Top 10 Newborn Essentials: #5

And without further ado, here comes #5 on the list of top ten newborn essentials. I'm going to string you along this time and give you one essential thing per day...

#5: Layers

No, I don't mean layers of clothing although for the hotcoldhotcoldhotcold of the early postpartum period, you should do that too. I mean layers for the crib, the changing pad, and the boppy. Let's take the crib: You have your mattress, your mattress pad, and your crib sheet. Maybe your crib sheet is super cute or maybe you only have one or two. Either way, the second you put your baby in the crib, s/he will drool, spit up, poo, or pee on the sheet. Maybe it's everywhere and you have to change it immediately because it's a total biohazard or maybe it's just a little bit but you've only been a parent for 72 hours and it feels pretty important not to let your baby sleep on a sheet that you know has something gross on it. Changing a crib sheet is a PITA, however, and you should do it as infrequently as possible. If you only have one or two crib sheets, you will be forever doing laundry and if you have enough crib sheets to avoid that, you have way too many crib sheets.  Enter the ambiguous "flannel pad." I happen to have stolen my collection of largeish flannel pads from the hospital (at my nurse's urging - I'm not a klepto, I promise) but they are available for purchase as well. They sort of stick to the cotton sheet, so even a wiggly baby can't move them and suffocate and they're much easier to wash and change than crib sheets.


I have the same sort of thing for the changing table, but these have a waterproof backing. They come in very handy when the peanut decides that the perfect time to do her business is in the 2 seconds between removing her dirty diaper slipping the clean diaper under her bottom. Other fun fact: grabbing your toes and pulling them over your shoulders and/or gnawing on them is a really good way to get things moving down below. Anyway. We wash the changing pads a lot.





I use the plain old flannel receiving blankets as a similar top layer on the boppy. Not only does it protect the cover (which is also a PITA to change) but it also serves as a nice burp cloth/spit up rag/etc. Anyway, the main message here is that babies are really slimy little people and it behooves you to have as many barriers as possible between the slime and the nice, pretty thing you purchased to make your nursery visually pleasing.

Back with #4 tomorrow!

Top 10 Newborn Essentials (Part I)

The peanut is no longer a newborn. She is now a BABY - she has a sense of humor, she squirms in your arms, and she sometimes makes faces at us that foreshadow her adolescence.

Like this one...

Back when she was a sleepy, snuggly, tiny, new person, we had a thousand things in our house that were marginally useful and a few serious workhorse items. I would have loved it if someone had separated the best from the rest for me before the painful, exhausted, overwhelming newborn days. So without further ado, here are the first five of my top ten newborn essentials (in no particular order). Warning: there be nipples ahead. Travel wisely.

#10: The Grovia Magic Stick

I don't mind touching the peanut's butt. I don't even mind it when some poo gets on my fingers. For some reason though, diaper rash cream really grosses me out. It smells strange and the white stuff gets into the cracks of my fingers and won't go away unless I scrub. Blech. For $13.90, you don't have to deal with any of that. The Grovia Magic Stick is like a giant tube of chapstick for baby butt cheeks. It smells really good, like something you'd find in a spa (no joke). You don't have to touch anything with your fingers. As an added bonus, it's made of lovely organic stuff.  (Even if it weren't, I would totally still use it.)  As if that weren't enough, it's also cloth diaper friendly. We've used it with disposables as well, and it works like a charm no matter what kind of diaper you use it with. It's more expensive than a tube of Desitin, but it lasts forever and is worth it, in my opinion. 

