PUL Cloth Diaper Covers

Written by Diaper Diva

A couple days ago I gave a brief overview on cloth diaper covers. I’m big into details, so I figured I’d dedicate a few posts to specifics.

As far as PUL covers go, I can really only give information on the ones I’ve tried. I have used Bummis (both the snap & “whisper wrap” versions), Mother-ease Air-Flow, and Green Earth Diaper Wraps.

Bummis Diaper Covers: I used the bummis for the newborn & small sizes. I was able to register for them on amazon.com so I received them as baby shower gifts (amazon has since started carrying more brands). They worked great and are really durable. They’re even supposed to be safe for putting in the dryer, but I have to admit I was chicken (i REALLY want my cloth to last through more kids!), so I never put them in. However, they air-dried pretty fast (a couple hours or less?). The leg elastic is encased really well, so they never caused any red-marks on the legs & did not dig in at all. They also held in any explosions that managed to sneak outside the actual cloth diaper, so with the cloth/bummis combo I never had to change diaper’s girl’s clothes due to blowouts/leaks.

They fit great over the kissaluv size 0 & over prefolds (& over the kissaluv with a prefold wrapped & snappied around it night-time combo). I used them a bit over the Mother-Ease One-Size diapers once they first started to fit, but they just barely worked for that.

With the wrap you can also…well, ‘wrap’ it tighter, so that supposedly you can just lie a prefold diaper, tri-folded in the cover & put that on the baby…sort of like an All-in-Two (AI2). I tried this a few times & it never seemed to work out very well for me. Perhaps i’m just in need of a tutorial.

I asked mostly for the snap version & had just a couple “whisper wraps” since I’m drawn more to snaps than aplix/velcro since the latter will wear out quicker. Since I’ve used both, i can tell you why the “whisper wrap” is named as such. The snaps are CRAZY loud!! They’re sturdy all right (& a little hard to pull open!), but boy…When diaper girl was newborn & in need of a night-time change I would save my whisper wraps for that because i was convinced the snaps would wake up diaper dad & diaper boy (probably impossible but I was sleep-deprived & irrational).

The only other complaint I would have is that they are less breath-able than I would like. Now, diaper girl’s bottom never seemed overly warm or sweaty, but I did notice that I often couldn’t tell if she had a dirty diaper or not (when it’s purely breastfed poo the smell isn’t very strong). However, after a month when i started to switch over to my Mother-ease Air-flow, I could walk in the room & immediately know what was going on in that diaper. I can only assume this means the Air-Flow well….allow more air to…flow.

Mother-Ease Air-Flow: I use this size for medium & large. I would have liked to have some in the small size, but since I received the Bummis as a gift I didn’t want to buy more smalls. So when I used the Mother-Ease One-Size diapers in the newborn stage, I just made-do with the medium size cover, or squeezed it into a Bummis snap cover. They look really “poofy” when you put them on, but it’s a very thin PUL & thin elastic, so it smooshes down in clothes & does not cause extra bulk. These air-dry SUPER fast. Maybe 20 min & you’re back in business. They are called “air-flow” because they have what looks like pockets on the hips, between the snaps at the waist & legs. It’s hard to describe this, you can see a picture on the Mother-ease website. These covers fit over any type of diaper.

I have almost never had leaks using these covers. The only leaks I’ve had were with diaper boy at night. He has always been an incredibly heavy night-time wetter (even huggies overnight diapers didn’t always contain it!) so If he wore tight cotton pj pants over his diaper, it would wick onto his pj pants. he’s never woken up totally soaked (like he did with disposables), but damp around the legs & waist. We’ll cover this in another post, but just a tip: Use either wool or 100% polyester fleece pants/sleepers over night-time diapering & any “wicking” leaks will be history.

What i don’t like about the ME AF: The elastic. It’s not encased & it does cut into their legs. With diaper girl this was fairly easily resolved by not snapping it as tight as you would think you need to. So on her legs there appears to be gaps. However, we’ve still never had a leak with this get-up. Diaper boy with his uber-sensitive skin was a different story. The poor boy had red marks around his legs even when it was NOT actually cutting into the skin at all. Again…he’s NEVER complained about this & I would always ask him if it hurt & he said no…but it doesn’t look comfortable. If they could find a way to make that elastic more friendly, i would shout the merits of this cover from the rooftops. I do love the Mother-ease Air-flow.

Green Mountain Diaper Wrap: I bought some of these when I had to size up & buy large size covers for diaper boy but didn’t want to drop the coin for the Mother-ease. They were super inexpensive. I had very little success with these. They work ok over prefolds (which I rarely use), but not great. There were occasional daytime leaks & they didn’t work well over kissaluv fitteds & didn’t really work at all over the Mother-ease One-size. So, I can’t recommend these. Sure wish I could though, as they were quite inexpensive. Oh well, I guess you get what you pay for. I did break down & buy 4 of the Mother-ease Air-flow in the large size, and yes, it was worth it.

Up next: Fleece

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