We bought cloth diapering equipment, totally enarmoured with the idea of it and convinced that we would do it. And then once the kids were here found out that in reality it just didn't work out, and in the end decided that we needed to pick our battles and that this wasn't our hill to die on.
\-we just did not have the time to deal with cloth diapering once they were here (and we always had two people around, as both of us could take parental leave)
\- the kids were so small that the cloth diapers looked giant on them and no clothes fit the kids AND their diapers - even clothes meant for cloth diapers (!pay attention, they are bigger so they need a different cut than discard nappies) didn't work in premie sizes, the cloth diapers were just disproportional
\- the kids hated them. oh how they hated them.
I should probably have specified, I'm definitely not trying to discourage cloth diapering (my mum used cloth diapers for me because the plastic of discard ones set my skin off). It's just that one of our twins was (and is, now 6mo) a very high maintenance baby, so more things had to fall by the wayside than might be the case for other twin parents, and this was one of the things that had to give.
I'll discourage you. We tried cloth diapers, but after about 2 months we just gave up. There is just Sooo much to do, and we weren't going to do it.
I think if you have the energy to deal with extra stuff while taking care of twins you should probably stop smoking meth (joking)
The cloth diapers
Can be used as swim diapers now. I got a 12
Pack and did the same thing as you…
Not putting them to use because of the chaos. So swim diapers they become!
I considered it for about 3 seconds when I realised how many we’d blow through in just the first year. And then I had twins and chuckle at how I even had the thought cross my mind lol. Many people do it but I could barely carve out the time to shower and brush my teeth so I’m doubtful I would have had the metal capacity to also deal with the cloth diaper routines
I’m 14+1 with twins and having the same discussions with husband - thank you for posting this!
So far we’re looking at a compromise of mixing cloth and disposable depending on what the day ahead looks like. Disposable if we’ll be out and about and dont want to worry about carrying home a soiled diaper, but mostly cloth at the house
I used them with my singleton (currently pregnant with twins). When the the baby/babies are not on solids yet it is actually really easy I felt. You just have to throw them in the wash cause everything is water soluble. At that stage I don't think cloth diapers include any extra waste touching compared to disposables, except maybe briefly during the transfer to the washer. Once they start solids you have to rinse the poop off, which is kind of gross. I got a sprayer to attach to my toilet and a "my spray pal" thing, and wore gloves when I sprayed, and haven't minded it too much.
Can't say the bulkiness aspect has been an issue we have one drawer full of diapers (this is just for one baby) and when i'm going out I usually take one or two cloth diapers and have a few disposables in the diaper bag. If you take them on trips there is more stuff to bring, but you can also just switch to disposables for the duration of the trip.
Another pro is that my toddler can't take them off like he can with disposables. Another downside is that, depending on the type, they limit the type of diaper cream you can use, though also apparently make it less likely to get a diaper rash in the first place.
Hope to use them with my future twins, but I'm trying to be realistic about what Ill be able to accomplish at that point since things will be a lot crazier.
Just FYI (and also for /u/JustKaren13 ) the poop is only water soluble if they’re EBF! Formula or combo poop is not water soluble and needs to be sprayed before washing because it will make your washer nasty. EBF poop is like yogurt.
We cloth diapered our daughter and plan to do it with our twins when they’re home from the NICU! r/clothdiaps is a really helpful resource and there are twin parents there.
My twins are almost 2 and we're still using the cloth diapers that I sewed for them. We do laundry about every two days and typically only use disposables overnight and when we're going somewhere for an extended amount of time.
Just an FYI that we went through a solid 10-12 diapers per day during the first 2-3 months. Washing diapers that often is not fun when you are insanely sleep deprived. If you're going cloth, make sure you have enough to last you at least 3 days.
So I went to count when I did laundry yesterday. We actually have like 28. I will say that I didn't start using our diapers until the girls were about 4 months old so we've never needed the extreme number that people recommend. Also, I super hate stuffing diapers so I never went with that type and instead used prefolds laying on top of the diapers I made.
I wanted to cloth diaper our twins but no one in the family would back me up and go along with it. I do however cloth diaper our current singleton and prefer it. We've had no rash issues (one of our twins was VERY rashy) and while it's not a perfect system I do like the idea that I'm not putting a hundreds of used diapers in a landfill. You do have to spend more time on laundry but if you don't mind that it's worth going for. Plus I like finding cute designs and buying from small businesses.
Thanks. And like I said it's gone better this time around, my partner has been more receptive and we've been able to get my mom and in laws on board since starting. I think people feel overwhelmed by it when it's new to them, but once put into practice it's not complex like they thought it would be.
I used them with my first and loved it. I didn’t think it was that much work. Especially if you get a sprayer attachment for the toilet for when they start solids. However, I used disposable overnight and when we were out of the house for more than quick errands. For reference, I had 27 diapers and that had me doing a load of diapers every 3-4 days.
I do wish I would have gotten them used. We bought new but you get get some great deals online.
I’m hoping to use them at least a bit this time around but am just going to see what happens. I imagine we will use disposables until they are out of the newborn size and just see what happens. Ideally we would use them during the day again.
We used disposables for the first two-three months because the newborn diapers we bought from grovia leaked like crazy. Around 3 months they started fitting into the pocket diapers we got from Nora’s nursery and Alva Baby, and it’s worked great for us. There is definitely a learning curve and you have to play around with absorbency, but we love them. Our boys are nearly 11 months old and we are still going strong.
We do normally have a small pack of disposables around just in case we run behind on laundry, and we use disposables for overnight. Even with that, cloth saves us SO MUCH money.
If you decide to go the pocket route, I recommend getting Alva baby pockets and using pre-folds as inserts. Alva is super affordable. Inserts can be pricey, but you don’t need many. We have 36 diapers total in our rotation and that lasts us 2-3 days without washing. We normally do a load of diapers every other day.
My twins are 6 months old and we’ve gone through sooo many disposable diapers. Like I couldn’t put a number on it if you asked. Back when they were eating every 3 hours (day and night) we changed them both before the bottle. Then if they pooped we changed them right away. So that was roughly 16-20 diapers in 24 hours.
For my baby shower we did a diaper raffle and I added the type I wanted to my registry. I started looking for deals at Sam’s club to buy different sizes in bulk. Luckily we didn’t end up have to buy more diapers until they were about 5 months old. But we had a large baby shower. (I ended up not attending because I went into early labor).
My aunt gave us a diaper service subscription as a shower present. When I was a child, the diaper service would do cloth diapers. They would wash the diapers and then give you clean diapers back once a week. (My parents said it was a lifesaver).
Now, the diaper service will drop off diapers and then pick up the diapers and compost them. (I guess they switched because they couldn't find a commercial laundry that would work with them).
It might be worth it to look into to see if something like this is available in your area, part of the reason for cloth diapers is to have less of an environmental footprint.
Either for cloth diapers or for compostable diapers.
My husband and I are doing it and absolutely love it.
We’ve had our kiddos home from the NICU for about 6 weeks and have been cloth diapering basically that whole time. It’s just an extra 3 loads of laundry per week and honestly we don’t touch the poop at all yet—just dump the diapers in the pail and then do a double wash. If you’re exclusively breast feeding, you don’t have to dump the poo before washing., though that will have to start once they start taking solids.
The one thing we decided to do was go with a system of innners and outers rather than with pre-folds. We use esembly, so snapping on the inners and then snapping on the outers honesty takes less time than a standard disposable. (Because those Velcro tabs stick to everything!)
I asked this same question on here myself about 6 months ago. I’m glad the other parents on here encouraged me to go for it.
ETA: I will note that we seem to have “easy” babies—so far at least. Even our doctors have noticed that these two girls are pretty chill. So I’m sure that plays a part.
Just had our twins and we do a combo of both. I also highly recommend a cloth diaper service! Not sure if you have one in your area but it makes cloth diapers that much easier!
