Cloth Diapering a Newborn - The 1st Month

Have we exclusively cloth diapered so far?  No... but we have definitely used cloth for the majority of the time Christopher has been with us.

We used the disposable diapers in the hospital and we had a "back-up" package of disposable newborn diapers at home (which were used sparingly when we miscalculated laundering/drying time).  Because we started cloth diapering after Jack was over a year old I had no idea how I we would handle the diaper laundry when we were going through 8-12 diapers a day for the baby, plus about 6 for our toddler, especially when I had no idea how my labor & delivery would go.  I don't outline any of this as an "excuse" but just as a way to explain that cloth diapering for us isn't an "all or nothing" situation... I am realistic to the situation where cloth might not fit in our lives.  Luckily, that wasn't the case at all... adjusting to two in cloth diapers has been pretty easy (as easy as adjusting to having two children can be).  I should say that my wonderful husband has been a huge support for this; just last weekend he had both boys in the living room while letting me get some sleep and he managed to catch up on all of the pocket diaper stuffing that had gotten away from me in a couple of days.

I posted a few months ago on our "complete" newborn cloth diaper stash.  Well, I may have added a couple of pocket diapers & covers since that post, but not many.  I'm going to try to give an overview of our experiences so far with cloth diapering a newborn over the next few days/weeks.

Overall, our experience has been great!  I wouldn't go so far as saying "we never have a leak or poo explosion" that I've heard people say about cloth diapering, but we have had less than I remember having with Jack (or at least less severe). 

We have a dozen infant/preemie prefolds because they're the least expensive way to build a newborn stash... honestly, they're not for us.  At 3 weeks old, they were unable to be snappied around Christopher and when I just trifolded them to lay them in the cover, poo would always get on the cover (therefore I had to wash it before the cover could be used again).

My favorite combination by far has been a fitted diaper and cover!  We've had the fewest leaks and [I think] no poo leaks with this system.  As far as which fitteds and covers I've liked the best I'll break that down in a later post.

I think we will always like the pocket and all-in-one systems out there, so naturally we liked the simplicity of these diapers.  The trickiest part about these during the newborn phase has been the fit.  Christopher has kinda skinny legs with quite the belly so being able to get a good fit around both areas has not been easy.  With a few of our diapers we went through phases where they fit, then did not fit, then started fitting again... seemed kind of counter-intuitive to me, but that has been our experience!

Stay tuned for more posts with details about our experience with cloth diapering a newborn!