#9: A Breastfeeding Pillow

At first, I was too cool for a breastfeeding pillow. I didn't want to be tied to my house or to be one of those moms who lugs her boppy everywhere. My baby and I were going to be mobile. Out to lunch and time to nurse? No problem. At Target and time to nurse? Piece of cake! (You can see where this is going.) At the hospital, the lactation consultant cheerily told me I looked like a pro. Good job, self, I thought. We don't need no stinking pillow. And then, all of a sudden, everything fell apart. A mere two days after the peanut graced us with her presence, the girls hurt worse than I ever thought possible. To say I had "cracked nipples" would be the understatement of the year, let me tell you. I wept when she ate. I wept thinking about the next time I had to feed her. I watched the clock tick towards that three hour feeding mark with utter dread. I cried in the shower. I called a lactation consultant, who prescribed a stack of couch pillows "just until it heals." I ordered fancy nipple butter.  I balanced the peanut on the teetering stack of couch pillows, which shifted around and squished while she was trying to eat. Unsurprisingly, everything hurt and wasn't getting better and I felt like a terrible mother for hating breastfeeding. My doctor went so far as to tell me, "Yeah, that might not heal until you wean." ARE YOU KIDDING ME?? Then, one fateful day about eight weeks in, I was at a friend's house and went into her son's room to feed the peanut. She had a boppy and, in the absence of my teetering stack of couch pillows, I decided to give it a go. It wasn't immediate relief (we were way too far gone for that) but I could immediately see what all the fuss was about. I ordered a boppy on my phone while nursing. And then I cursed myself for being such a stubborn mule for eight weeks. It took almost another eight weeks for everything to heal - nursing injuries are no joke - but the fact that I am still breastfeeding is 100% due to the boppy. So buy the stupid pillow. It doesn't matter if it's a Boppy or a MyBrestFriend (although that one has the best name and looks like you could land an airplane on it) or a Mombo (which sounds like you should drink a cocktail while you nurse). Buy it and take it with you to the hospital when you go into labor and take it to Target and to restaurants and to the park. Embrace your status as "that mom who lugs her boppy everywhere." The irony is that you'll get a good latch early on and then be able to breastfeed without it, unlike me. TRUST ME ON THIS ONE. It's worth it. 

#8: Short-Sleeved White Onesies

Even if it's winter. Even if you think the ones that say "Daddy's Little Princess" or "The Littlest Slugger" are the most adorable things ever. Even if you have a thousand cute little outfits that you can't wait to put your bundle of joy in. The peanut is wearing a short sleeved white onesie most days. Under a dress and leggings so her belly doesn't show (and get cold) when I pick her up. Under a sleeper (and a snowsuit) when it's seven degrees out and we have to walk to daycare. By itself when I'm tired of being cold and crank up the heat so our house feels like Miami Beach in the summer. She grew out of her newborn onesies and we didn't have any bigger ones and I didn't know what to do. I broke out the "Daddy's Little Princess" set but they always show through the neck hole of whatever is on top. I'm also against emblazoning my child with a logo at such a young age (and/or in general), but that's a discussion for another post. The long sleeve onesies are warmer, but get all bunched up under other long sleeves, making everyone frustrated. A pack of white onesies in each size to last a kid through the first year of life might be the best shower gift in history.

#7: HoMedics Sound Spa Lullaby Relaxing Machine

Everyone wants the Sleep Sheep. He's cute and he makes "white noise" sounds. What more do you need? In our case, something that doesn't shut off every "forty-five" minutes. The forty-five is in quotes because when your baby only sleeps until the white noise stops, you only sleep until the white noise stops, and even if it's actually forty-five minutes it feels like about forty-five seconds. Everything starts looking rather dire rather quickly and don't even get me started on what happens when the Sleep Sheep runs out of batteries. Enter the fine folks at HoMedics. No, they are not a group of prostitutes with medical degrees (badum CHING). They make many varieties of white noise machines that (1) run as long as you want them to and (2) plug into the wall so you never run out of batteries.  Although the photo shows a little "30," making it seem like this is a time-limited device, there is an option to turn off the timer altogether. The peanut likes the ocean sounds. I prefer the rainforest, but it doesn't seem to keep her in a deep enough sleep. The three song options are sort of weird and whiny and the heartbeat option sounds like the Law & Order bomp-BOMP over and over again (so. creepy.) I've never used the projector part for long, but the peanut seems impressed when I do. Those oceans though, are pretty much the best ever. The peanut has an adult version of this sound machine at daycare, which comes with lots of water noises. I believe they use the "brook" setting and apparently all the kids sleep forever at nap time now. YOU'RE WELCOME. 