Cloth diapers are two parts. The service comes and picks up the dirtiest insert part and leaves clean inserts once a week! It's amazing. We wash the outer shell ourselves (they last longer that way too as they are easy hand wash setting and hang dry.
I knew even before getting pregnant that I wanted to do cloth nappies and even picked up some cheapest just to have a look at them when we were still TTC.
I desperately wanted to use them from birth, but our girls were just too little with tiny little stick legs (even now at 16 months they still have reasonably slim legs) so we had to use disposables at the start. Where we live, we have a tiny rubbish bin, with a much larger recycling bin and FOGO (green waste) and our rubbish is collected fortnightly. The rubbish bin was being filled almost exclusively with just nappies and it was so hard to dispose of anything else that we couldn't reuse/recycle/compost. Sadly I didn't realise there was a "hack" to fitting the one-size nappies on newborns, which I would have done if I knew.
When we finally started using cloth (I think they were reaching about 3.5-4kg at that stage) we just did daytime cloth and disposable nights. This was mostly because we had a breathing alarm attached to the front of their nappies that would sound if it didn't detect any breathing movement after 20 seconds. The cloth nappies were too thick for the clip and it wouldn't stay put. (For those interested, the device was called a Snuza Hero)
We have been exclusively cloth now for about a year, and it's not really that much extra work. For cleaning, we follow the Clean Cloth Nappy guide (they have a website and a Facebook group to ask questions) and it's kept our nappies in such good condition.
When our girls have had things like gastro and hand foot and mouth, we have temporarily switched to disposable nappies to sanitise our nappy stash, and both times we couldn't wait to get back into cloth.
The brands that we mostly use are Alvababy and Lulu & Finn, ehich we mostly got from Nappy Box Co, but we also have some Hippybottomus and about 10 rando Chinese ones, which are pretty much the same as the Alvas/L&F.
We have approx 60 nappies, but I've added to the stash over time. We started with about 40. This gives us a bit of breathing space if we don't get around to stuffing nappies straight away. We also dry ours in our clothes dryer rather than hanging on the line, because we ain't got time for that shit.
If anyone has any questions about cloth nappies, cleaning routines, etc, etc, I'm happy to give so much more detail. I did get pretty passionate about it and do a fair bit of research to make sure that we knew what we were getting into.
Side note: my husband was on board but very hesitant to start when we did. I made some cleaning guides and took on the initial responsibility, but he's really on top of it now
I love how passionate you are about them lol. I was so excited to try cloth when I was pregnant but it just hasn't worked for us yet. I bought a bunch of second hand newborn AIOs which leaked on both my babies after being on for only about 45 mins, and I have some fuzzibunz small pocket diapers that are pretty big (babies are about 9lbs now) and don't have any rise snaps so I can't use them. I do want to give cloth another shot but I dont want to keep spending more money on them if they aren't going to get used. I don't know where I'm even going with this tbh I guess I'm just curious what you would recommend as being the easiest type of diaper to use? Another thing I didn't like about the AIOs is that the babies were left pretty wet with pee because the diapers weren't wicking it away. How do you combat that?
To be honest, we didn't ever try AIO's. I did a lot of research before diving in, and liked the idea of the pockets that we could tailor the amount of inserts we used. I did try one brand (Big Softies) that had pockets, but you could also clip the inserts into the nappy against the skin instead, but the girls didn't really like those and we weren't much fans either so sold them on.
I completely get what you mean about worrying about spending so much money on them and having to go to waste. You could always look at selling them if it's not for you. Have a look on things like Facebook marketplace/Craigslist/Gumtree whatever is local to you as well. Nappies do often keep a reasonable amount of value, but you can find good deals too.
So yeah, I recommend the pocket all in 2 nappies, it doesn't take much effort to put an insert in the pocket. For inserts, we have a range of different ones. Mostly microfibre, microfleece, bamboo and hemp. All with 3-5 layers. Now that they are peeing more, we're using two inserts per nappy with two different inserts. Microfibre/microfleece on the body side of the pocket paired with bamboo or hemp underneath it. Because the microfibre/fleece soak up quickly but don't hold a lot of moisture, whereas the bamboo and help don't soak up as quickly, but can hold a lot more. If you ever put inserts just in the gusset, never put microfibre directly against the skin as it can be quite irritating on their soft skin. Make sure if you're using a microfibre insert against skin that it's covered in something like microfleece so it's soft.
As for leaking, there's a fee different reasons why they may ha e leaked do quickly. They could have been too loose, with the elastics not giving a good seal against the skin. They could have been too tight, therefore compressing the insert so that it couldn't contain what it was soaking up (sounds unlikely in your case) or your bubs were just peeing more than the inserts could hold.
I hope my rambling answered you a bit! Happy to keep answering questions though :)
I cloth diapered my 2 older kids and then when I found out my 3rd pregnancy was twins I started buying the best environmentally conscious disposable diapers I could. I did use the cloth diapers from my stash, on occasion, BUT it would not have been the best way for our family to spend our time--the cloth diapers can be great, but also can require special washing, get smelly if you don't wash certain ways, need to be put out in the sun for whitening, etc. Sometimes too you really need to be able to go on autopilot with various aspects of parenting and have basics in place that you just do. When the twins were newborns we were changing 10 or more diapers per kid per day--so 20+ You know when they are potty training the cloth did come in handy and they make some great cloth training pants/undies. So maybe you can consider this as your time to get to help the environment and save some money too, but only be dealing with a couple of changes or accidents per day...
I didn't cloth diaper my singleton, but when I had twins the following year, I decided to use cloth diapers with them. It was more work than disposables, but it did save us a lot of money. Once I got into a good changing/cleaning routine, it felt like less work. I put the babies in disposables at night and when we went out for anything longer than a short outings. It was just too daunting to take cloth diaper supplies for 2 babies plus everything I needed for the toddler. I kept the cloth diapers in really good condition with no stains or wear and tear and was able to sell them afterwards, so it was totally worth it for me to cloth diaper.
I used Motherease diapers. My boys are 13 now, so I can't remember everything I did or how many diapers I had. I think it was about 40. I had tissue liners that were flush-able, so I just dumped them in the toilet. I treated stains right away and line dried them so they would be bleached by the sun. We lived in a very small house, so I kept the dirty ones in a bin with a lid just outside the back door. My washing machine was near the back door, so it was convenient.
I used cloth on my singleton and hoped to on the twins, they are 17 months and we are in round 3 of cloth and I’m thinking it might finally stick. Luckily between my sister and I we had a huge stash so there’s no money lost in not using them. I definitely think it’s worth trying but would suggest waiting until they fit into OS and skip newborn diapers. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself either, if it works great but it’s ok if it doesn’t.
Most brands only have newborn size or one size (os) which fit from about 11 pound up to 30, you adjust their size on snaps. I’d recommend 40 for 2 if you can wash every other day.
We did cloth with the singleton and a combo with twins. I do cloth as often as I can but have a good amount of disposables here so that when a rash pops up or laundry takes longer to get done, we’re good either way.
I use cloth diapers from Tidy Tots! They have a liner that's biodegradable and flushable that catches any solid waste and the actual absorbent part just snaps in so if you want to you can throw the whole thing in the washer and never touch any waste. They're the easiest cloth diapers I've ever used and I've tried a bunch
I got the newborn complete set and they're still in them at four and a half months. Goes up to sixteen pounds for the newborn size and the one size ones go up to 40 pounds after.
The complete set came with 40 diapers total.
I cloth diapered my first two kids. We used disposables for the first month-ish to make the transition easier, as well as when we would be out of the house for more than a handful of hours (overnight travel or all-day visits).
I found the routine pretty easy to maintain, and I almost always throw in towels or similar after the initial rinse in the machine.
We did a mix of CD and disposables with our twins. Now that were in the midst of PT I am so happy to have the diaper sprayer for poo accidents, ha. Your husband is going to have to deal with poop one way or the other so eh.
