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Monday, August 13, 2012

Finding an Overnight Diaper

One of the most common challenges that cloth diapering presents is finding an overnight diaper that doesn't leak on your little one. Even though I'm on my 3rd baby, I still sometimes struggle to find a cloth diaper that will hold Emmett all night long! His ever changing sleep pattern makes that an even bigger challenge as one night he will sleep 12 hours straight (ok, this actually only happened twice) and the next night he'll wake up and nurse 4-5 times per night. No wonder I love coffee...

Anyhow, I digress...

My first son, Ian, did very well with pocket diapers overnight. When we first started cloth diapering, the only diapers we owned were BumGenius One-Size Pocket Diapers. Back then the 3.0 version was all that was available, but you can now purchase the 4.0 version. He only needed the one-size microfiber insert and 2 of the newborn inserts stuffed into the pocket to hold him for 12 hours! As my love for cloth diapers grew, we later tried out several other brands, including Happy Heiny's, Swaddlebees, and Fuzzi Bunz. All of these with an extra microfiber insert or two worked great overnight for Ian!

Then along came my little Sean. Sean was a heavy wetter from very early on and we had to try several different diapers before finding one that worked for him overnight. Sean was an awesome sleeper, sleeping for 10-12 hours per night from about 6 weeks on. That means he needed something heavy duty! We ended up having 2 options that we could use interchangeably. The first option was a Best Bottom One-Size Cover. I preferred the hook & loop version for overnight, it's super adjustable. We snapped an overnight insert in the cover first, and topped it off with a stay-dry insert. Another option that worked very well for him was almost any brand of one-size pocket diaper with a one-size microfiber insert and a large hemp insert. I found the Happy Heiny's Hemp Stuffins to be really great for little boys. You can stuff a couple extra hemp ovals in the pocket of the insert and put that end in front, just where boys need it!


When Emmett came along, I thought I had it all figured out! A pocket diaper with some inserts was bound to work, wasn't it? Not so much! When I say Emmett can pee, I mean Emmett can pee. Somewhere in that tiny body of his is an adult sized bladder. No amount of inserts stuffed in a pocket diaper can hold Emmett overnight. I did find a combination with my trusty Best Bottom Diapers that works, though! Best Bottom Diapers now offers a hemp/organic cotton overnight insert when once they only had a microfiber insert available. I pair this with a stay-dry insert and this will hold. Phew! But I wanted more options. I love using my BB's during the day and sometimes don't have enough shells to use them overnight as well. Then I discovered fitted diaper love! A fitted diaper is unique in that unlike a pocket diaper where just an insert absorbs, the entire fitted diaper is absorbent. Another great thing about fitted diapers is that the vast majority of them are made out of hemp or bamboo, both ultra absorbent materials! I have 2 go-to fitteds that when covered with a wool diaper cover are bullet-proof. The Imagine One-Size Bamboo Fitted and Kiwi Pie Bamboo fitted both are absorbent enough that I don't even need to add an additional doubler! Why wool you ask? Wool is great for overnight and especially for heavy wetters because it's breathable, anti-microbial (you only need to wash it about every 2 weeks!), and it can also absorb when your diaper is soaked.


So don't get discouraged if you have to do some experimenting before finding an overnight option for your child. Even us CD "pros" have to do some trial and error! If you've found an overnight solution for your child, feel free to share in the blog comments!

7 comments:

Megan said...

Kawaii overnight pockets are the only thing that has worked for us.

Mrs. W said...

My little man is 11 weeks old and sleeps about 10-12 hours. I've found a best bottom hemp overnight insert topped with either a stay dry or another hemp insert does the trick.

Melissa said...

Interesting article. We just ordered a bunch of fitteds to try to find something that will work for my super soaker. He is only four months old and is soaking through everything. We were using a Blueberry hemp and microfiber os insert paired with an extra Bamboo insert in a pocket and that was holding fine. Then when that didn't work we would use a size 1 Bamboozle with the extra soaker snapped in and an extra bamboo insert with an Imagine cover on top. Well the night before last that was completely soaked and leaked. So yesterday I orderd a Kiwi Pie, an Imagine bamboo fitted, a Totsbots Bamboozle in size 2, a dozen Imagine bamboo prefolds, and from another site a Sustainablebabyish OS bamboo fitted and Sustainablebabyish sized bamboo fitted. I'm also making an upcycled wool cover right now. Out of all those options something better work or I am out of ideas!

K Zoellick said...

We've done a similar process. Very quickly we discovered our son is a wetting machine. So we went from an insert and shell, to shell with overnight insert and additional insert, which eventually progressed to fitted with wool cover as the wetting amount seemed to increase. Now we are at a shell with fitted since amazingly he was starting to soak his pjs. We were having compression-like leaks with the fitted + wool cover on whatever side he was sleeping on.

Betsy Parr said...

I like reading blog posts like this for the information, but I am one of the lucky ones thus far. Little man will sleep 9-10 hours straight through at night now (almost 5 months old now, but he's been doing this now for a couple of months at least) and I can get by with a trifolded prefold inside a Best Bottom cover (just like we do all day long too). I think he just doesn't pee much in his sleep. I only recently switched to a snappi'd prefold in a wool soaker and it wasn't for absorbency, it was more for the comfort factor. After a long nights sleep little man had red marks on his belly and legs. He gets all snuggly in his wool =)

NYCole0425 said...

Our 9 month old is hit or miss. She does very well with a prefold and a Thirsties cover most nights. On the "miss" nights, it's usually when Daddy puts her to bed. He tends to grab the first available ready to go diaper (prefolds and covers are not in his realm of comfort). So far we have tried BGs with a microfiber insert and doubler, a Rumparooz with both the 6r and doubler, and Happy Heinys with microfiber and doubler (we avoid this one like the plague due to terrible wing droop). He is not a fan of any of the above because of the occasional leak and the massive bulk. I would love to hear what is popular with other CD dads out there.

Leslie said...

We use homemade fitteds at night. They're NOT trim, but they're super absorbent. The body is made out of 2 layers of bamboo fleece, 1 layer of bamboo velour and then a knit print outer, plus it has a snap in soaker that is 3 layers of bamboo fleece and one layer of bamboo velour...and on top of that we add in an insert (either a Thristies hemp, or a homemade one that has 4 layers of bamboo fleece). Wrap it all up with a cover and it holds up, every.single.time, to our 12-13 hour, heavy wetting, sleeper.

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