Cloth Diapering Guide for Today's Newborn

Is a new little baby joining your family soon?  Whether this is your first baby or maybe just your first baby to cloth diaper, the choices you have for diapering you tiny newborn can be daunting.

This comprehensive guide will share with you the insights I have learned, answer the questions that are quite often asked and highlight some of the best of today's products for diapering a newborn.   If you haven't yet read the article on Cloth Diapering Lingo 101, I suggest either you start with reading that article or reference it as needed throughout this essay.

Let's begin by looking at the challenges to Newborn Diapering and what can be done to overcome each challenge:

1. Unknown Baby Sizing

2. Newborn Poop Containment

3. Meconium

4. Cord Care

Unknown Baby Sizing:

Until baby is born his/her weight and sizing is an unknown quantity.  Although you can make a decent hypothesis on the likely size of your first baby by determining what your own mother's and maternal grandmother's first babies' birth weights were, and can also make a decent prediction of baby's birth weight based on the birth weight of your own prior children; the reality is your predictions are just educated guesses until the baby actually arrives.  To accommodate this great unknown, baby will need a diapering system that has the ability to fit varying weights and body-types.

Newborn Poop Containment:

Newborn babies are generous with their poop all day, all night, just after getting a new diaper, while getting a new diaper...very generous.  For the exclusively breastfed baby this poop has a runny, mustard like appearance. (Have I mentioned that I do not use mustard on my burgers.) Anyways I digress, the main point is that you can depend on a breastfed baby's delivery of runny poop.  To meet this challenge prepare your diaper collection with diapers and/or covers that have elastic around the legs and at the back waist.

If your new baby has been unable to breastfeed his/her poops will be more formed and you may want to consider using a flushable liner for quick and easy poop removal.

Meconium:

Meconium is the thick, tar-like substance that an infant passes out of its intestines in the first few days after birth.  Many new parents are worried about the meconium washing out of the diapers and/or staining the diapers.  Many experienced parents who have diapered an infant report that the meconium did not stain at all.  

If you are still concerned, you could easily add a folded cloth wipe between the baby and the diaper to protect the diaper from the meconium.  This will be the first of many a creative array of uses for those cloth wipes.

Cord Care:

Debate vacillates and continues on the proper method of cord care: rubbing alcohol, breastmilk, golden seal, nothing at all, etc.  You will determine just how you will care for the umbilical cord.  Realize that cloth diapering will not interfere with whatever method you settle on.  Just as clothing can be worn over the healing area, likewise cloth diapers may cover the area too.  Cloth diapers unlike their plastic counterparts allow airflow into the diapering area.  Some diapers do come with a belly button fold down or a belly button dip option; while these options are nice they are not necessary. 

Due take precautions against staining if the place where you deliver applies iodine or the triple dye to the cord area.  Both of these products can cause staining.  Use of a cloth wipe between the cord and your diapers may be an easy solution.

Newborn Diapering Comparison Chart

    A good economical choice                    A convenient, luxurious choice