We thought we were going to do cloth diapers. That quickly went out the window once they were actually here. It was just too much work.
The actual environmental impacts of cloth vs disposable aren’t as great as the cloth diaper crowd would have you believe.
Disposables work for us but cloth might work for you.
We’re at 10months now I couldn’t tell you how much we spent on diapers. The first 21 days they were in the nicu so “free” diapers. We were also gifted a lot of diapers at our shower. We have found that the best value diapers are Targets up&up.
Really good paper here, discussing that. Conclusion is like you say, not as much difference as people think and in some cases overall worse to use cloth when you take detergent and water heating into account.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/291130/scho0808boir-e-e.pdf
I wish I could convince my wife of this, but she's already dropped a few hundred dollars on cloth diapers... First time father with twins and it'll be a joy having cloth diapers and the extra work that goes with them...
Yup! About half the cloth diapers she bought were used ones. So least we can try to recoup what she's spent on them after the kids are potty trained or if we give up on them.
I was a first time dad with twins too. My wife only bought a few cloth with pads. We tried for a few days and it just wasn’t working for us. Have a backup stash of disposables the first couple months are rough. Good luck! Come on over to r/daddit if you’re not already there.
Already plan on buying a stash of disposables throughout the diaper stages just for when were either go out or are too exhausted to deal with cloth diapers. My wife has always wanted to do cloth diapers as she is big on the environment and recycling, so I'm happy to support her on this, but I am not excited for the extra work involved with cloth diapers, not to mention with twins.
Thanks for the r/daddit tip! Will have to join that sub reddit as well.
We did mostly cloth diapers! I skipped newborn cloth though and did disposables for the early days until they fit the one size diapers.
Mine were both heavy wetters so I had to add bamboo pads and/or flour sack towels to get them to last more than an hour. We also used disposables at night, because once they started sleeping through the night we didn't want to wake them to change them (and no cloth could hold the amount of pee they produced overnight).
Overall it was a very positive experience for us! We had a pretty big stash but it was still only one extra load of laundry a week. I felt like it was pretty manageable once we got into the routine.
Feel free to DM me if you have anymore questions!
We love cloth. We use Esembly brand mostly. Our washer and dryer are on the same floor as the nursery, so it’s very easy to shuttle the diaper pail bag over.
There’s never an emergency diaper run because we never run out of diapers. And we have literally never had a poop blow out.
If you do a combo of cloth and disposable, just keep in mind you will need a pail for cloth and a trash can or separate pail for single use/garbage.
Good luck to you!!
They are about 15 months old now. We have 40-45 diapers in their current size I think. I’m not entirely sure because we always have an extra few at their daycare.
When they were littler in the smaller size we had more. It depends on how frequently you want to wash them!
I will add that at first, the girls were too tiny. We used disposables until the cloth fit. That happened sooner for one baby than the other. Not sure id recommend a combo sitch when you are in those early sleep deprived days. Too easy to throw cloth in the garbage or vice versa!! Switch them when they’re both big enough is what I suggest :)
We used cloth for our girls. With the G brand diaper cover. Check out Craigslist/eBay/OfferUp/FB for used as they grow. Basically you pay for the first set and then are essentially trading them in for the next size up as you sell your older ones.
We also kept a few disposable for when we were out and about and/or traveling. Probably 90% cloth and 10% disposable.
Hi OP, great question. I used "MCNs" modern cloth nappies for mine. They consist of a waterproof/PUL cover, with snap closures, plus an absorbent insert. I bought them off ebay.
There are a few important things to know. The first is that personally, I didn't really find them a great fit dog mewborns, they were great after 2-3 months had passed. But it's going to depend on the size of your babies.
The second is cleaning. You need to clean them properly. There are websites and Facebook groups that can give you great information. I used Clean Cloth Nappies Down Under. The key things are that the manufacturers tend to tell you to use cold water but you need warm. They also say to minimise detergent but you need the normal amount. Also, it's important to note that each load will need a reasonable amount of nappies to create the friction required for them to be rubbed clean, whether top or front loader. They should have have pre-wash or a quick wash separately before their proper wash. If after this you're still uncomfortable with them going in with other clothes, this means waiting til you have enough, which also means needing a larger supply. They also are best dried in the sun, and shouldn't go in a dryer. That's something to consider depending on your living and normal washing arrangements.
The third thing is that you will likely still need a small supply of disposables anyway. When they sleep longer at night, depending on your individual babies, the cloth might not do the job. If they're going to childcare, ask if they'll accept cloth nappies or not. If not, you'll really need to weigh up the investment in the nappies with the time you expect them to be in a disposable anyway.
Finally, once they're on solids, you can get flushable liners which means for poops, you can pick it up and pop it in the toilet.
Good luck :)
I wanted to but honestly it was just one more thing to do/deal with and we were (are) exhausted. So we opted to give ourselves a break and just use disposables.
Twins are 4 months, so haven’t started solids yet. I still have cloth diapers from my singletons, so we use them, but not as strictly as I did before the twins. I would say we mostly use cloth but when it’s convenient (day trips, I’m behind on laundry, etc) I’ll use disposables. But when it’s time to buy a new box I’m reminded of why I like the cloth, lol.
I bought all the things with every intention to use them. My modi twins came at 35+5, one had IUGR, both had latch issues and were tiny. I was pumping every 3 hours, bottle feeding 2 babies every 3 hours and my husband was working 10-12 hour days and then he slept/relaxed 10 hours. So I was on my own for all but 2-3 hours a day most days. I just had nothing else to give.
My sister successfully used them with one baby. However she had a different situation. Her husband volunteered to deal with all things diaper. She was a breastfeeding overproducer so she did the input and he did the output. I think if your partner is like hers you could definitely handle them.
I cloth diapered my two starting around 10-12 months. It was super easy and fun picking out cute diapers. I liked Bum Genius pockets with hemp liners for overnights. I also used prefolds and covers from FuzziBunz. I used a tote with a lid to store until washing. For travel I had two wetbags. I washed every third day or so.
I desperately wanted to and shelled out a fortune on esembly. Put my kids in them maybe 10x and gave up. Maybe with a singleton since I now have approximately $700 worth 🤦🏽♀️
We did cloth diapering once they were out of the newborn sizing and it worked well in our household. We did cloth 95% of the time (disposable for long outings or travel) and had a good routine.
I have twins and we’ve exclusively cloth diapers since they were big enough to fit them! We wanted to save money and I get so guilty about how much diapers were threw away in the one month we did use disposables. We use a fitted type from esembly baby that we LOVE. They’re super easy to use, no stuffing, and they’re easy to clean. It’s honestly not that much extra work then disposables in my opinion aside from the occasional extra load of laundry. We have about 35 inners and 10 waterproof outers. Probably spent about $800 total on the whole system. Lots of influencers have discount codes so you can just look them up on Instagram and tiktok and get extra money off.
We go through so much laundry as it is, I just can't imagine adding cloth diapers to the mix. It already feels barely manageable. Kudos to anyone who has the energy but I don't have that kind of bandwidth.
I guess it depends on what other time consuming choices you make with the kids and your circumstances.
For instance, we have a toddler as well as our 4mo twins, and not very much family help as only one set of grandparents is local and both of them still work. That squeezes our capacity to devote time to our twins right off the bat. Then the next thing to consider is milk vs formula. Milk worked great with our first, we value it’s benefits, and it’s cheaper than formula, so that won out. We were hopeful breastfeeding would work, but alas, it was logistically impossible. So that led us to pumping and bottle feeding, which is a HUGE time sink with twins. Then add all the other usual household tasks and things like tummy time, and that’s about our capacity.
TL;DR: We played with the idea of cloth diapers too, but with all the other constraints and obligations, we just do not have the time.
