- Use flats for one week
- Doublers or additional inserts can be added
- They can be used in pockets
- The flats and everything used to diaper baby must be hand-washed
Typically, "flats" are simply one big piece of birdseye cotton or flannel. We have a couple dozen Diaper Rite large flats which I'm using this week, which are birdseye cotton. We also have a couple dozen small flats which I have kept for diapering a future baby as a newborn. I bought ours at Diaper Junction for $22 per dozen (the small flats are cheaper). I originally purchased flats thinking I could stuff our pocket diapers with them but they can be used folded in a variety of ways too. Since they are just cotton, a cover must always be used to create a waterproof barrier.
Here is a picture of a flat and some covers we like:
This is a large flat, completely unfolded and two of our covers. We use Blueberry Coveralls, Flips and Swaddlebees Capri covers but we usually use Flip organic inserts in them. We also use pocket diapers for daycare, grandparents, sitters, etc. I also greatly prefer the pockets when A is having tummy issues...they're much easier to clean poo out of. I like the simplicity of pad-folding the flats and using them in the covers. So, for this project, we really are just substituting a flat for a Flip organic insert...pretty easy!
Here is a picture of the pad-folded flat in the cover, ready for A to use:
Again, we use these covers with a similar system on a daily basis. I greatly prefer covers with the flaps built into them (our Blueberry Coveralls do not have these but they are great for nighttime). The flaps just hold the diaper in place nicely.
As I mentioned before, you can also fold flats in a variety of different ways and put them on the baby in that way. Here's an example of the flat folded into an origami fold:
This fold (and most others besides the pad-folded flat) require using pins or a snappi to attach the diaper to the baby. Truthfully, I don't have the time and patience to fold diapers like this all day, nor to master the skill of getting them on my squirmy, active baby. But I have to say that they look pretty cool!
Anyway, our first day was fairly uneventful. Flats aren't as absorbent as our standby, the Flip organic inserts, so I have to change A every 2 hours or we're risking a leak. A seems to pee more than the average kid, though and these really work great for many kiddos. I'm finding that these work better now than they were a few months ago (likely b/c A is eating more solids and drinking less milk than he was). We made it through with one little leak (mama pushed over the 2 hour mark). Otherwise, they worked better than I'd remembered from a few months back. I also did not use them overnight (which I'm supposed to do). My plan was to use our usual Flip organic insert with a flat (we usually use a Flip Stay-Dry), all in a cover. But the flat was bulkier than the Stay-Dry and I just couldn't get a good fit. I knew we were destined for a crying kid with wet sheets. And sleep is worth more to me than this project. So, he got his usual solution, but I'm hand-washing it with our flats and other daytime solutions.
Tomorrow, we'll talk about the scary part of this experiment - the whole hand-washing thing.
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