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Audrey, my 10 month old daughter, has been in cloth nappies since she was 3 days old. Often, when people start to look into cloth nappies during pregnancy it can feel too daunting to try to combine learning about how to use and wash nappies alongside how to look after a new tiny person. However, I think it can be the ideal time to start as you’ve never known any different and once you find a routine and system that works for you you’re good to go. Here are my go-to tips if you’re pregnant and want to use cloth on your newborn bundle of joy:
1. Check out the Nappy Library's Antenatal Nappy Natter workshop
My husband and I attended the Antenatal Nappy Natter workshop about a month before Audrey was due. It was great to see a wide variety of nappies in person, ask those all important questions about poo and debunk some myths. You can also learn more about hiring our newborn kits. Currently these are still running via Zoom.
2. Hire a newborn nappy kit from the library
This is a great way to bridge the gap between tiny newborn size nappies and birth to potty nappies. Many birth to potty nappies are better suited to slightly older babies, from 12lb+. You may find that your baby ends up fitting into these quite soon so if you are hesitant to buy any newborn specific sizes but you want to try cloth from birth, our kits are perfect for this. They are available to hire for 6 weeks, and we are currently running a Crowdfunder to increase the amount of newborn nappies we have available to hire. Any donations to help us with this would be greatly appreciated!
3. Look into second hand newborn nappies
We started using a mixture of Close Pop-in newborn nappies and Baba+Boo newborn nappies. Knowing that she may only be in them for a short period of time, buying second hand seemed cost effective and also good for sustainability. ⅔ of our newborn nappy collection was bought second hand via Facebook groups and Ebay. Close Pop-in newborn sizes stopped fitting Audrey at about 6-8 weeks, but the newborn Baba+Boo nappies lasted her until 5 months. I have put them all into storage now and will be saving the Baba+Boo newborn nappies for any future babies ,and donating the Close Pop-ins to the library for our newborn kits.
4. Don’t aim for ‘perfection’
So often I hear people say they couldn’t commit to using cloth full-time or they feel guilty for using disposables. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing! We used disposables in the hospital for 3 days and have used them when we have been away too. We had no idea how we would manage keeping on top of washing nappies and getting our heads around being parents, so kept some disposables as back up too. If we were too tired to do the washing, disposables were fine. It doesn’t have to be perfection. Even using just one cloth nappy a day would stop around 800 nappies going to landfill.
5. Don’t worry about poo
Oh how I miss the days of newborn poo! I worried so much about what to do with the poo at first, but at the Antenatal Nappy Natter I learnt that breastmilk and formula poo is water soluble so you can just throw them straight into your washing machine and not worry about a thing. Now a few months into weaning I miss those days. But perhaps cloth nappies and poo can be another subject for another blog post!
If you are interested in hiring one of our newborn nappy kits (available from your due date), please get in touch - via the details below or on any of our social media channels. If you are interested in donating to our fundraiser to buy more newborn nappies, please click here.
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