Tips for successful overnight modern cloth diapering. Quick changes can you make for a better night time reusable diaper experience.
Once your little one is sleeping through the night, a lot of families struggle to figure out a good night time cloth diapering set up. Day time is easy because you’re changing your baby's cloth diaper often, every 2 hours or so. But overnight, the cloth diaper has to work really hard to keep them dry and comfortable for eight to twelve hours—It’s a tough job.
What are some things you can do to stop stubborn night time leaks in your baby's modern cloth diaper?
1.Check for gaps
Sometimes too much absorbency can cause the reusable diaper to have a poor fit which can lead to unexpected leaks. If you find that the added bulk of night time inserts is preventing the diaper from sitting in baby’s underwear line properly you may need to adjust the style of absorbency or how you are stuffing it in the diaper.
With pocket style diapers, we recommend splitting bulky absorbency so that some of the absorbency is inside the pocket and some sits against your baby's skin, on top of the lining of the diaper. This will allow the elastics to nestle into baby’s underwear line and provide a better fit.
You may also find that you need to adjust the rise setting of your night time diapers to be a size bigger than your baby's daytime cloth pocket diaper.
2. Increased absorbency
When families reach out to me with leaks overnight, one of the first things we talk about is increasing absorbency.
How do you know if you need more absorbency? When checking baby's diaper in the morning, if the inserts are fully saturated, there is no remaining dry area at either end, it is time to increase the amount of absorbency. I like to start by adding one additional insert. This will look different for every family but often this can be as simple as adding one more 4-Layer bamboo or hemp cotton insert. Often you don't need as much extra absorbency as you think.
3. Switch diaper styles.
For families with really heavy overnight wetters, pocket diapers may not be a good fit. In these cases, we tend to recommend something like a flat or fitted style of diapers.
Flat diapers are very versatile. You can fold them a number of different ways to customize where the bulk of the absorbency sits to meet your baby's unique diapering needs. And if you find that you don't like the flat style of diaper, you can always pad fold it to use as an insert in diaper cover or pocket style diaper.
We offer a great overnight diaper from Mimi and Co, an Australian brand, in our storefront. The Mimi and Co. Minky Night Nappy is great all over absorbency option for heavy night wetters. It’s super soft, includes some built in absorbency and has a pocket to add your favorite absorbency for added protection.
Need more help? Consider joining our discord community. The Make Cloth Mainstream Discord includes channels about cloth diapering help, fit checks, and more.