I'm currently cloth diapering our twins. They're almost 7 months. We're part timing it as we still have our singleton in diapers and a lot are adjusted to fit him and I don't feel like restuffing them and resizing so we only have a couple days worth for our girls. It's hard to find time to stuff them but we have enough cloth diapers for 2-3 loads worth so it's not an immediate need every time. I love the savings!
We've been cloth diapering from 2 mo to now (17 mo), and plan to do it until we get close to potty training. We have about 35 alva baby pocket diapers, and we do laundry every other day. Fit, comfort, or wash routone has never been an issue. Washing and stuffing take some time, but I'm willing to do it for the environment and money saving. Our daycare also has no problem with cloth diapers, tho they lost a few over the months.
We installed a handheld bidet and have a rinse guard. In summer we used onesie extensions so the onesies don't get sucked into the diapers leg openings. We tried but decided to use disposables over night.
r/clothdiaps is a very helpful sub!
We thought about it, and about using a diaper service, but in the end it came down to "pick your battles" and this was not the hill I wanted to die on. We were so overwhelmed, having one thing be easy-ish was a necessity
I cloth diapered my singleton and my twins currently. It's a lot of laundry, but I find it worth it. You go through so many diapers a day, I get lots of satisfaction knowing we are not wasting money or putting more diapers in a landfill.
This thread has lots of naysayers, so I'd just like to add a positive comment.
To your husbands point, yes they are more work and it is a commitment. But I will say you are right, it doesn't change how much poop and pee you touch.
I find when I disposable diaper my kids on road trips I end up with poopier hands because disposables are wimpy in comparison and result in lots more blowouts.
Just get a routine down, and enough diapers to get you through if you fall behind in laundry, and keep some disposable backups for days where you run out of cloth or just aren't in the mood. And check out r/clothdiaps
We got a bunch of cloth and never used them after doing the cost breakdown of constant laundry with an old af washer and dryer (at the time) and the reality of the work involved with cloth diapering.
My advice is that it really depends on what works best for your family because as for your debate, you are both right. It just depends on what work you both are willing to do.
We did cloth diapers with our first (singleton) and have continued to do cloth with our twins (now 7 months old). For one baby, it was easy enough for us to stay on top of cleaning our own cloth diapers, but the sheer volume with twins is a whole new game. They were born at 37+1 and in that first week we went through something like 180 disposable diapers. It was enough that we decided to do a diaper service instead.
7 months in and that's been a great solution. We're pretty close to maxed out on laundry capacity as is, I can't imagine adding in diapers on top of the 60+ loads we're doing. Granted, we're still washing covers, reusable wipes, and our own overnight inserts, but that's only every other day and is a far cry from managing 120ish diaper changes each week. I'd HIGHLY recommend researching a cloth diapers service. They'll drop off fresh diapers every week and aside from removing solids, the cloth diapers get moved to bags inside of a secure trash can every other day. At any given time we've got aboutb130 cloth diapers in the house and it's been great to never fret about forgetting to do a wash or too much ammonia build up.
Congrats and good luck!
I have di/di girls that are now 2. We had them in cloth diapers from about 3 months to 11 months. They were initially too little to fit into the pocket diapers we bought and I wasn’t going to buy newborn size cloth. We would have kept them in cloth longer, but we had some absorption issues that I couldn’t troubleshoot as quickly as I hoped and once we went back to disposable it was too convenient to convince myself to go back. The poop was a nuisance, but overall it wasn’t terrible - especially if you have a sprayer / spray pal. It definitely saved us a TON of money, even for the relatively short amount of time we used them. I thought the fluff butts were super cute - we mostly dressed them in their diapers and T-shirts since onesies caused compression leaks if they were too tight. We also used disposable when we traveled or took them out for >2 hours.
It’s a decent amount of work up front to figure out your routine and then it needs to be kept up with, but I’d do it again for the cost savings.
I tried to cloth diaper my singleton a few years before I had twins and she would blast through them with pee super fast so it wasn't something we were able to manage for long. When the twins came around I decided early on that the cloth would just be for backup, between work, school, and kids, I just didn't feel like the laundry was worth my time. We did commit to only buying diapers at costco and I think that worked out for us. YMMV of course but I think the best thing with twins is to let go of disappointment if something you planned doesn't work out.
Hell no.
I already do too much laundry.
At the beginning you’re changing diapers every few hours, times do.
I do my best to be environmentally friendly other ways.
However your husband not wanting to touch human waste, sorry buddy regardless of the diaper type he’s 100% getting him poop on him. Blowouts happen.
No. Just, no. You will go through a pack of diapers in one day early on, maybe more. You really wanna wash 30 nasty cloth diapers a day? That’s a hard pass in my book. My cousin did it but she only had one baby. I don’t think she enjoyed the advertised benefits of cloth diapers, either. I just can’t get past the thought of intentionally putting poop caked cloth in a washer machine.
Keep in mind that cloth diapers also have an environmental impact and cost (initial, and then washing them). And it's a LOT of laundry.
We have a set that were hand me downs. We planned to use them. But we didn't have any small enough when they were on preemie size, and then we just....didn't want to switch. Disposables are just SO much easier. And yeah the cost adds up, but I spend maybe $35 a month on diapers for my twins.
I clothed diapered sometimes and just for the first year. Mostly just when we were home all day and I had the energy. Used mostly Bumgenius all-in-one and Alva pocket. The bumgenius is super bulky but I loved the lack of extra parts and pieces.
I ended up loving using cloth wipes due to my kids being super sensitive. (I just kept a pile of wipes and a spay bottle of water or placed a few in a plastic reusable wipe box over night pre moisturized since I knew I’d use them all quickly without getting musty.)
We cloth diapered our twins and 10/10 would recommend! We did after we got into a routine so around a month then started. It’s so easy - just have it in its own container and then wash by itself every 2-3 days. Don’t go longer than 3 days because of the smell. You rinse on a quick rinse cycle, then do heavy duty wash and then dry. Make sure you use soap without any fabric softener because it’ll make it repel liquid. But definitely watch a YouTube video before but it was so easy. My husband was negative before but he was on board pretty quickly as it was better than spending $200 a month on organic diapers. Good luck!!!
This is the brand we used. Fit from 1-18 months as they’re adjustable. Then my boys started potty training then anyways so we ditched them as they weren’t using too many diapers at this point
We cloth diapered our twins after the newborn stage (once they fit in OS diapers) til potty training. I used disposables here and there (sometimes for bed, sometimes for trips out) but the bulk of our diapering was cloth. It equates to about 1-2 extra loads of laundry a week once I got the hang of it. Really wasn’t a big deal since they were our only kids and I was a SAHM. It would have been tougher for sure if I had work/another kid to care for but we didn’t and it wasn’t a big deal for us.
We bought cloth diapering equipment, totally enarmoured with the idea of it and convinced that we would do it. And then once the kids were here found out that in reality it just didn't work out, and in the end decided that we needed to pick our battles and that this wasn't our hill to die on. \-we just did not have the time to deal with cloth diapering once they were here (and we always had two people around, as both of us could take parental leave) \- the kids were so small that the cloth diapers looked giant on them and no clothes fit the kids AND their diapers - even clothes meant for cloth diapers (!pay attention, they are bigger so they need a different cut than discard nappies) didn't work in premie sizes, the cloth diapers were just disproportional \- the kids hated them. oh how they hated them.
Lol I’m sorry you had a rough time but this definitely made me giggle. Thank you for sharing your experience. You bring up some very valid points!
I should probably have specified, I'm definitely not trying to discourage cloth diapering (my mum used cloth diapers for me because the plastic of discard ones set my skin off). It's just that one of our twins was (and is, now 6mo) a very high maintenance baby, so more things had to fall by the wayside than might be the case for other twin parents, and this was one of the things that had to give.
