I’m so excited to share with you this guest post, written by Nicole, my friend and a new mom to her sweet baby girl, Lauren. Nicole is also the author of the blog, Wonderful Joy Ahead. She currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband and baby girl. Nicole shares with us her take on the new hybrid diapers, meaning cloth diapers with disposable inserts. Are hybrids really cost effective?
In the beginning, we were doing just disposable diapers since my new baby girl was going through about 10 or so a day, and we wanted to ease into the hybrids. Pampers were best for newborn; Huggies leaked every time. Now that she’s bigger, I’m using the Huggies that we had already bought before we knew they leaked, and they are doing fine. Actually, Pampers newborn fit her best for the first month and then she started to outgrow the newborn size but the size 1s are still too big. Huggies’ size 1 are smaller than Pampers’ size 1, and fit her better.
About a week after Lauren was born, Pampers switched their formula and are now “dry max,” which means more chemicals but a smaller diaper. I wasn’t thrilled about the more chemicals part and paid the little extra to get the “sensitive” Pampers instead of the “dry max” diapers when I could find them in store. The big boxes (and more economical choice) were really hard to find in our Target and grocery stores. Babies R Us and Toys R Us carried them, though. When all was said and done, she didn’t get a rash or reaction to any of the diapers she’s used, but I do find those little liquid-absorbing crystals in her crevices.
I’ve started to ease her into the hybrids. We are fortunate to have a store here that has a try ‘em, love ‘em, or return ‘em policy that lets you buy their cloth diaper shells (or even the cloth inserts) and try them for 15 days. If you don’t love them, you can return them for a full store credit. Then, they have a sale a few times a year to sell the returned washed and stain-free diapers.
So, I tried Flip diapers, g diapers, and GroBaby diapers. I used the Flip diaper inserts and the g diaper inserts. Both are biodegradable and use fillers like wood pulp to absorb. G diapers are also flushable (you can go to their website for more info on that, if you want). You can interchange the inserts in any of the diapers, and I think I like the g diaper inserts better than the Flip.
I love the g diapers. They fit well and don’t seem too bulky. They have a removable/reusable snap-in liner inside the cloth shell so that the mess gets on the liner instead of the cloth part. That way you don’t have to wash the shell every time they go. The downfall of g diapers is that you buy sizes for them (small, medium, large) whereas GroBaby and Flip diapers are both a one-size diaper. You use snaps on those diapers to resize them so that you don’t have to buy the expensive ($13-16ea) shell when they grow.
The Flip diaper is very bulky for little Lauren right now. Maybe that will change when she gets bigger. The other problem is that the Flip inserts slide around inside the diaper and can bunch up in there, which means that the shell has to get washed every time she goes. It doesn’t leak, though.
The GroBaby diaper fits well, too. I really like it except it doesn’t have the snap-in liner like the g diaper. The Flip inserts seem to fit better in the GroBaby diapers than they do in the Flip diapers.
How do they compare price-wise? Flip diapers come out to $0.28/insert. You can buy a big pack of g diaper inserts on amazon for $0.28/insert. Buying them full-price in the store would make g diaper inserts more expensive. ToysRUs sells Pampers Sensitive newborn diapers (box of 96) for $0.31/diaper and Huggies’ newborn for $0.29/diaper which means that– not including the reusable shell– the inserts are marginally cheaper than the disposable, but you can always find Huggies/Pampers coupons…
So, all of that to say that there’s no real cost savings if you do the hybrid option. You’re just helping out the environment/landfills. Cloth diapers is where you’ll find the real savings.
Do you have a cloth or hybrid diaper review or giveaway that you want to share? Feel free to link up. It seems that this is becoming a popular topic!
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Interesting. I think I’ll do what I did with #1 for #2, disposables until I felt like a human being again (apparently that took about 3-4 weeks because I have pics of #1 at 1 month old in cloth) and then switch to cloth. I looked at the g-diaper at one point, but Target brand is cheaper when you don’t want to do cloth especially since they revamped their diapers about 2 yrs ago.
If youre worried about the price of the actual shell, remember than you can use the diaper for almost 3 or 4 babies before they are unusable (if you treat them properly).
While I used disposable diapers and am past the point of having to even think about diapers any more…I just wanted to say – How cute is that little babies bum!!
The cloth diapers today are soo cute!
Great information! Now just to convince the hubby on just how much the cloth diapers will help the budget so maybe I can get him onto that side of the fence. Any ideas?
My personal cloth favorite is the Bum Genius 3.0. Holds A TON of urine. Super over night diaper insert. The shells aren’t cheap, but they are a grow with me diaper so it should last for MONTHS. I think I have 4 of them and then about a dozen inserts since the micro fleece doesn’t absorb the urine, you can actually reuse the same shell all day long if you’d like. If you’re worried about staining, you can buy rice paper liners so that the diapers, in theory, stay white and the rice paper receives the poop stain which you just flush down the toilet. I think even http://www.walmart.com sells the rice paper liners.