Cloth Diapers; Our Hybrid (AI2) System

I started writing this post over a year ago... when my kiddo was still in diapers. Umm... because he's been potty trained since last summer. I even had it mostly written, but then life blew up - as it does - and I left my blog alone for a good long while. Part of me is still surprised sometimes that it's here.

So, here goes, eh?...

I decided to cloth diaper my baby simply because I wanted to minimize my carbon footprint, and accumulating masses of used diapers to send to landfills just didn't mesh with that goal. That being said, we did occasionally use disposable diapers - when we travel, when I need a break from laundry, or when dude has any kind of bad rash that the cloth diaper friendly creams can't help with, and we switched exclusively to disposable trainers when potty training. (I can do a whole separate post about that, if anyone is interested) There are ways to avoid disposables altogether - as families did before the days of disposables - but "sposies" are a simple and easy solution and work well for our purposes.

When I was pregnant I did TONS of research. After hours on end of, frankly, daunting cloth diaper research, I settled on trying out two styles of diapers - Hybrids and Pockets, and after about 6 months of use, I decided to simplify and consolidate my stash almost entirely to Hybrids, or All-in-Twos.

 As far as cloth diapers go, I am a big fan of the hybrid style. Hybrid diapers can take many different forms, but for simplicity, I'm going to break them down into their simplest parts.

ONE: the outer shell, and TWO: the soaker pad.

A hybrid diaper shell will not hold in waste without a soaker, and a soaker will not hold in waste without a shell. Only when their powers combine, can they protect all your nice things from baby excrement.

Our hybrid diaper of choice was the GroVia Hybrid. I also used a few Softbums Echos (which I actually preferred when we were first starting cloth diapers, but found it difficult to find the right leg fit as he got bigger) and, when they were more readily available, we used GroVia ONE  All-In-One's at night.

I opted for a hybrid system during the day because I liked the idea of saving money by investing in fewer shells that I could reuse during the day and just swap out the soaker. The appeal of the GroVia system is that most of their soakers have a waterproof backing that prevents most wetness from getting onto the shell to begin with. That means swapping out soakers every diaper change, but *hopefully* using the same shell.

Some days you can go the entire day using only one shell. Alternatively, other days, you'll change the shell every time you change a diaper.

Most cloth diaper manufacturers offer two options for diaper closures - snaps or hook & loop (aka velcro). I don't think one is any better than the other. It just comes down to preference. When bub was little, I swore by H&L (hook & loop) because I felt I could get a better, more custom fit. As he got older, and he wasn't growing QUITE so fast, he kind of fell into the more expected size ranges and I felt more comfortable using the snap settings.

As an aside, the snaps on the front of the diaper snap up and down to adjust for the size of babies' legs, whereas, the snaps along the top edge of the diaper adjust to babies' waist AND legs. Finding the right fit can be tricky, but with patience, anyone can figure it out.

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I think a big deterrent for people with cloth diapers is the laundry. I had a relatively flexible schedule at the time, so the extra laundry was no big deal for me - one load every 2-3 days. I'd dry the soakers on the heavy duty setting, and hang the shells.

The key is finding the right detergent. It's trial and error - your water (is it hard?), your baby's skin (is it sensitive? how sensitive?) Gain powder ended up being the best choice for us. The more natural alternatives didn't get the diapers clean enough, and the higher powered cleaners (like Tide and Persil) irritated our noses and baby's skin.

Have you tried cloth diapers? What system did you use?