#6: Halo Sleep Sack

We watched a few Harvey Karp videos on YouTube before the peanut was even a glimmer in our eyes (Thanks, Brian and Jenn!) and we were totally sold on the swaddle. We got seven thousand Aden & Anais muslin blankets as gifts, which worked great to swaddle the peanut when she didn't move, ever. Once those little arms started flailing about, though, she busted out of her muslin swaddles faster than you could say "Thank goodness, she's finally asleep." Enter the Halo Sleep Sack, a.k.a. the Baby Straightjacket. Two strips of super strong velcro attach the straightjacket part, so it's flail-proof. It zips from the chin to the toes so you can sneak in the bottom and change a diaper. (Both of these features differentiate this sleep sack from the other two that we tried - one had no velcro and the other forced us to unswaddle for a diaper change.) The baby in the photo looks loosely swaddled to me. The peanut, however, requires seriously tight swaddles or she flips out. If it's too loose, we'll hear this emergency cry coming from her room and there she is, with her little hands sticking out of the top, looking at us like, "WHERE DID THESE HANDS COME FROM?" Then we tuck them back down and she falls right back to sleep. I've tried to break her of her swaddle addiction by leaving one arm out, to no avail. That one arm waves around like it's battery powered and there is no sleeping. I can't say I blame her though - if my arm were flying around and knocking me in the face, I wouldn't be able to sleep either. At any rate, the Halo sleep sack is a must have. If you have a summer baby, they come in a nice light cotton too so you don't cook your child. See? They think of everything. 

Will these five things make your baby sleep through the night immediately and make you feel like the best mom/dad ever? No chance. However, they will make your life a little bit easier and that, my friends, is all we can hope for. 

The remainder of my Top 10 will be in the next post.  Thanks for reading! 

And the winner is.....

After trying eight different types of cloth diapers, we bought fourteen of the Bum Genius 4.0 One-Size Pocket Diaper.  Like the Rumparooz, it is a pocket diaper that comes with a newborn insert and a one-size insert.

The inside, with the "pocket" open at the right

 The white fabric is less fleece and more microfiber, which means it doesn't get pilly like the Rumparooz did.

The outside in "dazzle"

It fit all of our criteria:

• It's daycare friendly: We stuff the inserts ahead of time and our daycare provider tosses each dirty diaper into a wetbag, which we pick up every evening. (She stores all the diapers - disposables in the trash and cloth in wetbags - on her porch. In the winter, this means we pick up a bag full of frozen diapers at the end of the day!) 
• They work well at night: The fleece/microfiber shell wicks almost every drop of moisture away from the peanut's tush. We double stuff the pocket for nighttime, either with a newborn insert and a one-size insert or with a newborn insert and a hemp doubler, for extra absorbency. We haven't had a single leak. 
• The snaps are great: No more sticky velcro!
• The one-sized diapers will fit the peanut for the rest of her diaper days, saving us money.

In addition, they are super easy to wash and dry and the shells are coming clean after either one or two washes, depending on how messy they've gotten. The inserts are holding onto stains a bit more - I am going to investigate stain removal techniques but since there is a nice clean layer of fleece between the stained insert and the peanut's bum, it bothers me less. 

Fourteen diapers lasts us just shy of two days. This means we're forced to do laundry frequently which, in turn, probably helps with the staining. I might pick up two or three more diapers just so we can comfortably make it through two days, but we're doing just fine for now. 

Here is the peanut with her new stash of diapers: 

We got lots of colors because colors are fun.

Happy customer!

She's quite a bit bigger in this photo (which I took today) than in all the other photos (which were taken in early January). A little steadier on her feet, too! The diaper fits a little trimmer than it looks like here. So far, we can use the newborn insert for day wear, which makes the diaper very trim under her clothes. 

