Sunday, March 13, 2011

Disposable Inserts – What are they and why would I use one?

The first question to answer about disposable inserts is WHY would you want to use disposable inserts when you cloth diaper?  Doesn’t that defeat the entire purpose?  There are many reasons why these inserts are an excellent addition to any stash!  It is great to keep a few disposable inserts on hand in case your power goes out and you cannot do laundry, you need to put non cloth diaper safe cream on baby’s bum, or you are going out someplace or traveling and cannot use cloth or take all of your cloth accessories along.

How do you use disposable inserts?  You can use them with a cover, a wrap, or even a pocket diaper.  With a cover or wrap, you would use this insert just like any other insert and place it in the cover.  To use with a pocket diaper, you would remove the other insert(s) and then place the disposable insert on top of the stay dry lining so that the disposable insert is between baby and the diaper.  In effect, you are using the pocket diaper as a cover.  This is a great solution if you do not own any covers or wraps.

Personally, I only use these when I need to put non-cloth diaper safe cream on my daughter’s bum.  This was extremely useful when we first started cloth diapering and I hadn’t bought too many cloth safe creams.  Now, I have mostly cloth safe creams and I do not use these for that purpose.  However, these inserts are fabulous when you are out and about or traveling and it is too difficult to deal with all of the cloth gear.  This does not happen often, but it is so nice to have the option.  I highly recommend that all cloth diapering parents have a pack of these on hand for those “just in case” and “always be prepared” moments.

There are two different disposable inserts that I have tried; Flip and GroVia.  Reviews to follow.

3 comments:

  1. I used these when my son had a yeast rash and I didn't want to try to get yeast out of my diapers. Plus, then I could slather his sore bum with cream at every change and not have to worry about it. Totally agree that they are nice to have on hand and they don't have that terrible chemical smell that disposables have.

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  2. We have tried both Flip and GroVia disposable inserts. When we went on vacation over Christmas we knew it would be too difficult to wash our diapers, but we didn't want to buy disposables. Since we almost exclusively use covers and prefolds we thought disposable inserts would be the answer. We were definitely disappointed. The Flip inserts worked better than GroVia, but neither did us any favors when it came to breastfed poo. Neither held anywhere near as much liquid as a prefold, thus we had several leaks. And ultimately we didn't feel like we were using much less waste than a disposable.

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  3. um. why not just buy disposable diapers for when you need them? isn't this the obvious solution to vacations/etc when you can't wash diapers or want to damage them with creams? seems like it would be cheaper than buying disposable inserts (and...way more convenient & space-saving). the difference environmentally would be negligible.

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