Battle of the diapers

With the wee one's arrival imminent, I started asking around what the best diaper options are for newborns. Biboy and Barbara swear by Pampers but since there are so many diaper product lines now (even within Pampers), I'm kind of overwhelmed. So, I thought I should buy a few of different brands and test them when the baby is here. The scientist in me jumped on the opportunity to conduct an experiment to assess which one is best for the baby and which one I'd continue to purchase.

I considered both disposable and reusable diapers with their pros and cons (including carbon footprints of throwing out disposables, and of washing and disinfecting reusable ones), I ended up stocking up on disposable diapers with eco-friendly claims. I figured I should buy the diapers in size 1 because the wee one, I expect, will outgrow the newborn size rapidly. So, the diapers I got were Pampers Pure, The Honest Company, Seventh Generation, and Dyper. At Buy Buy Baby, where I bought most of the diapers and other baby gear, the cashier asked me why I was stocking up. Did I already have a baby shower? Note that I was there a few days before the shelter-in-place order was issued... I'm very thankful that I bought enough diapers to last two months, both so I don't have to go out often during the baby's first weeks and just in case the limitations for shopping get extended well into the middle of the year.

Soon after I felt smug enough because I have diapers for the wee one, life threw a curve ball. I had to deliver sooner than expected. And I didn't prepare for an early-term baby. So all of a sudden, the diapers I had bought would remain unused until the wee one becomes big enough. I had to resort to newborn-size Pampers Swaddlers (size 0) provided by the hospital and Gabriel's leftovers. And I can say, after a week of using it with the baby, that the Swaddlers are a good fit. Each diaper has soft and stretchy sides that allow my baby to move (he kicks a lot!) yet make sure that there's no leakage (unless I end up putting it on him the wrong way). It also has a wetness indicator which makes it easy for me to see if my baby peed; poop is a different story: I have to actually detach the adhesive tapes of the diaper to check for poop. Anyway, I liked the Swaddlers a lot that I continued with the product. I bought a few more boxes of size 0 to last for four weeks. The question is: will my baby remain small enough to fit in size 0? He is rapidly growing and I suspect that we'll be moving to size 1 around the time we finish his last opened box of Swaddlers... if not sooner. I received Pampers Swaddlers in size 1 as a gift a few weeks later and thoroughly enjoyed using it because I didn't have to guess when the diaper was wet (thanks to the wetness indicator).  

And I was wrong... my son actually outgrew the newborn size of Pampers Swaddlers within a few weeks so I started him on the Dyper newborn-size diapers. I didn't use this brand sooner because its diapers ran big (more like a size 1). Anyway, I chose to try Dyper because its claim to fame is that its diapers are compostable and it has efforts to reach carbon neutrality. But how about its performance as a diaper? I noticed that when it's wet, the diaper is much bulkier than the Swaddlers and it appeared to be less absorbent as well. I knew that it was time to change diapers even without looking at the wetness indicator because my baby kept crying when he felt uncomfortable. I see this as a positive: I am forced to change my son's diapers every few hours, keeping him clean as a result. Though I am actually happy with Dyper, I didn't go with the subscription service because I had a few more brands to try before settling to a particular diaper brand.

After my child had used up all of the Dyper diapers, I next got him to try the Honest diapers. The biggest difference I immediately noticed was that the diapers had cute animal prints on them. And that there's no wetness indicator. I asked my parents how'd I know when to change nappies when there aren't any indicators (because when they were figuring me out as brand new parents, I doubt that my diapers had wetness indicators). I figured it out soon enough... I just had to change diapers every two or three hours. The Honest diapers become noticeably bulged with all the poop and pee anyway. Does my son like it? So far, I haven't had a cry because of a wet nappy.

I finally opened my box of Seventh Generation diapers. Like the the Honest diapers, the Seventh Generation diapers had prints but no wetness indicator. So I was back to smelling his diapers every two or three hours to see if he'd wet them.

But at the end of this experimentation, I ended up sticking with Pampers Swaddlers (when the little one shifted to the next bigger size). It's the most reliable diaper we've used so far and I liked the idea of the wetness indicator. Perhaps, once he needs another size-up (or I've used up all the Swaddlers I have in stock), we'll revisit other diaper brands.