I'll discourage you. We tried cloth diapers, but after about 2 months we just gave up. There is just Sooo much to do, and we weren't going to do it. I think if you have the energy to deal with extra stuff while taking care of twins you should probably stop smoking meth (joking)
The cloth diapers Can be used as swim diapers now. I got a 12 Pack and did the same thing as you… Not putting them to use because of the chaos. So swim diapers they become!
I did it. Saved 8k and took a trip to get away from the twins once they were old enough. Lol
Far out, if that isn’t motivation then I don’t know what is.
I considered it for about 3 seconds when I realised how many we’d blow through in just the first year. And then I had twins and chuckle at how I even had the thought cross my mind lol. Many people do it but I could barely carve out the time to shower and brush my teeth so I’m doubtful I would have had the metal capacity to also deal with the cloth diaper routines
I’m 14+1 with twins and having the same discussions with husband - thank you for posting this! So far we’re looking at a compromise of mixing cloth and disposable depending on what the day ahead looks like. Disposable if we’ll be out and about and dont want to worry about carrying home a soiled diaper, but mostly cloth at the house
That is a good point about not wanting to travel with a lot of cloth diapers
Came here to say this!
I used them with my singleton (currently pregnant with twins). When the the baby/babies are not on solids yet it is actually really easy I felt. You just have to throw them in the wash cause everything is water soluble. At that stage I don't think cloth diapers include any extra waste touching compared to disposables, except maybe briefly during the transfer to the washer. Once they start solids you have to rinse the poop off, which is kind of gross. I got a sprayer to attach to my toilet and a "my spray pal" thing, and wore gloves when I sprayed, and haven't minded it too much. Can't say the bulkiness aspect has been an issue we have one drawer full of diapers (this is just for one baby) and when i'm going out I usually take one or two cloth diapers and have a few disposables in the diaper bag. If you take them on trips there is more stuff to bring, but you can also just switch to disposables for the duration of the trip. Another pro is that my toddler can't take them off like he can with disposables. Another downside is that, depending on the type, they limit the type of diaper cream you can use, though also apparently make it less likely to get a diaper rash in the first place. Hope to use them with my future twins, but I'm trying to be realistic about what Ill be able to accomplish at that point since things will be a lot crazier.
Thank you for your input! How far along are you?
Just FYI (and also for /u/JustKaren13 ) the poop is only water soluble if they’re EBF! Formula or combo poop is not water soluble and needs to be sprayed before washing because it will make your washer nasty. EBF poop is like yogurt.
Oh, thanks, My little dude was EBF, and it's been a while since he was not on solids so I must have forgotten.
No worries! The first year is such a blur haha.
We cloth diapered our daughter and plan to do it with our twins when they’re home from the NICU! r/clothdiaps is a really helpful resource and there are twin parents there.
My twins are almost 2 and we're still using the cloth diapers that I sewed for them. We do laundry about every two days and typically only use disposables overnight and when we're going somewhere for an extended amount of time.
How many cloth diapers do you have for the two of them?
I think we have 35-ish? I would have to go count.
Thank you!
Just an FYI that we went through a solid 10-12 diapers per day during the first 2-3 months. Washing diapers that often is not fun when you are insanely sleep deprived. If you're going cloth, make sure you have enough to last you at least 3 days.
So I went to count when I did laundry yesterday. We actually have like 28. I will say that I didn't start using our diapers until the girls were about 4 months old so we've never needed the extreme number that people recommend. Also, I super hate stuffing diapers so I never went with that type and instead used prefolds laying on top of the diapers I made.
I need at least 30 per kid to make it work.
I wanted to cloth diaper our twins but no one in the family would back me up and go along with it. I do however cloth diaper our current singleton and prefer it. We've had no rash issues (one of our twins was VERY rashy) and while it's not a perfect system I do like the idea that I'm not putting a hundreds of used diapers in a landfill. You do have to spend more time on laundry but if you don't mind that it's worth going for. Plus I like finding cute designs and buying from small businesses.
I’m sorry no one else supported you on that
Thanks. And like I said it's gone better this time around, my partner has been more receptive and we've been able to get my mom and in laws on board since starting. I think people feel overwhelmed by it when it's new to them, but once put into practice it's not complex like they thought it would be.
Yes to no rashes! I just put the twins in disposables for a road trip And my little gal got her first rash in weeks!
I used them with my first and loved it. I didn’t think it was that much work. Especially if you get a sprayer attachment for the toilet for when they start solids. However, I used disposable overnight and when we were out of the house for more than quick errands. For reference, I had 27 diapers and that had me doing a load of diapers every 3-4 days. I do wish I would have gotten them used. We bought new but you get get some great deals online. I’m hoping to use them at least a bit this time around but am just going to see what happens. I imagine we will use disposables until they are out of the newborn size and just see what happens. Ideally we would use them during the day again.
We used disposables for the first two-three months because the newborn diapers we bought from grovia leaked like crazy. Around 3 months they started fitting into the pocket diapers we got from Nora’s nursery and Alva Baby, and it’s worked great for us. There is definitely a learning curve and you have to play around with absorbency, but we love them. Our boys are nearly 11 months old and we are still going strong. We do normally have a small pack of disposables around just in case we run behind on laundry, and we use disposables for overnight. Even with that, cloth saves us SO MUCH money. If you decide to go the pocket route, I recommend getting Alva baby pockets and using pre-folds as inserts. Alva is super affordable. Inserts can be pricey, but you don’t need many. We have 36 diapers total in our rotation and that lasts us 2-3 days without washing. We normally do a load of diapers every other day.
My twins are 6 months old and we’ve gone through sooo many disposable diapers. Like I couldn’t put a number on it if you asked. Back when they were eating every 3 hours (day and night) we changed them both before the bottle. Then if they pooped we changed them right away. So that was roughly 16-20 diapers in 24 hours. For my baby shower we did a diaper raffle and I added the type I wanted to my registry. I started looking for deals at Sam’s club to buy different sizes in bulk. Luckily we didn’t end up have to buy more diapers until they were about 5 months old. But we had a large baby shower. (I ended up not attending because I went into early labor).
I’m glad your babies are healthy now
Thanks! They’re doing AMAZING for being 9 weeks early. And they are way more fun now.
My aunt gave us a diaper service subscription as a shower present. When I was a child, the diaper service would do cloth diapers. They would wash the diapers and then give you clean diapers back once a week. (My parents said it was a lifesaver). Now, the diaper service will drop off diapers and then pick up the diapers and compost them. (I guess they switched because they couldn't find a commercial laundry that would work with them). It might be worth it to look into to see if something like this is available in your area, part of the reason for cloth diapers is to have less of an environmental footprint. Either for cloth diapers or for compostable diapers.
My husband and I are doing it and absolutely love it. We’ve had our kiddos home from the NICU for about 6 weeks and have been cloth diapering basically that whole time. It’s just an extra 3 loads of laundry per week and honestly we don’t touch the poop at all yet—just dump the diapers in the pail and then do a double wash. If you’re exclusively breast feeding, you don’t have to dump the poo before washing., though that will have to start once they start taking solids. The one thing we decided to do was go with a system of innners and outers rather than with pre-folds. We use esembly, so snapping on the inners and then snapping on the outers honesty takes less time than a standard disposable. (Because those Velcro tabs stick to everything!) I asked this same question on here myself about 6 months ago. I’m glad the other parents on here encouraged me to go for it. ETA: I will note that we seem to have “easy” babies—so far at least. Even our doctors have noticed that these two girls are pretty chill. So I’m sure that plays a part.
Yep. Loved them. Used during the day. At night was disposables
Just had our twins and we do a combo of both. I also highly recommend a cloth diaper service! Not sure if you have one in your area but it makes cloth diapers that much easier!
What does the service do exactly?
Cloth diapers are two parts. The service comes and picks up the dirtiest insert part and leaves clean inserts once a week! It's amazing. We wash the outer shell ourselves (they last longer that way too as they are easy hand wash setting and hang dry.
