Diaper Covers: A Personal Review.

I am inspired to write this post after receiving my first package of Thirsties Diaper covers. As a user of prefold diapers, a waterproof cover is necessary to hold everything in and prevent leaks and for the past 11 months we have been searching for the perfect cover. With the arrival of the Thirsties I feel like I’ve finally found them!

One major factor in choosing a diaper cover for my baby is the breathability of it. Those old style plastic pants are just not going to cut it these days…they get sweaty and look ugly! No, the diaper covers of today have to go a whole lot further in both functionality and design. One easy way to test the breathability of a diaper cover, the ability for air to circulate in and out from baby’s bottom, is to hold it tightly over your face against your mouth and nose and literally see if you can breathe through it! If you are still alive at the end of the experiment, you know they are good!

Another vital feature of a diaper cover is the ability to hold in wetness and solid matter. Although regular changes are a part of cloth diapering, you want the cover to withstand a large deposit for at least a few minutes without leaking so you can get to the changing mat! Gussets on the legs are almost essential to ensure leak-free surety.

I also like flexibility. I want my diaper cover to move in harmony with my baby and not splay her legs too far apart with bulky material. I want something snug enough to enable her clothes to still fit well and of course it also has to look good!

So with these few criteria in mind let me back up to the beginnings of our cloth diaper adventure for the reviews to begin…

Bummis Super Whisper Wrap

When I bought my first batch of prefold diapers from Amazon the covers recommended to go with it were the Bummis Super Whisper Wrap . They seemed to have fairly good reviews so we added some to our baby registry and were grateful to receive them.

However from the start I didn’t like them. They were starchy stiff and didn’t seem to fit around baby well at all. I felt like they made her body rigid and they were very bulky under her clothes.  They also had no leg gusset and although we managed to avoid any major leaks I found this a short-coming of a diaper cover that was seemingly so well hyped. Because we had no other option at the time we used them for quite a while but did not want to order the next size up so we started searching around for something different….

Imse Vimse Bumpy Soft Cloth Diaper Cover
The next batch we used were donated to us by a friend. These covers by the well known brand Imse Vimse had some pretty good reports but I wasn’t overawed with them (Am I hard to please?) They were a little more flexible than the Bummis Whisper Wrap but still felt a little bulky. The leg gussets were good. Anyway we hardly used these at all because at that time a whole new diaper cover became available locally in Dominica…

The Nameless Brand
A local supermarket suddenly started selling some nameless diaper covers and they were bought out as fast as they came in. We got a few and I was in bliss. These covers were super thin yet completely waterproof and they came in a variety of coloured designs, which was a welcome change from the plain white of the Bummi’s and Imse Vimse’s. They were super, super cheap when compared with anything else online and although they were made from PVC knit they easily passed the breathability test. Another reason I was endeared to these covers is that they fastened with snappers rather than Velcro, which I don’t like the texture and sound of.

The downside to all this diaper cover joy was that the fasteners would firstly peel off a top layer of whatever paint or lacquer they were coated with and I had to be vigilant to ensure baby was not picking it up and putting it in her mouth. The fasteners would also rust very quickly and so the covers could not be left to soak or machine washed. After the peeling-paint stage, the fasteners would often fall out from their attachment to the cloth and leave holes. Being so fond of them, I diligently mended the gaps and sewed in new fasteners which prolonged their life. However the next stage in their decline would prove to be fatal…after many washings the inner wrap would come apart from the seams and render the whole cover prone to leaking and thus useless. Despite their drawbacks I mourned the loss of each one as they were bought from a supplier going out of business and I could not find them anywhere else. What would I do now?

Thirsties Diaper Covers
Well I had been reading about Thirsties for a while but hesitated at the cost of $11 each. With a sense of desperation that can only be felt by a committed cloth diaper Mama running out of options, I decided to go ahead, splurge with some online shopping and see if they could live up to the hype. Of course from my exuberance at the beginning of this blog you can tell I am a highly satisfied customer. These are the diaper covers I have been wishing and waiting for…I wish I had bought them sooner. The Thirsties Diaper Covers are brightly coloured, fit baby like a glove, are breathable, well made with a lovely double leg gusset that is snug but not too tight. They are also super lightweight and thus don’t bulk up baby. They are high quality and made to last so I’ll be able to use them for a very long time making them great value for money.

Inspired by this success of finally getting the right cover I began instantly thinking about what to do for baby number two on the way. I want he/she to wear cloth diapers from day one and have already purchased some preemie and newborn sized prefolds. I now need some extra-small sized covers and since the Thirsties do run rather large (my 11 month old still fits into a small size) I asked Heather at Cloth Diaper Outlet for her advice on the smallest cover available. As well as some Thirsties I have decided to also order some newborn size Proraps and  Bummis Super Brite covers to get the perfect newborn fit. I am now waiting for these items to arrive and will review them in a follow up post…

Although my love affair with Thirsties seems set to be a long-term relationship, I’m still open to diapering polygamy so please let me know what your favourite diaper covers have been and any other recommendations!