Price-wise, it seems like every online retailer carries single diapers for $17.95 (Amazon, Diaper Lab, and the Green Nursery all have the same price) and packs of six or twelve for slightly less per diaper.  At the Diaper Lab, you get a discount for buying in bulk so twelve pocket diapers, one wetbag, and one giant box of Country Save laundry detergent cost a total of $250.00. I went back and got two more diapers for $17.95 each after it became clear that twelve diapers would not get us through two days. So for under $300, we could potentially make it all the way to potty training. Various websites estimate the cost of disposable diapers for one child at between $1500-$3000. I am not committed enough to be a coupon clipper and the Target brand disposables that we tried for a little while were a disaster, so I would imagine we would have ended up in Pampers or something and landed close to the upper end of that range. I'll be glad to put that money towards something else! 

Thus ends the diaper quest! We've been using the Bum Genius pocket diapers for about a month and we couldn't be happier!

Rumparooz One-Size Pocket Diaper

Although we were leaning towards all-in-one diapers, Laura put two pocket diapers in our trial and (foreshadowing!) we're super glad she did. The first pocket diaper we tried was the Rumparooz One-Size Pocket diaper. Unlike all-in-ones, pocket diapers are a two-part system. First is the shell, which is made of waterproof material (the gray part) and fleece (the white part).  The fleece wicks the moisture away from the bum and into the interior of the diaper, which holds an absorbent insert made of microfiber, hemp, or bamboo.

You can really see the extent of the adjustable-ness on this diaper - so many options to get a perfect fit.

The Rumparooz pocket diaper had internal gussets (like the Eco Posh, which is also made by Rumparooz), and did an excellent job holding in everything the peanut could dish out. 

I somehow forgot to take a picture of the peanut in this diaper. She looked extra cute in it, I promise. 

The Rumparooz diaper comes with a newborn-size microfiber insert and a bigger microfiber insert - 

(photo from amazon.com)

You can snap both inserts together for extra absorbency (like at night), which is a great feature, or add another insert made of a more absorbent fabric like hemp or bamboo.

Another great thing about the Rumparooz is that both the covers and the inserts are VERY easy to wash, dry in a flash, and showed zero stains during our two week trial. SWOON. Even without going into the dryer, the cover dried super quickly (in a matter of a few hours), which would save us electricity, keep the diapers in great shape, and make our plan to buy two days worth of diapers possible. The inserts went through the dryer but didn't take long to become bone dry, unlike some of the all-in-ones we tried.

Stuffing the insert into the shell is an extra step involved with pocket diapers that is not necessary with all-in-ones, which turns some people off but ended up being a plus, in our opinion. With this extra step came the easy washing and drying that really made this diaper convenient.

So did we buy lots of Rumparooz?  No. We returned our fabulous Rumparooz diaper to the Diaper Lab at the end of our trial. It was more expensive than the type we ended up choosing and we liked it equally. Also, and this was a minor, minor thing, but the fleece on the inside of the shell became a little "pilly" with several washings. Not like that matters, but the other diaper did not get pilly and seemed like it would last through several hundred washings a little more gracefully.

Why, you ask, did we not just get some Rumparooz and some whatevers and some whatever elses? People have lots of different kinds of diapers and speak highly of being able to choose an all-in-one for daycare, a pocket with customizable absorbency for nighttime, or a sized diaper for under leggings or a dress. Part of our decision to populate the peanut's diaper stash with only one type of diaper is due to my weird love of seeing neat stacks of diapers in a drawer, which doesn't happen when you have lots of different kinds. The other (more sensible) reason we went with one type of diaper instead of several is to save ourselves the hassle that comes with having different care instructions for different materials, different customer service departments to call in case of a problem, different drying times, different silver bullet stain removal techniques, and different snap configurations to size properly. That's my story  and I'm sticking to it.

The final word, though, is that this is a four-star diaper (or five stars... just give it all the stars you've got). It didn't leak, washed well, and seemed like it would hold up for the long term. The slightly pilly fleece and the cost were the only things that prevented us from buying a whole drawer full of Rumparooz.

