Success Using Cloth Nappies Overnight: A Case Study

Christina is a mum from Christchurch and a valued Bubblebubs customer. She was a keen cloth nappy user during the day, and like many of us, chose to use a disposable nappy overnight.

But when her heavy wetting son was around 8 months old he began leaking through disposables at night. Despite choosing high quality disposable nappies and upsizing to a larger weight range, the leaks continued – along with Christina’s frustration and sleepless nights!

She “got sick of waking up to wet sheets or having to get him changed within a minute of waking up to avoid the first big pee of the day leaking out.”

The thought of putting up with having to continue to wash and dry sheets and mattress protectors day after day during a wet, cold winter led Christina to look into other options.

“Three sets of sheets and two mattress covers weren’t enough! I also figured spending more money on more sheets and mattress covers was such a waste when I could just invest in night nappies.”

She already had Bamboo Delights fitted nappies in her stash, which she used during the day. When she discovered the trick of adding in extra absorbency between the fitted nappy and outer cover, she experimented with using our night booster sets in this way. She also uses our All In Two Candies on her son, so also tried using the booster sets from these in the same way. Christina finally had relief from leaks with this combo!

However as her son grew, she then found she had problems with a medium sized PUL cover fitting well over all the layers of nappy and boosters, and the leaks were appearing by morning again. This is common and just to keep everyone on their toes, one nappy combination may not last your little one throughout their lifetime in nappies!

This time she swapped out the booster set that comes with the Bamboo Delights fitted nappies with an Ai2 Candies booster set, and due to the extra bulk, she then upsized the PUL cover to a large size (designed for 14kg+ although her son was a few kilograms off this weight).

Our PUL covers are generously sized to accommodate bulky nappies so they’re the perfect choice for a night nappy. Having a little boy, she folded the single boosters in half and placed these towards the front of the nappy [see photos below showing Christina’s night nappy set up]

This latest change to the night nappy set up was when her son was one year old and now at 17 months old, it’s still going strong. And best of all, her son is warm, dry and comfortable and everyone is getting much more sleep at night – win, win, win!

Christina offers some great advice after her experimentation with using cloth nappies overnight:

• I would recommend 3-4 Bamboo Delights if living in rainy parts of NZ and 3-4 extra Candies inserts or night inserts to boost Bamboo Delights, as most people could use Bamboo Delight inserts. Louis is just insanely heavy and needs the couple more layers from the Candies. Another great aspect of this set up is it contains any insane morning poop!
• I wish I had known about night nappies from birth. Of course he pooped so much we had to change him in the night often anyway but sometimes I’d be changing just pee and sleep was SO ROUGH for months for us. So I wish I had known how easy it is to boost BamBams, prefolds, and Bamboo Delights under the roomy Bubblebubs covers to make things easier to skip a change if no poops.
• I find hand rinsing all layers of the nappy in hot water and a bit of detergent essential. I follow CCNDU [Clean Cloth Nappies Down Under] instructions for this and don’t have any smells or ammonia issues. I use Persil. I did worry about this extra step but it takes less than a minute. And since all my Candies inserts are rotated through night or day, no one insert in particular takes a frequent heavy urine load for 12 hours unlike other night nappy options.

Like to get these results for yourself? Check out our Night Nappy Trial Pack here!