Cloth Diapering Boys vs. Girls, How do they compare?

Guest Post by Bert

You wouldn’t think that there would be that much difference between girls and boys when it comes to cloth diapering. Incorrect. I have learned over the past few weeks that stuffing a nighttime pocket diaper for Lady Bug is completely different than what I had been doing the last two and a half years for Buggie.

You see when little boys pee it fills the front of the diaper. Not rocket science, I know, but I promise you this never occurred to me! That’s the main reason I’m writing this…because I’m thinking that maybe you didn’t realize this either. Anyways, when little girls pee it fills the back of the diaper. And that, my friends, affects how you stuff your pocket diaper if you are using a newborn/doubler sized insert.

With Buggie we stuffed the diaper with the doubler insert in the front. Worked brilliantly with him and as he aged and his bladder grew we simply added more layers. Okay it was only a hemp (I LOVE hemp for a nighttime diaper by the way. It’s not bulky but it holds a lot of urine.) layer but it did the trick for us. So our diaper for Buggie looked like this:

Trust me that did not work for Lady Bug. We’ve had leaky night diapers for about a week and a half. Ben and I could not figure out why this kept happening. We were about ready to contact the diaper manufacturer and ask if other parents had this problem. That’s when it dawned on me. Was the extra insert even getting wet? So I grabbed her sopping wet diaper and pulled out the inserts. Sure enough the back of the diaper was soaked and the front part where the doubler insert was placed was practically dry. No wonder I’ve been changing crib sheets and mattress pads every day this week! It wasn’t the diaper’s fault. It was me! And let me tell you what a relief that was.

For Lady Bug the doubler needs to be placed towards the back of her diaper for optimum pee absorption. Her nighttime diapers need to look like this:

Noticed how the doubler is not in the front? That’s the key my fluffy fanatic mamas! I also will be using a hemp doubler on top of a regular insert. That diaper will look like this:

And as she grows and her bladder grows her nighttime diaper will probably be the same as Buggie’s was. It’ll look like this but with the doubler in the back:

Happy absorbent diapering my friends! I hope this spares you of many late night sheet changes. Don’t worry; I was happy to be the village idiot on this one!

Elizabeth (aka Bert) Anderson married her college sweetheart in 2005, and started her journey into motherhood in 2008 with the birth of her son.  She started blogging in 2009 as a way to keep track of her thoughts on being a first time mom, especially her struggle with postpartum depression, and as a way of reaching out to other moms who are struggling with the same things.  This June, Bert had another first in her motherhood travels - a little girl!  Even though she's newly a mother of two, Bert maintains that no matter how many children you have you will always be a "first time mom" because there's a first time for everything!  Visit her blog, at FTM. Bert is a contributor for She Thinks Media.