Price information (from Amazon):
Rumparooz One Size Pocket Diaper, $23.50

Swaddlebees Simplex All-in-One Sized Diaper

I told Laura, the helpful Diaper Lab employee who put our trial together, that we wanted all One-Size diapers. She convinced me to try at least one "sized"diaper just to make sure we actually liked the one-size diapers as much as we thought we would. She helpfully pointed out that one-size diapers can be awfully bulky on a smaller baby due to the extra fabric. We agreed to try the Swaddlebees Simplex, pictured below (with elephants!). It is the sized cousin to the Swaddlebees Simplex One-Size diaper that we had in green. The medium, pictured here on the peanut, fits babies from 12 to 25 pounds. The photo below doesn't quite capture it, but the lack of elastic and gathered fabric, as is common on the one-size diapers, made it slide dangerously low on her "hips," which don't really hold anything up yet. The leg holes sagged and out came the bodily fluids. This diaper tied with the Grovia hybrid for the leakiest diaper in the trial. At the same time, the gathering that was so problematic in the green Swaddlebees diaper was absent here. 

The inside of this diaper is just like the other Swaddlebees diaper - organic cotton on one side of the tongue ...

And fleece on the other.

(For whatever reason, this diaper stained a bit more than the green one.)

The diaper is still adjustable on the sides (see the multiple rows of white snaps?) but doesn't have an adjustable rise like the one-size diapers. This makes it more trim-fitting but also a bit more hit-or-miss when it comes to sizing. Diapers fit each baby differently and this one just didn't fit our peanut. The weird fit and crazy leaks made this diaper a no-go. In retrospect, however - and this is a very important point - the peanut weighed just shy of 12 pounds during our trial. If we went back now, with a baby actually between 12 and 25 pounds, we might feel very differently about the elephant diaper.

Price information (from Amazon):
Swaddlebees Simplex 2.0 Medium All-in-One Diaper, $22.95

Tots Bots Easy Fit All-in-One

The Tots Bots Easy Fit All-in-One diaper was one of our favorites. It was a tongue-style all-in-one diaper with a "minky" interior that was oh-so-soft against the tush.  Laura, who set up our trial, gave us a thin fleece liner that we could lay in the diaper to make it "stay-dry" overnight.  The fleece liners came many-to-a-pack for $5, which made it a workable nighttime solution. 

Slight staining - and we know how I feel about stains. 

Tongue laid across the middle of the diaper.

Tots Bots diapers are made in Scotland and the pattern we got - "Jubilee" - was extra delightful and British. I didn't get a close up of the outside, but there are totally Union Jack hearts and tea cups and something I assume is a tea cake. The company also makes nursery rhyme patterns (Hansel and Gretel, Jack and the Beanstock, Three Little Pigs) along with solids, putting Tots Bots in the running in the "cutest patterns" category.  

Despite the slight staining you see in the first photo, the diapers actually washed really well.  The washing machine's agitator takes the tongue out of the pocket for you, so you don't have to touch the wet/dirty part at all. The "minky" fabric also absorbs a ton but dries really quickly, a huge plus for an all-in-one.  

The fit was quite trim as well. 

One red flag came up when I was looking online for prices and availability for each of the diapers in our trial. Although I love the Diaper Lab and will certainly shop there as much as I can, getting the best price on baby items is also important (because there are SO MANY baby items). The plus side of all my internet searching is that I can safely say that the Diaper Lab has VERY competitive prices. The downside is that Tots Bots are curiously not-that-available on Amazon. In my head, if Amazon doesn't have something, it's relatively obscure. The Diaper Lab is a pint-sized store and doesn't always have things in stock when you need them. It's also quite a haul from where we live and I could see the benefit of having diapers available online. Other websites carry the diapers, of course, but free shipping and such from Amazon tends to steer me in that direction on a regular basis. 

In the end though, the main reason we didn't buy a ton of these was that we found something we liked just as much that cost less.  I'm not going to spoil the surprise and tell you what we picked just yet, but I can tell you that I was a little bummed to return this diaper at the end of the trial. 

Price Info (from the Green Nursery, which seems to have a consistently good online selection):

Tots Bots Easy Fit with Snaps, $24.95

Bum Genius Elemental All-In-One Diaper

The diaper I most wanted to love was the Bum Genius Elemental All-in-One Diaper.  Sherry and John over at Young House Love gave it a great review, the all-in-one-ness would have been a breeze for daycare and home alike, and they come in cute prints like the one shown below (called Lovelace).  

