI2s — I read on a forum that AI2s were not useful in the newborn stage as their poop was liquid and would go everywhere, reducing the reusability of the shells at the stage. While I knew it could work very well even as soon as 2 months in, I decided I didn’t want to have to change systems later on.
- Pockets — Some of the prints were really tempting! However, I decided I wouldn’t have time to stuff the pockets.
- Prefolds or preflats with a cover — I shortlisted this as the short drying time of prefolds was really appealing to me.
- Flats with a cover — I also shortlisted this as the stretchy nature of flats would give me the ability to achieve a good seal around the legs no matter baby’s size!
In the end, I settled on flats with covers, though I did have a few prefolds and preflats for days when folding a flat just seemed like an insurmountable task. The flats I chose were all white, in different weights, going all the way to 320gsm for my night setups. Part of the reason why I chose flats was that it would allow me to customize the absorbency I needed with different folds (thinner folds for morning and thicker padfolds for night). I chose white ones from Two Busy Bums — they also made them in a stretchy fabric so the flat would technically ‘grow’ with my baby - different folds would give me the ability to customize the diaper for baby through growth spurts.
For covers, I chose ones that I knew would be thin. I started off thinking velcro would be most similar to disposables, but landed up with buttons as I considered that past a certain age, babies would most likely be able to manipulate the diaper, while even the most nimble fingers would find snaps difficult, and hopefully buy me some time to get to them. While the idea of a toddler flinging a poopy diaper around their head like a lasso made me crack up, I didn’t think I’d find it quite so funny if it eventually happened. I liked the Comodo Wraps from Seedling Baby the most as they were bombproof with the double gussets. They held in the worst of blowouts and were easy to clean, too.
This system had its drawbacks, however. I found it very difficult for anyone else — husband, mother-in-law, my mother — to do diaper changes as they didn’t have as much practice as I did (nor were they as bought in, honestly) with folding flats. There were definitely days I wished I’d chosen something more caregiver-friendly like pockets or AIOs. When my boy reached schoolgoing age, we eventually used AIOs to convince the school to cloth diaper for him.
With flats, my wash routine was pretty standard. After the diapers were used, they were dry-pailed in a cheap plastic basket that I bought from a neighbourhood hardware store. I followed the single cycle protocol from Clean Cloth Nappies and they came out great every time. With my top loader, I did have to watch the loading to make sure my laundry got a ‘stew’ consistency. I used mainstream powder detergents (usually TOP) and accordingly. I could have bucketed in hot water for a warmer wash but found it too much work — just adding bleach to the mix did the trick.
Overall, the cloth diapering journey has had its ups and downs. If I had to re-do it, I would probably have bought some preflats for caregiver use early on, and I would definitely have read up more and avoided mistakes like soaking diapers or overdosing on diaper creams. However, the more we did it, the easier it got, and if I were to have a second baby, I would be confident enough to cloth diaper him right out of the hospital!