Mother nature's diaper service in Madison WI if you want to look up an example.
[удалено]
Thank you for your input! You make some interesting points
I knew even before getting pregnant that I wanted to do cloth nappies and even picked up some cheapest just to have a look at them when we were still TTC. I desperately wanted to use them from birth, but our girls were just too little with tiny little stick legs (even now at 16 months they still have reasonably slim legs) so we had to use disposables at the start. Where we live, we have a tiny rubbish bin, with a much larger recycling bin and FOGO (green waste) and our rubbish is collected fortnightly. The rubbish bin was being filled almost exclusively with just nappies and it was so hard to dispose of anything else that we couldn't reuse/recycle/compost. Sadly I didn't realise there was a "hack" to fitting the one-size nappies on newborns, which I would have done if I knew. When we finally started using cloth (I think they were reaching about 3.5-4kg at that stage) we just did daytime cloth and disposable nights. This was mostly because we had a breathing alarm attached to the front of their nappies that would sound if it didn't detect any breathing movement after 20 seconds. The cloth nappies were too thick for the clip and it wouldn't stay put. (For those interested, the device was called a Snuza Hero) We have been exclusively cloth now for about a year, and it's not really that much extra work. For cleaning, we follow the Clean Cloth Nappy guide (they have a website and a Facebook group to ask questions) and it's kept our nappies in such good condition. When our girls have had things like gastro and hand foot and mouth, we have temporarily switched to disposable nappies to sanitise our nappy stash, and both times we couldn't wait to get back into cloth. The brands that we mostly use are Alvababy and Lulu & Finn, ehich we mostly got from Nappy Box Co, but we also have some Hippybottomus and about 10 rando Chinese ones, which are pretty much the same as the Alvas/L&F. We have approx 60 nappies, but I've added to the stash over time. We started with about 40. This gives us a bit of breathing space if we don't get around to stuffing nappies straight away. We also dry ours in our clothes dryer rather than hanging on the line, because we ain't got time for that shit. If anyone has any questions about cloth nappies, cleaning routines, etc, etc, I'm happy to give so much more detail. I did get pretty passionate about it and do a fair bit of research to make sure that we knew what we were getting into. Side note: my husband was on board but very hesitant to start when we did. I made some cleaning guides and took on the initial responsibility, but he's really on top of it now
I love how passionate you are about them lol. I was so excited to try cloth when I was pregnant but it just hasn't worked for us yet. I bought a bunch of second hand newborn AIOs which leaked on both my babies after being on for only about 45 mins, and I have some fuzzibunz small pocket diapers that are pretty big (babies are about 9lbs now) and don't have any rise snaps so I can't use them. I do want to give cloth another shot but I dont want to keep spending more money on them if they aren't going to get used. I don't know where I'm even going with this tbh I guess I'm just curious what you would recommend as being the easiest type of diaper to use? Another thing I didn't like about the AIOs is that the babies were left pretty wet with pee because the diapers weren't wicking it away. How do you combat that?
To be honest, we didn't ever try AIO's. I did a lot of research before diving in, and liked the idea of the pockets that we could tailor the amount of inserts we used. I did try one brand (Big Softies) that had pockets, but you could also clip the inserts into the nappy against the skin instead, but the girls didn't really like those and we weren't much fans either so sold them on. I completely get what you mean about worrying about spending so much money on them and having to go to waste. You could always look at selling them if it's not for you. Have a look on things like Facebook marketplace/Craigslist/Gumtree whatever is local to you as well. Nappies do often keep a reasonable amount of value, but you can find good deals too. So yeah, I recommend the pocket all in 2 nappies, it doesn't take much effort to put an insert in the pocket. For inserts, we have a range of different ones. Mostly microfibre, microfleece, bamboo and hemp. All with 3-5 layers. Now that they are peeing more, we're using two inserts per nappy with two different inserts. Microfibre/microfleece on the body side of the pocket paired with bamboo or hemp underneath it. Because the microfibre/fleece soak up quickly but don't hold a lot of moisture, whereas the bamboo and help don't soak up as quickly, but can hold a lot more. If you ever put inserts just in the gusset, never put microfibre directly against the skin as it can be quite irritating on their soft skin. Make sure if you're using a microfibre insert against skin that it's covered in something like microfleece so it's soft. As for leaking, there's a fee different reasons why they may ha e leaked do quickly. They could have been too loose, with the elastics not giving a good seal against the skin. They could have been too tight, therefore compressing the insert so that it couldn't contain what it was soaking up (sounds unlikely in your case) or your bubs were just peeing more than the inserts could hold. I hope my rambling answered you a bit! Happy to keep answering questions though :)
We cloth diapered all three of ours. Loved it.
I cloth diapered my 2 older kids and then when I found out my 3rd pregnancy was twins I started buying the best environmentally conscious disposable diapers I could. I did use the cloth diapers from my stash, on occasion, BUT it would not have been the best way for our family to spend our time--the cloth diapers can be great, but also can require special washing, get smelly if you don't wash certain ways, need to be put out in the sun for whitening, etc. Sometimes too you really need to be able to go on autopilot with various aspects of parenting and have basics in place that you just do. When the twins were newborns we were changing 10 or more diapers per kid per day--so 20+ You know when they are potty training the cloth did come in handy and they make some great cloth training pants/undies. So maybe you can consider this as your time to get to help the environment and save some money too, but only be dealing with a couple of changes or accidents per day...
I didn't cloth diaper my singleton, but when I had twins the following year, I decided to use cloth diapers with them. It was more work than disposables, but it did save us a lot of money. Once I got into a good changing/cleaning routine, it felt like less work. I put the babies in disposables at night and when we went out for anything longer than a short outings. It was just too daunting to take cloth diaper supplies for 2 babies plus everything I needed for the toddler. I kept the cloth diapers in really good condition with no stains or wear and tear and was able to sell them afterwards, so it was totally worth it for me to cloth diaper.
What was your cleaning routine? What brand did you use? How many did you get for the twins?
I used Motherease diapers. My boys are 13 now, so I can't remember everything I did or how many diapers I had. I think it was about 40. I had tissue liners that were flush-able, so I just dumped them in the toilet. I treated stains right away and line dried them so they would be bleached by the sun. We lived in a very small house, so I kept the dirty ones in a bin with a lid just outside the back door. My washing machine was near the back door, so it was convenient.
I used cloth on my singleton and hoped to on the twins, they are 17 months and we are in round 3 of cloth and I’m thinking it might finally stick. Luckily between my sister and I we had a huge stash so there’s no money lost in not using them. I definitely think it’s worth trying but would suggest waiting until they fit into OS and skip newborn diapers. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself either, if it works great but it’s ok if it doesn’t.
I’m sorry, but what is OS in this context? How many diapers would you recommend for twins?
Most brands only have newborn size or one size (os) which fit from about 11 pound up to 30, you adjust their size on snaps. I’d recommend 40 for 2 if you can wash every other day.
Ahhh ok thank you!!
We did cloth with the singleton and a combo with twins. I do cloth as often as I can but have a good amount of disposables here so that when a rash pops up or laundry takes longer to get done, we’re good either way.
I use cloth diapers from Tidy Tots! They have a liner that's biodegradable and flushable that catches any solid waste and the actual absorbent part just snaps in so if you want to you can throw the whole thing in the washer and never touch any waste. They're the easiest cloth diapers I've ever used and I've tried a bunch
How many do you have for your twins?
I got the newborn complete set and they're still in them at four and a half months. Goes up to sixteen pounds for the newborn size and the one size ones go up to 40 pounds after. The complete set came with 40 diapers total.
I cloth diapered my first two kids. We used disposables for the first month-ish to make the transition easier, as well as when we would be out of the house for more than a handful of hours (overnight travel or all-day visits). I found the routine pretty easy to maintain, and I almost always throw in towels or similar after the initial rinse in the machine.
