I’m going to go out on a limb here and tell you this fundamental fact:
You will have to deal with diaper blowouts at least once per child. Usually, you get better at stopping them with each consecutive child.
While I only have 2 children, I can tell you that my diaper game (my husband, too) was much stronger with our second child. Except for that late-night blowout I talked about before. But that was the only time I had a diaper catastrophe so bad that I nearly had to call Hazmat to come to clean it up.
With my eldest, diaper blowouts were regular initially because of the cheap diapers we used. Finally, I had a blowout of my own (the verbal kind) with my husband and told him to get the imported diapers, or I was taking this pooping mess of a child and moving back to America without him.
We saw fewer blowouts once we bought the good diapers with elastic legs and back (Pampers were our preference). The only time we got hit with them was when my mother-in-law changed her and didn’t secure the tabs properly, and once when my husband didn’t want to let diapers go to waste, he used one of the last of a smaller size we’d had on her. She pooped, and it came right up the back.
I have never used cloth diapers myself though I have many friends that are enthused about them. And I have some that insist that cloth diapers have a tighter elastic fit in the back which keeps it from blowing out.
Other friends say that cloth diapers over disposable ones are a great solution, especially for nighttime, road trips, and plane rides. I think that if I had to deal with a diaper blowout while I was on a plane, train, or in an automobile, I’d probably lose my mind.
In any event, you can certainly try cloth diapers. But it is a matter of preference. Just as I preferred using Pampers on my children, I have friends that swear Huggies is way better. We didn’t like the way Huggies worked for us.
My best friend’s sister is all about saving the environment and was all into the cloth diaper thing. She swears cloth diapers are the best and that she’s never had a blowout with the ones she uses.
Bottom line: try them and see how they work to solve your diaper blowout woes.
Leslie Berry lives with her husband and two young daughters in Los Altos, California, where she loves helping other moms get comfortable with motherhood and embracing the insanity with facts peppered with laughs.
She loves eating too much sushi, exercising, and jamming out on her Fender. Read more about Leslie here.
