Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)These things are great! I've never had a blow out with them or any leaks. But they do SEEP, and if you're not careful, the can soak EVERYTHING on or near baby.
SEEPAGE: The inside of the diaper is waterproof - awesome. But the nice white edging on the diaper is all cloth. As such, it's very soft on baby's skin, but it is also very absorbent. So if moisture from a wet pre-fold diaper seeps onto the edging, it soaks the edging and then the edging soaks baby's clothes and everything baby has on. And this happens often because of the silly little sizing tag that hangs down in the back of the diaper. The tag will get wet, then the wet seeps onto the edging, then the wet edging seeps onto clothes, blankets, etc. Ugh.
The solution is simple - just cut the tags out. Or it would have been easier for Thirsties to make them with printed in tags so you don't have to guess as to the size when you cut the tags out.
Otherwise:
FIT: great! They fit pre-folds lovely. Very adjustable. I've never seen a blow out.
CLEAN UP: Urine is no problem. I find that nearly every poo requires me to change the cover also and wash it, but the poo stays in the cover and does not leak. Since the covers are cheap, I bought 6 of each size I need. (I do about a load of whites a day, so a few are always being cleaned.)
WASHABILITY: GREAT! these things have gone through the washer so many times and still look fine. they haven't stained for me.
COMFORT: no diaper rash and counting. and baby doesn't have wrinkles on her butt like she gets from disposables
HASSLE: for a cloth diaper, minimal. pre-folds (Well, at least the ones I use) don't "wick" away moisture, so I never leave her in them for long, so I change her diapers more often with the cloth. I choose not travel with these or leave them for sitters, because I feel cloth diapering requires buy-in from the people who are doing the diapering. But as I'm with baby most of the time, I use these almost always. Dad doesn't mind them either.
ECONOMY: great! they hold up, last for a long time with adjustability, and were cheap for a very nice product
LOOKS: they do give baby a big butt, but seriously, it's not like baby has a really svelte figure anyhow. they do require me to dress her a size bigger for a good fit, though.
OVERALL: nice! just fix that stupid tag in the back thing and these would be perfect (but again, you can just cut them out)
****************
**UPDATE**: A year and a half later and we're still using Thirsties.
Our "baby" is now getting closer and closer to being toilet training ready, and we have gone through 4 different sizes of Thirsties diaper covers. I liked Thirsties well enough that we never switched to another brand, which says a lot. A few notes:
*WASHABILITY: These still wash up great. No fading at all to the color. The Velcro holds up wash after wash, even though I wash them with the cloth diaper inserts on the most intense hot-water setting there is to kill germs. It is best to "tuck" the velcro against the tabs provided, to avoid tangling of the diapers in the dyer. Otherwise, the velcro tabs stick to one another.
* All that washing and still they're fine. Out of the 30-some covers I have, 1 had velcro tabs that were not well-sewn on and started to tear free of the stitching upon first washing. But for 1 out of 30, I'm going to take it that it was a fluke.
* LEAKS: Still no leaks - ever. And by leaks I mean blowouts. I put these on snug in the proper size and they hold the inserts in place and poos and pees stay in the diaper. Good job, Thirsties.
* STAINING: I said previously these don't stain. That is not entirely true. The slick inside of the diapers don't stain. The cloth can, especially the white edging around the legs where poop sometimes gets trapped (that's the price you pay for no leaks). Many of my diapers now have a yellowish or brownish tinge to the edging around the legs that no amount of washing will entirely bleach. Oh well. The kiddo wears clothes over them so no one sees.
* SEEPING: Seeping DOES occur. I still find that if the diaper insert soaks, moisture can seep onto the edging and then seep onto clothes. As a newborn to 6 months, this moisture crept up the back tab and onto the back edging. More recently, the seeping happens around the leg openings. It's a function of a) how your baby is lying, sitting, or standing and b) how quickly you change the diapers. But I have found you need to change cloth diapers quickly when they're wet. Thirsties covers don't leak, but if you don't change them in a timely fashion, you will get seepage.
* COMFORT: Cloth diapers give my sensitive skinned baby much less diaper rash than disposables. A lot of it comes from the fact that we notice and change out soiled diapers more quickly with cloth. Thirsties edging is comfy and does not pinch, yet does not leak.
* GREAT PRICE, GREAT INVESTMENT: I always found I needed a few more Thirsties covers than I thought I would, and at $10ish a pop, they're a great deal. I have invested in some $800 worth of cloth diapering supplies that has seen me through from when baby was a few weeks old to toilet-training age. That was about 3 dozen pre-fold inserts in four different sizes and about 10 covers for each size. I easily saved that much on disposables in half a year. Now that baby 2 is on the way, I'm so glad I have supplies that work well. Because Thirsties covers have held up to the use and abuse, I have them ready to go for baby 2.
* A note on what goes inside the Thirsties: I never found diaper inserts that I liked on Amazon. I found pre-fold diapers of old school kind on a site called greenmountaindiapers.com. I mention it because I kept going back there. It's a very wacky-looking site (sorry, the design is just bizarre), but their pre-fold diapers are fantastic. You fold them into thirds, slip them into the Thirsties cover, and just pull them back out when soiled. Follow the care instructions that come with the pre-folds, for sure, but those diapers made excellent inserts for these covers.
Happy Cloth Diapering!
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