Wool Covers and Soakers: A better way to cloth diaper

The learning curve for cloth diapering can seem steep when starting out, but with time it becomes an easy and enjoyable process that is beneficial for your child, your wallet and the environment. Hopefully, this article will prevent some of the costly guesswork that families often experience while trying to find a diapering set-up that works for them. I will not describe the pros and cons of each type of cloth diaper. Rather, I will detail what I’ve found works best for my son and my family.

There are a number of diapering options one can choose from: All in Ones, All in Twos, Fitteds, One-size, Prefolds and Flats. For diapers that require covers one can choose waterproof covers with a PUL lining that keeps moisture inside, conventional and organic cotton, fleece covers or wool wraps, soakers and longies. What works best for one family may not work for another family because success of one type over the other has a lot to do with preference. What works well for my family – i.e. my son, me and my husband, and our washer and dryer are the old-fashioned square prefold diapers and wool covers. Prefolds and old-fashioned flat diapers are a very energy-efficient form of cloth diapering and the one that most people think of when they think of cloth diapering. They wash efficiently and line-dry well and take minimal time to dry in an electric dryer. One need not worry about risking a painful stick with old-fashioned pins anymore either. Cloth diapering has come a long way and there is now an implement known as a Snappi that gathers and holds the fabric taut without the use of pins.

For covering the prefold to prevent leaks, we prefer wool diaper covers and soakers for a number of reasons. Many families cloth diaper to help minimize the environmental toll of bringing another human into the world and the notion of using cloth only to cover it with a petroleum-based liner is discouraging. Wool is a highly breathable natural fiber. The good quality wool used in most covers isn’t scratchy at all against babies skin. It is one of the softest and most gentle fibers you can put against his skin and wool covers when fitted properly aren't bulky. Since switching to wool from PUL covers, my son rarely gets diaper rash. With PUL covers, his sensitive skin frequently got rashy because the cover did not allow his skin to breathe. Wool is a homeostatic material meaning that it adjusts to accommodate body temperature. It keeps baby warm in the winter but doesn't overheat him in the summer. In the summer we use soakers and shorties and in the winter we use longies. There are so many cute options to choose from, we almost never bother with pants and instead use his diaper covers as bottoms for his outfits.

Another important benefit of wool is that it is superior to other covers in its absorbency. It can hold three times its dry weight in urine before feeling wet and unlike PUL covers, you know it's time to change the diaper when you can feel moisture. The biggest convenience to using wool is that unlike PUL or even organic cotton, wool contains the anti-bacterial and anti-fungal substance lanolin that “scrubs” the cover clean without the need to wash it after each use,. Wool covers self-clean when wet with urine and each one only needs to be hung to air-dry for an hour or so before it can be used again. You will notice that once it is dry, it will no longer smell at all like urine. It really is a wonder fiber.

Because wool is antibacterial, unlike synthetics or cotton, a wool cover will only require a real washing, via hand, when the lanolin needs reinforcement or when poop has leaked from the diaper and soils the cover. This works out to be once every few weeks or so. From an ecological standpoint, this is ideal because it conserves energy. Wool covers never get stinky like fleece or anything made of a PUL synthetic center. With PUL diaper covers, you need to have quite a few, upwards of ten or twelve, to get you through two of so days between washdays. My experience was that even after airing, if you didn't launder them after a single wear, the PUL smelled. With wool you need to have about five covers and you can just rotate through them. This is a money saver.

We've used a lot of different wool covers, all with success. My favorites are Disana, Aristocrat and Lanacare (they are the gold standard). A prefold and a Lanacare will take my heavy-wetter son all the way through the night without soaking the sheets and without giving him rash. We've used Covered Caboose and Swaddlebees for daytime. I mostly like soakers (pull-on covers) over the snapping or Velcro wraps, but that is just personal preference. We buy most of our wool in For Sale or Trade forums like the one on Diaperswappers and on sites that sell WAHM-made wool like Hyena Cart and Etsy. This keeps the cost of purchasing wool down while also supporting small creative entrepreneurs. Wool is pricier new than PUL covers but it is well worth the investment. You won’t need to buy as many as other wear-once-and-wash once covers. Because you aren't washing as much and because it is a high-quality natural fiber, wool covers last longer. Of course, the most cost-effective means of acquiring wool diaper covers is to have you or someone else knit up a stash. If you are craftily-inclined, there are so many cute patterns to choose from.

I will cover how to lanolize in a future article so you won't stain the cover with supplemental lanolin or shrink or felt the cover. You can purposefully felt the cover in the dryer to bring it down to size or increase its absorbency to make it “bullet proof” for naptime or nighttime, but I will cover this in a subsequent article. I hope when readers consider the option of cloth diapering, they will consider wool as a good option for their children and their environment.