Birth-to-potty or sized nappies?

[grubbysoles]

Hi Fizzy Izzy,

Best of luck with Bubs! I'm not an expert on any of the brands you mention, but your quantities should be plenty to get you in the swing of things. You'll probably find that you decide what you like/need a couple more of as you go along and you can just buy bits and bobs here and there rather than having to fork out squillions of pounds all in one go. We used folded up muslins when my daughter was tiny - worked a treat, dirt cheap and now come in very handy as a stash of bibs. If you're anything like me, though, you'll soon lose all trace of the nappy nippas! I bought 6, I think, and have just had to buy another 6 for forthcoming New Arrival as I can only seem to find 1 of the old ones. They're a bit like socks. Tend to just vanish...

I hope you get on well with the cloth nappies. We really did save a small fortune by using them, and will do so again with the new baby (if it ever comes out). Oh, and you WILL change your mind about motherhood when the baby arrives. Then, after a few months when everything has settled down a bit and you are getting more sleep, you'll change your mind back again and will be chomping at the bit to get cracking with the next one. It's really lovely watching them get bigger, but my goodness it happens ever so quickly.

[Fizzy Izzy]

Thanks grubbysoles,

Maybe I'd better get a few more nappi nippas then! Or maybe that would mean I'd just lose more.... I'll see about some muslins for the early days too.

I 'm just feeling a bit nervous about cloth nappies because I don't know ANYBODY in real life who uses them - so I'm going to be the odd one out and I haven't got anyone else's advice or knowledge to draw on. In fact, I'd never even seen a cloth nappy until a couple of months ago when I paid $10 (in Canada) to go to a cloth nappy demonstration class. But I'm absolutely determined that I will make it work...

I'm so grateful for forums like this where I can come and ask questions and feel "normal"!

[grubbysoles]

I also didn't know anyone else using cloth (and still don't!!) - but all the disposable fans were very quick to tell me just how awful cloth would be, even though they had never tried it. Some popular things I heard:

Your baby will have terrible nappy rash.
Your baby will be bow-legged (!!!?????)
You'll get fed up and give up.
By the time you've washed and dried the nappies, you won't have saved any money.
You can't take them on a day out.
It's really fiddly and time-consuming to change them.
Your house will smell of dirty nappies all the time.

All nonsense, of course. You might not need to use muslins, depending on the size of your nappies. I used them because I bought size 2 Fluffles which can be folded smaller to a newborn nappy, but even folded they were too big for Munchkin at first, so I used muslins until her bum was big enough to use the nappies. It was quite frustrating - the nappies were sitting there looking so cute and fluffy and I just wanted to get them on her little bum but couldn't! She still has a small bum, she certainly didn't inherit that from me....

Seriously, once you get in your routine with the cloth nappies they really are not time consuming or uber-messy. You might find that you need to buy big sized baby clothes to fit over the bulky bum, but in the long run this is also a money-saver as you can skip whole sizes of clothes and go straight on to the next size. Oh, and remember your flushable liners (can't see them on your list). My favourite were Popli as they were very soft and would survive going through the wash several times, meaning fewer getting flushed down the toilet (unless they were poo-ey), and in the long run I didn't have to keep buying more and more of them. I still have loads left, which I will be using for the new baby (if it ever decides to come out of there )

I could babble on all night about cloth nappies! I loved them, and I am looking forward to using them again and saving myself another small fortune with this baby.

[kathleen]

Hi! Seems like a million years since I've posted (I have a 10 week old little guy!). I use fitted cloth nappies, I'm in NZ though so the brands are obviously going to be different. I bought 4 from different makers to see which I liked the most, my favourite are made by Honey Child over here, I think the same nappy is sold as Fuzzi Bunz overseas. They're excellent but sooo expensive - I gave it to my sister who's a whiz at sewing, and she's making me a whole set for about $10 a nappy (they retail for about $40 by the time you get the inserts!). Have a look around on the net, lots of patterns. Here's a good site with patterns & tutorials! http://www.thenappynetwork.org.nz/diy.php.

Good luck!!

[Fizzy Izzy]

Thank you for the reassurance - I'll be prepared when people throw these objections my way now! And yes, flushable liners! I knew I'd forget something...

That looks like a good site kathleen, I have a sewing machine, but very little confidence in using it. Perhaps I should just be brave and give it a go. I found this pattern/tutorial too which looks good:
http://babyjibjib.blogspot.com/2008/08/ ... ocket.html
But I decided to give it a go with the terries/flat nappies first, then if it's not working for me try to overcome the fear of the sewing machine!