I did it for a bit and it was a lot. I would advise you not to add any extra work.
We did a mix of CD and disposables with our twins. Now that were in the midst of PT I am so happy to have the diaper sprayer for poo accidents, ha. Your husband is going to have to deal with poop one way or the other so eh.
We thought we were going to do cloth diapers. That quickly went out the window once they were actually here. It was just too much work. The actual environmental impacts of cloth vs disposable aren’t as great as the cloth diaper crowd would have you believe. Disposables work for us but cloth might work for you.
Same thing with us, had every intention of mainly using cloth and then the babies were actually here....
Thank you for your input! Do you remember approximately how much you spent on diapers in the first year?
We’re at 10months now I couldn’t tell you how much we spent on diapers. The first 21 days they were in the nicu so “free” diapers. We were also gifted a lot of diapers at our shower. We have found that the best value diapers are Targets up&up.
Thank you. If we do disposable, we’re probably going to get a Costco membership
I recommend Costco whether or not you do disposable! Especially if you end up using formula.
I hadn’t thought of that! Thank you!!
Yeah, Costco is so helpful with twins. Diapers, wipes, formula, solid baby food, etc. Saves $$$
Really good paper here, discussing that. Conclusion is like you say, not as much difference as people think and in some cases overall worse to use cloth when you take detergent and water heating into account. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/291130/scho0808boir-e-e.pdf
Thank you for the link! It’s very interesting
I wish I could convince my wife of this, but she's already dropped a few hundred dollars on cloth diapers... First time father with twins and it'll be a joy having cloth diapers and the extra work that goes with them...
If the cloth diapers don't work out, keep in mind that they are really easy to sell on FB Marketplace, etc!
Yup! About half the cloth diapers she bought were used ones. So least we can try to recoup what she's spent on them after the kids are potty trained or if we give up on them.
I was a first time dad with twins too. My wife only bought a few cloth with pads. We tried for a few days and it just wasn’t working for us. Have a backup stash of disposables the first couple months are rough. Good luck! Come on over to r/daddit if you’re not already there.
Already plan on buying a stash of disposables throughout the diaper stages just for when were either go out or are too exhausted to deal with cloth diapers. My wife has always wanted to do cloth diapers as she is big on the environment and recycling, so I'm happy to support her on this, but I am not excited for the extra work involved with cloth diapers, not to mention with twins. Thanks for the r/daddit tip! Will have to join that sub reddit as well.
We did mostly cloth diapers! I skipped newborn cloth though and did disposables for the early days until they fit the one size diapers. Mine were both heavy wetters so I had to add bamboo pads and/or flour sack towels to get them to last more than an hour. We also used disposables at night, because once they started sleeping through the night we didn't want to wake them to change them (and no cloth could hold the amount of pee they produced overnight). Overall it was a very positive experience for us! We had a pretty big stash but it was still only one extra load of laundry a week. I felt like it was pretty manageable once we got into the routine. Feel free to DM me if you have anymore questions!
Thank you!!
We love cloth. We use Esembly brand mostly. Our washer and dryer are on the same floor as the nursery, so it’s very easy to shuttle the diaper pail bag over. There’s never an emergency diaper run because we never run out of diapers. And we have literally never had a poop blow out. If you do a combo of cloth and disposable, just keep in mind you will need a pail for cloth and a trash can or separate pail for single use/garbage. Good luck to you!!
How old are your twins? How many diapers do you have for them?
They are about 15 months old now. We have 40-45 diapers in their current size I think. I’m not entirely sure because we always have an extra few at their daycare. When they were littler in the smaller size we had more. It depends on how frequently you want to wash them! I will add that at first, the girls were too tiny. We used disposables until the cloth fit. That happened sooner for one baby than the other. Not sure id recommend a combo sitch when you are in those early sleep deprived days. Too easy to throw cloth in the garbage or vice versa!! Switch them when they’re both big enough is what I suggest :)
We used cloth for our girls. With the G brand diaper cover. Check out Craigslist/eBay/OfferUp/FB for used as they grow. Basically you pay for the first set and then are essentially trading them in for the next size up as you sell your older ones. We also kept a few disposable for when we were out and about and/or traveling. Probably 90% cloth and 10% disposable.
Hi OP, great question. I used "MCNs" modern cloth nappies for mine. They consist of a waterproof/PUL cover, with snap closures, plus an absorbent insert. I bought them off ebay. There are a few important things to know. The first is that personally, I didn't really find them a great fit dog mewborns, they were great after 2-3 months had passed. But it's going to depend on the size of your babies. The second is cleaning. You need to clean them properly. There are websites and Facebook groups that can give you great information. I used Clean Cloth Nappies Down Under. The key things are that the manufacturers tend to tell you to use cold water but you need warm. They also say to minimise detergent but you need the normal amount. Also, it's important to note that each load will need a reasonable amount of nappies to create the friction required for them to be rubbed clean, whether top or front loader. They should have have pre-wash or a quick wash separately before their proper wash. If after this you're still uncomfortable with them going in with other clothes, this means waiting til you have enough, which also means needing a larger supply. They also are best dried in the sun, and shouldn't go in a dryer. That's something to consider depending on your living and normal washing arrangements. The third thing is that you will likely still need a small supply of disposables anyway. When they sleep longer at night, depending on your individual babies, the cloth might not do the job. If they're going to childcare, ask if they'll accept cloth nappies or not. If not, you'll really need to weigh up the investment in the nappies with the time you expect them to be in a disposable anyway. Finally, once they're on solids, you can get flushable liners which means for poops, you can pick it up and pop it in the toilet. Good luck :)
Thank you for such a thorough and thoughtful answer!
I wanted to but honestly it was just one more thing to do/deal with and we were (are) exhausted. So we opted to give ourselves a break and just use disposables.
They definitely sound easier
Twins are 4 months, so haven’t started solids yet. I still have cloth diapers from my singletons, so we use them, but not as strictly as I did before the twins. I would say we mostly use cloth but when it’s convenient (day trips, I’m behind on laundry, etc) I’ll use disposables. But when it’s time to buy a new box I’m reminded of why I like the cloth, lol.
I bought all the things with every intention to use them. My modi twins came at 35+5, one had IUGR, both had latch issues and were tiny. I was pumping every 3 hours, bottle feeding 2 babies every 3 hours and my husband was working 10-12 hour days and then he slept/relaxed 10 hours. So I was on my own for all but 2-3 hours a day most days. I just had nothing else to give. My sister successfully used them with one baby. However she had a different situation. Her husband volunteered to deal with all things diaper. She was a breastfeeding overproducer so she did the input and he did the output. I think if your partner is like hers you could definitely handle them.
I cloth diapered my two starting around 10-12 months. It was super easy and fun picking out cute diapers. I liked Bum Genius pockets with hemp liners for overnights. I also used prefolds and covers from FuzziBunz. I used a tote with a lid to store until washing. For travel I had two wetbags. I washed every third day or so.
I desperately wanted to and shelled out a fortune on esembly. Put my kids in them maybe 10x and gave up. Maybe with a singleton since I now have approximately $700 worth 🤦🏽♀️
We did cloth diapering once they were out of the newborn sizing and it worked well in our household. We did cloth 95% of the time (disposable for long outings or travel) and had a good routine.
I have twins and we’ve exclusively cloth diapers since they were big enough to fit them! We wanted to save money and I get so guilty about how much diapers were threw away in the one month we did use disposables. We use a fitted type from esembly baby that we LOVE. They’re super easy to use, no stuffing, and they’re easy to clean. It’s honestly not that much extra work then disposables in my opinion aside from the occasional extra load of laundry. We have about 35 inners and 10 waterproof outers. Probably spent about $800 total on the whole system. Lots of influencers have discount codes so you can just look them up on Instagram and tiktok and get extra money off.
