I would probably hesitate to say that cloth diapers are ENTIRELY leak-proof. I mean, I doubt anything is leak-proof, if you want to get right down to it. Plus, if you leave a diaper on long enough, it doesn’t matter what the heck it is made of or how many gussets it has. It will leak. That’s just physics, yo.
But in the couple months (has it only been that long) that I’ve been using cloth diapers, I’ve noticed one giant benefit: There have been virtually NO LEAKS.
There’s been the odd leak here and there. Mostly urine and mostly when she’s wearing a prefold trifolded into a prorap cover. And most of those leaks have been fairly recently, as she’s been outgrowing her prefolds and covers at an alarming rate (hello, chunky baby!). She pretty much NEVER has a leak while wearing her pocket diapers (right now: BumGenius and Rumparooz).
But I’m leaving out the most important aspect of all of this: NO POOP EXPLOSIONS! Now, Evie only wore disposables for the first six weeks or so of her life. But in that time, we learned that with her rather infrequent pooping schedule, poop explosions were pretty much unavoidable. She would output a day’s worth of… poop and well, no disposable known to man could possibly contain it all. Truthfully, I wondered at the time if any cloth diaper could contain it as well.
The prefolds in the cover are pretty good, to be honest. We might get a little seepage around the legs, but nothing shooting up the back our out the front or sides so far. The BumGenius just laugh at the audacity of this poop that would like to explode out. “Not so fast,” they say. And the Rumparooz double leg gussets have never failed to contain whatever is tossed their way. Ever.
Now, there are some extenuating circumstances here. I am pretty quick on the diaper changes, something that I’ve gotten even better at since she’s been in cloth. I find I’m a lot more attuned to such things now. Also, her poop has not met the worthy adversary that is the exersaucer. If anything can compress a diaper, it’s an exersaucer.
But in the meantime, I’m pretty impressed. This is something I wasn’t expecting from cloth diapers. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. But definitely a fantastic side benefit to cloth diapering.
Is my experience a common one? Or am I just lucky?
Tags: bumGenius, disposables, Epic Poop, leaks, Pockets, prefolds, prorap, Rumparooz
Nicky has only had leaks with pre-folds, too. He once leaked through a BG, but it was because he peed an enormous amount in very little time.
interesting….
When we were going through PoopFest 2008, I attempted to use disposables (to decrease the number of times I had to put my hands in the toilet). It was a disaster. The only thing that could contain all the poo was cloth. I don’t know know if perhaps the cloth soaked up the liquid faster or what, but yeah. We had maybe a tiny spot of leaking poo with cloth, but a GIANT blow out with a disposable. Lets just say that I chose sticking my hands in the toilet over poo all over my house.
Kitten was grown out of her exersaucer by the time she was in cloth, so I can’t comment. But if your prowraps are anything like the Bummis Super Whisper Wraps? You won’t have to worry about a thing!
My son did not leak, however, my daughter has teeny tiny thighs and BGs do not fit tight enough so she always pees out the sides! Anyone got a solution??
My baby leaked out of every diaper (pocket, sized) his first day in pocket diapers. Including one poo explosion. Since then, he seems to be doing pretty well.
OTOH, we don’t have leaks in disposables either. And we are changing more often in cloth than we did in disposable (and we are using disposables at night. Cleaning the sheets/bedclothes everynight is a real good way to get us to decide we don’t want to do it, I know)