The peanut clearly felt powerful in the Elemental, thus the HI-YA pose:

It's crazy how much she's changed since this photo was taken! 

Unlike the Swaddlebees diaper, the Elemental does not have a "tongue."  Instead, there is a loop of fabric attached to the diaper in the front and in the back, which makes drying time shorter and ensures that water (and soap) can flow around the parts of the diaper that do the heavy lifting. Though the middle part of the loop dried quickly the parts sewn to the body of the diaper took forever to dry, longer than any of the other diapers (other than the Eco Posh).

The diaper fit well but it didn't wash well. The below photo shows some of the sad, sad staining that occurred after two weeks of use. Cloth diaper aficionados swear by "sunning" (putting your diapers in the sun) to bleach out stains. Others suggest that you shouldn't care about stains on something that is only going to get pooped on again (and again...). The thing is, though, stains bother me. Even if the diaper has been through the wash a thousand times, SOMETHING must be living in the fibers to cause the stain, which means it's not totally clean. I don't know if laundry science backs that up, but stained diapers FEEL dirty. As for sunning, we live in a particularly un-sunny corner of the world. Apparently sunning works when it's cloudy, but there are a lot of trees on our property and a lot of tall buildings that cast long shadows. Any given spot is in the sun for such a short period of time each day that I'm not sure we could sun diapers to any great effect. Given all that, buying diapers that stain after two weeks of use seemed like a questionable decision.

Sorry for posting a photo of a gross poo stain but this is life, folks.

But such a pretty outside! Sigh. 

Even though I really, really, REALLY wanted to like this diaper, it went back to the Diaper Lab at the end of our trial.

Price info (from Amazon):

Bum Genius Elemental One-Size Cloth Diaper, $24.95

Eco Posh One Size Fitted Diaper

We got the Eco Posh One Size Fitted Diaper in our trial because we wanted to use cloth diapers at night (we had been using disposables) and wanted something ultra absorbent with a "stay dry" liner against the peanut's rash-prone tush. Laura, who set up our trial, included the EP fitted diaper along with a Rumparooz cover (not pictured) and said it was the heavy artillery of the nighttime diaper options. 

The EP diaper is ten layers thick and made of recycled water bottles, bamboo, and organic cotton.  It also comes with a bamboo "soaker" that you can layer in for extra absorbency. I liked the brown interior because, ahem, it would stain less than the pristine white interiors of all the other diapers.

Stay dry fleece + gussets on the inside

Ten layers of fluffy absorbency - how posh!

To be honest, however, we didn't really give the Eco Posh diaper a try. When we prepped the diapers for use (wash, wash, wash, dry, wash, wash, wash, dry), it took FOREVER to dry, much longer than any of the all-in-ones. That's the flip side of the super absorbent materials like bamboo - they also absorb and hold onto water from the washing machine and don't let go of it for a long while.  The long drying time was a serious red flag, especially since we planned to buy only enough diapers to last us for two days or so. The extra long drying time would have meant that we needed to buy several of these and the price ($35 for the diaper, $15 for the cover) made that a cost prohibitive plan. 

When I put the diaper on the peanut, she looked hilarious - skinny little legs poking out of this giant diaper.  I stood her up to take a photo and ... the peanut made use of the diaper.  I removed the diaper before getting a photo, and that was the end of that.  

I would have given the extra absorbent diaper another try despite the cost, but most of the other diapers worked just fine for nighttime. If we didn't need to spend $50 per diaper on a stash that would take a lot of time and/or electricity to dry, we weren't going to.  

Price info (from Amazon):

Eco Posh One Size Fitted Diaper, $34.95

Rumparooz One Size Diaper Cover, $18.00 (Diaper Lab's price was better here - only $15.00)

The peanut used the diaper for approximately 45 seconds but the downsides of the diaper (cost + drying time) weighed heavily once we found out she didn't need quite so much absorbency.  Despite its superpowers, we returned the Eco Posh One Size Fitted Diaper at the end of our trial.