I haven’t had the time (or money) to obsess about cloth nappies recently — they go on Oliver’s butt and then they go in the wash … nothing new or exciting there — and I’m hoping that Oliver will want to start using the potty/toilet full time come summer (we’ve had occasional potty use but it waxes and wanes with his mood and mine) BUT as our workhorse stash gets older, I’m starting to really notice the difference between various brands and fixings and thought I’d share my thoughts.
So here we go:
Velcro (also known as applix) nappies
Pros
- Offer the most flexibility in fit (ideal for smaller babies)
- Easiest to put on a wriggly baby
- Can roll the used nappy up and velcro it tab to tab to keep contents secure when out and about
Cons
- Velcro tabs curl with age so come undone easily
- Velcro can collect crap (literally!) in the ‘hook’ parts of the tabs
- Velcro nappies always come out of the wash in one giant stuck-together ball
- The top of the velcro tabs are quite hard, and can rub the belly causing sore red marks
- Start to look old after just a few washes
Popper (also known as snaps) nappies
Pros
- Harder for older babies/toddlers to undo
- Can be pre-fixed so the nappy slides on/off like a pull up (velcro comes undone)
- Nursery (day care) staff seem to do a better job with poppers (although don’t get me started on nappies and nursery!)
- No bundling in the wash
- No poop getting stuck in the fastenings
Cons
- Can be hard/fiddly to do up (Especially with wrigglers)
- I’ve had some poppers pull completely free of the material, ruining the nappy (bumgenius)
My overall preference is for poppers. Despite the fact that written down there aren’t many more “pros” to poppers, the cons to velcro make them a bigger pain in the butt (not literally…) I bought a popper application tool to convert my velcro bumgenius to poppers but it’s too fiddly so I haven’t bothered yet!
Disclaimer
It’s worth noting that my opinions are off the back of using the following brands of nappies (in order of most used / amount in our stash) – and I’m not counting newborn nappies which are virtually all velcro:
- BumGenius
- Baba + Boo
- Tots Bots easyfit
- Fuzzybunz
- Lenny Lamb
I highly recommend Fill Your Pants & Baba + Boo for buying nappies :)
04 Apr at 6:12 pm
Ooh, hadn’t thought about pre-fastening the poppers – great idea, thanks!
I’m finding the aplix ok on our totsbots stretchies – not so good on the little lollipop newborn ones though, 3 washes and it stopped sticking.
Oh and fyi the text in this comment box is a liiiiittle hard to see. I know you’re working on things but thought I’d nag anyway :D
04 Apr at 6:38 pm
I haaaaaate our Velcro diapers now and paid somebody on Etsy to convert half of my stash to snaps. I loved the Velcro at first but after 1.5yrs it went tits up and wouldn’t stay on to save its life. I still need to send the other half of my stash away to have it done before I need to use them on the new baby. I could do the conversion myself but it’s a problem is rather throw money at than my own time and effort.
For reference, all our diapers are BumGenius but they’re a mix of sized AIOs and OS pockets.