Diapering: Gerber Diapers
Thanks to Marie for this Frugal Baby Tip!

I know you're going to hear a lot of people say that the Gerber
birdseye (not DSQ) are garbage, but here's my 2 cents anyway. When my
daughter was born, we were living in Italy and couldn't find any
cloth diapers, much less have any idea where to find any. So my mom
went out to look for some for me, and ended up buying the Gerber
birdseye prefolds, the prefolds with an absorbent pad (which IS
garbage), and the flat twills. She washed them all before mailing
them to me.

She did comment that none of these diapers were like the ones she'd
used on all of us, but since it was all she could find, that's what
we went with. I have washed, and washed, and washed, and for the
first six months, doing what Laura in the UK calls the boil wash on
these diapers, and I'm still using them now, over a year later!

I started out folding them in half (since my daughter was so tiny)
and pinning them with a newborn or small plastic pant over them. I
know that these pants don't breathe, and a lot of people don't like
them because of the vinyl, but again, that's all we could find or
knew about. Because my daughter pooped everytime I fed her, I was
changing her every 1-1/2 to 2 hours, and they worked just fine. I
never had leaks, and if we had a poop blowout, it was contained in
the plastic pants. BTW, when we did use disposables (for travelling),
she ALWAYS blew out of them up the back anytime she pooped. So if
you're breastfeeding, changing over to disposables will probably be
worse.

As she's gotten older, I've had to double up the diapers, because
they're not terribly absorbent, but even at 14 months, she can go 3-4
hours with one of these diapers with another folded in middle as a
doubler. Maybe she's just not a heavy wetter!

Anyway, YMMV, but I wouldn't give up just yet. I would try to find
better wraps or covers, consider pinning, and keep trying. Now that I
know more about what's available, I would probably look into them if
we ever have another, but for now, what I have still works, and it
saved us a ton of money!

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