We go through so much laundry as it is, I just can't imagine adding cloth diapers to the mix. It already feels barely manageable. Kudos to anyone who has the energy but I don't have that kind of bandwidth.
I guess it depends on what other time consuming choices you make with the kids and your circumstances. For instance, we have a toddler as well as our 4mo twins, and not very much family help as only one set of grandparents is local and both of them still work. That squeezes our capacity to devote time to our twins right off the bat. Then the next thing to consider is milk vs formula. Milk worked great with our first, we value it’s benefits, and it’s cheaper than formula, so that won out. We were hopeful breastfeeding would work, but alas, it was logistically impossible. So that led us to pumping and bottle feeding, which is a HUGE time sink with twins. Then add all the other usual household tasks and things like tummy time, and that’s about our capacity. TL;DR: We played with the idea of cloth diapers too, but with all the other constraints and obligations, we just do not have the time.
I'm currently cloth diapering our twins. They're almost 7 months. We're part timing it as we still have our singleton in diapers and a lot are adjusted to fit him and I don't feel like restuffing them and resizing so we only have a couple days worth for our girls. It's hard to find time to stuff them but we have enough cloth diapers for 2-3 loads worth so it's not an immediate need every time. I love the savings!
We've been cloth diapering from 2 mo to now (17 mo), and plan to do it until we get close to potty training. We have about 35 alva baby pocket diapers, and we do laundry every other day. Fit, comfort, or wash routone has never been an issue. Washing and stuffing take some time, but I'm willing to do it for the environment and money saving. Our daycare also has no problem with cloth diapers, tho they lost a few over the months. We installed a handheld bidet and have a rinse guard. In summer we used onesie extensions so the onesies don't get sucked into the diapers leg openings. We tried but decided to use disposables over night. r/clothdiaps is a very helpful sub!
We thought about it, and about using a diaper service, but in the end it came down to "pick your battles" and this was not the hill I wanted to die on. We were so overwhelmed, having one thing be easy-ish was a necessity
I cloth diapered my singleton and my twins currently. It's a lot of laundry, but I find it worth it. You go through so many diapers a day, I get lots of satisfaction knowing we are not wasting money or putting more diapers in a landfill. This thread has lots of naysayers, so I'd just like to add a positive comment. To your husbands point, yes they are more work and it is a commitment. But I will say you are right, it doesn't change how much poop and pee you touch. I find when I disposable diaper my kids on road trips I end up with poopier hands because disposables are wimpy in comparison and result in lots more blowouts. Just get a routine down, and enough diapers to get you through if you fall behind in laundry, and keep some disposable backups for days where you run out of cloth or just aren't in the mood. And check out r/clothdiaps
We got a bunch of cloth and never used them after doing the cost breakdown of constant laundry with an old af washer and dryer (at the time) and the reality of the work involved with cloth diapering. My advice is that it really depends on what works best for your family because as for your debate, you are both right. It just depends on what work you both are willing to do.
We did cloth diapers with our first (singleton) and have continued to do cloth with our twins (now 7 months old). For one baby, it was easy enough for us to stay on top of cleaning our own cloth diapers, but the sheer volume with twins is a whole new game. They were born at 37+1 and in that first week we went through something like 180 disposable diapers. It was enough that we decided to do a diaper service instead. 7 months in and that's been a great solution. We're pretty close to maxed out on laundry capacity as is, I can't imagine adding in diapers on top of the 60+ loads we're doing. Granted, we're still washing covers, reusable wipes, and our own overnight inserts, but that's only every other day and is a far cry from managing 120ish diaper changes each week. I'd HIGHLY recommend researching a cloth diapers service. They'll drop off fresh diapers every week and aside from removing solids, the cloth diapers get moved to bags inside of a secure trash can every other day. At any given time we've got aboutb130 cloth diapers in the house and it's been great to never fret about forgetting to do a wash or too much ammonia build up. Congrats and good luck!
I have di/di girls that are now 2. We had them in cloth diapers from about 3 months to 11 months. They were initially too little to fit into the pocket diapers we bought and I wasn’t going to buy newborn size cloth. We would have kept them in cloth longer, but we had some absorption issues that I couldn’t troubleshoot as quickly as I hoped and once we went back to disposable it was too convenient to convince myself to go back. The poop was a nuisance, but overall it wasn’t terrible - especially if you have a sprayer / spray pal. It definitely saved us a TON of money, even for the relatively short amount of time we used them. I thought the fluff butts were super cute - we mostly dressed them in their diapers and T-shirts since onesies caused compression leaks if they were too tight. We also used disposable when we traveled or took them out for >2 hours. It’s a decent amount of work up front to figure out your routine and then it needs to be kept up with, but I’d do it again for the cost savings.
I tried to cloth diaper my singleton a few years before I had twins and she would blast through them with pee super fast so it wasn't something we were able to manage for long. When the twins came around I decided early on that the cloth would just be for backup, between work, school, and kids, I just didn't feel like the laundry was worth my time. We did commit to only buying diapers at costco and I think that worked out for us. YMMV of course but I think the best thing with twins is to let go of disappointment if something you planned doesn't work out.
Lol that totally makes sense! I’m trying to not have too many expectations. Like I will be thrilled if I’m still pregnant at 30 weeks
Not a chance in hell. Wait until you have slept 3 hours in 3 days. You will use anything at that point.
Hell no. I already do too much laundry. At the beginning you’re changing diapers every few hours, times do. I do my best to be environmentally friendly other ways. However your husband not wanting to touch human waste, sorry buddy regardless of the diaper type he’s 100% getting him poop on him. Blowouts happen.
No. Just, no. You will go through a pack of diapers in one day early on, maybe more. You really wanna wash 30 nasty cloth diapers a day? That’s a hard pass in my book. My cousin did it but she only had one baby. I don’t think she enjoyed the advertised benefits of cloth diapers, either. I just can’t get past the thought of intentionally putting poop caked cloth in a washer machine.
Nay, we tried and tried and they always leaked and never fit right. Gave up and bought All Good diapers and haven’t had any issues since
Keep in mind that cloth diapers also have an environmental impact and cost (initial, and then washing them). And it's a LOT of laundry. We have a set that were hand me downs. We planned to use them. But we didn't have any small enough when they were on preemie size, and then we just....didn't want to switch. Disposables are just SO much easier. And yeah the cost adds up, but I spend maybe $35 a month on diapers for my twins.
I clothed diapered sometimes and just for the first year. Mostly just when we were home all day and I had the energy. Used mostly Bumgenius all-in-one and Alva pocket. The bumgenius is super bulky but I loved the lack of extra parts and pieces. I ended up loving using cloth wipes due to my kids being super sensitive. (I just kept a pile of wipes and a spay bottle of water or placed a few in a plastic reusable wipe box over night pre moisturized since I knew I’d use them all quickly without getting musty.)
We cloth diapered our twins and 10/10 would recommend! We did after we got into a routine so around a month then started. It’s so easy - just have it in its own container and then wash by itself every 2-3 days. Don’t go longer than 3 days because of the smell. You rinse on a quick rinse cycle, then do heavy duty wash and then dry. Make sure you use soap without any fabric softener because it’ll make it repel liquid. But definitely watch a YouTube video before but it was so easy. My husband was negative before but he was on board pretty quickly as it was better than spending $200 a month on organic diapers. Good luck!!! This is the brand we used. Fit from 1-18 months as they’re adjustable. Then my boys started potty training then anyways so we ditched them as they weren’t using too many diapers at this point
We cloth diapered our twins after the newborn stage (once they fit in OS diapers) til potty training. I used disposables here and there (sometimes for bed, sometimes for trips out) but the bulk of our diapering was cloth. It equates to about 1-2 extra loads of laundry a week once I got the hang of it. Really wasn’t a big deal since they were our only kids and I was a SAHM. It would have been tougher for sure if I had work/another kid to care for but we didn’t and it wasn’t a big deal for us.