Cloth diaper diary @ 7 months

Short version: The right diaper insert makes a difference for night-time cloth diapering.

Maintenance

Washing diapers is still easy. We've had to dunk a few particularly soiled diapers in the toilet but this hasn't been a hardship. My good friend Kathleen, also a cloth diaper enthusiast, gave us a Bum Genius toilet spray hose so we could avoid the unpleasant diaper dunk. Sadly, our toilet is too modern and we can't attach the otherwise easy-to-attach hose to our toilet. I'll have to readjust my future diapering plan as I was planning on getting a lot of mileage out of that hose.

Fit

Puddle's impressive weight gain has slowed substantially. This is good for diaper fit.

Absorbency

So far we still only use diaper inserts, or doublers, at night. But we've discovered that some inserts work better others (and by "we" I mean my husband as I have strategically assigned him to the 6am diaper change).

1. Bummis terry cloth insert - while this worked in the beginning when Puddle had little pee-pees and she was too small for a bulky diaper, it's too thin now that she's a big girl.

2. Charlie Banana cotton insert - this insert comes with the Charlie Banana 2-in-1 cloth diaper (The most stylish cloth diaper BTW). We used it with our Tots Bots diaper and loved it for a couple of months but are now finding that we gravitate away from it, towards the thicker ones. We could pair this insert with a Bummis terry insert in a pinch though.

3. AMP hemp and cotton folded insert - this thick insert absorbs pretty well. Our only complaint is, it's bulky and makes snapping the diaper closed difficult. It's biggest advantage though, is you can fold it to meet your baby's specific absorbency needs. Heavy wetter in the front? Fold the insert in half and place in the front of the diaper. Ditto for the back and the middle.

 4. FuzziBunz organic cotton insert (our favourite) - I just bought this thick, absorbent insert from Cozy Bums (a great online diaper shop in Prince George, BC). It's now our first choice for night-time diapering because it is less bulky than the AMP insert, just as absorbent and fits easily into the diaper.