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Friday 19 April 2013

Real Nappy Week

It's Real Nappy Week this week, so I thought I'd put down a bit of my experience with the washable wonders.

When I was pregnant, we decided to go down the washable nappy route, and I dutifully bought a load of terry nappies, which promptly went missing when we moved house! After a bit of consideration, and conversations with people who already had babies, I made the decision to get used to having a baby around, and changing nappies, etc., before starting with the washables, as I didn't think I'd want to be doing all that washing straight away.

With all our feeding issues, it wasn't until a few months down the line that I eventually felt ready to get started with the real nappies. After exchanging several emails with the very helpful Ella at Bum Deal, I invested in the Bum Deal Bargain Pack of 10 nappies. They came in assorted colours and designs, and I selected a mixture of Minky nappies, some with poppers, some with velcro. Each came with 2 Microfibre inserts, though nowadays you'd get 1 Microfibre and 1 bamboo, which is even better. I also bought fleece liners, which are brilliant because they draw the wetness away from baby's bottom, whilst catching hold of poo, and a selection of wetbags for holding dirty nappies.

I found these nappies to be really easy to use, especially with a newborn, as the poo isn't too bad. I did have to change them every 2 to 3 hours otherwise a bit of wicking went on, but as soon as I purchased some bamboo boosters as well, we had no problems with leakage at all. Poo could just be flicked into the toilet, and the whole nappy popped into the wet bag to join the other dirties.


When B moved onto solid food, I started using flushable liners. However, I have become a bit lazy with the real nappies, as 'human' poo, as my husband calls it, is a bit more gross and I have struggled with getting the poo into the toilet whilst preventing adventurous hands from fiddling with her poopy bottom! I suppose I ought to just 'woman up' and get back into it really! I do sometimes wait until she's done a poo, and then put the washables on for the rest of the day. I've never had the courage to use washables over night though.

I also use washable wipes from Cheeky Wipes, which are fantastic, because they can just go straight in the wash with the nappies and are great for dirty hands and faces too. I bought wipes, a Fresh Wipes container, some Lavender & Chamomile essential oil and some Mandarin, Tea Tree & Tea Tree Lemon oil. They do sell a handy kit with everything you'll need in it.

I'd say we've definitely saved some money using the washable nappies and wipes, and even just using them a few days a week has reduced our landfill and carbon footprint a little bit. If and when we have more babies, I am determined to do better in the real nappy stakes!

What are your experiences with washable nappies?




1 comment:

  1. We use washables most of the time apart from when we go out or in the case of prolonged power cuts (who knows how long the power will be off?!). We use Miosolo and we like them. We looked for something which didn't particularly need liners as a norm as we didn't know how/when we would be able to get more if we ran out, plus we didn't know how many we would need to bring to Zambia with us. We also have some boosters which we add in during the night. We have had a few leakages but that's mostly due to us not putting the inner of the nappy in straight. You do have the option of buying flushable liners. Which we have bought 2 packs of 100 sheets for when the 'proper poo' comes as an aid to disposal until I can woman up enough to deal with it.
    But all in all I would highly recommend them!
    We bought them online (after having looked at them in the shops) from kiddiecare at £10.99 a nappy which was cheaper than the usual 14.99 they go for. So combined with that and washable nappies in general we've saved loads of money.

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