Prefolds

So, way back on Black Friday, I bought myself a set of six Indian unbleached prefolds from Kelly's Closet because I wanted to take advantage of the monster Black Friday giveaway she was doing!  When they came in the mail, they were HUGE (I bought a size larger than I actually needed at the time) and I just wasn't sure what to do with the things.  First, I realized I needed pins. It was actually kind of hard to find pins because a lot of cloth diaper sites don't sell them.   After looking around for awhile, I found some for $1 at Snooty Booty Diapers  (they were having a Free Shipping sale) and I bought them.  It's terrible, I know, to buy only one thing and not pay shipping, but it was all I needed so I did it.  A couple of days later I had the pins in hand and the cheapest diaper cover I could find (Green Earth, I believe--I think I got it from Pittsburgh Cloth Diapers because they offer Free Shipping all the time) and I decided I'd try this thing.

After five minutes of trying in vain to get the ridiculously sized diaper on my baby, and fiddling with pins that my fingers just weren't talented enough to figure out, I had my daughter in a pre-fold that was falling off her, and a cover that was way too large to stay put.  ¡Uy!  But I was determined that my money wasn't going to be spent in vain, so I kept trying. ...for a while that is.  When I realized that the pins and the too-large diaper cover and prefolds just weren't working for me, I cut my losses and left them in the bottom of my diaper stash for emergencies only (as in, I was too lazy to do diaper laundry and now this is all I have left)

I have to say that the whole thing wasn't a total loss.  In buying the prefolds, I did win a GroBaby diaper from Kelly's closet.  So I comforted myself in the fact that I had just bought myself a GroBaby for much cheaper than it's regular price :-).  And that was that.

Well, then one of my friends at church had a baby.  I had given her three one-size pocket diapers to start with so she'd have a feel for the different kinds that are out there.   My daughter was 9lbs 5oz when she was born, so the OS diapers worked fine for her.  My friends baby was bordering 7lbs, so a good fit wasn't even CLOSE with the Happy Heinys, bumGenius, and Smartipants OS that I sent her.  So she bought prefolds and Thirsties for the newborn stage.  In passing, she mentioned the snappis that she was using and I thought, "Why haven't I just bought one of those?"  I knew they existed, but I was familiar with pins, because, believe it or not, I remember helping my mother with diaper changes when I was 6 or 7 years old and using prefolds and pins and it had worked fine for me back them.  Go figure!  So, a couple of weeks ago, I gave in and bought a snappi--I don't remember which diaper retailer I bought it from but it was definitely one that offers free shipping!  I also bought some very girly diaper cover kits from Diaperkit.com (and foolishly dove into them and forgot to take pictures while making them so I can't post a tutorial).

And...voila! Suddenly my prefolds are a success! Meanwhile, Bunny has grown to fit into her $6 Green Earth diaper cover so it wasn't such a waste of money after all!

Check her out:

And guess what?  I love prefolds now!  Snappis are SO fun, in fact, I've been overlooking my plentiful supply of One Size pockets in favor of prefolds for a while.  It's great! I'm not sure Bunny agrees.  She's kind of particular about EVERYTHING and she's grown accustomed to the way her pockets wick the moisture away from her skin--which prefolds don't do.  But she's getting used to them.  She didn't like fitteds for awhile for that reason, but now she doesn't fuss as much in them.  I think she also didn't like how the snappi felt differently than velcro and snaps, but she got used to that as well.  I think I'm going to get a couple more Snappis and prefolds and have them as spares for long trips.  They're SO much easier to take care of than pockets when you're traveling with cloth, and require much less room in the suitcase!