Natural Parenting

Getting started with gDiapers

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Writing many a Facebook message with this information has prompted me to put it together into this post for anyone who’s interested, so here you have it πŸ™‚

We love our gDiapers. I’ve wrote about them before here. This is a little more detail on exactly what you need to get your family started on gDiapers.

gDiapers

First let’s talk a little on the anatomy of a gDiaper.

There is a gPant, gPant pouch, and inserts. gPants are the super cute colorful diaper covers. Pouches are plastic liners that snap into the gPants and hold the insert. The insert is the part that contains the diaper mess.

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gPants rarely need washed. Apart from a rare blowout or leak, they stay pretty clean. Unless your kids are like mine and like to chill in nothing but a gDiaper, which means they’ll get everything from sidewalk chalk to spaghetti on them, but that’s another story…

gPant pouches easily snap out so they can be changed with the insert when necessary. This happens maybe 50% of the time with a poopy diaper. No big deal, they’re super easy to switch out – 4 snaps & you’re done.

For inserts you can choose between reusable gCloth and biodegradable*/flushable gRefills. We use the cloth option in ours. When we started cloth diapering our main prompt was to save money, so this option made the most sense as after you buy it once you’re all set.

Sizing

Now for sizes. There are newborn g’s, small, medium, large, and extra-large. Here is a size chart by baby’s weight:

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With Kaden we didn’t start using gDiapers until he was 3 1/2 months old so we went straight to mediums. He fit in them until he was 2 1/2 & then switched to large.

For Alia we knew we wanted to use gDiapers. Since Kaden was a 9 lb baby I didn’t think we’d need newborn g’s (we didn’t, she was 8 lbs.), so we got what we needed to start her in smalls, and then she moved on to the mediums when she was about 4 months old.

So medium definitely gives you the most bang for your buck. We felt it was worth buying smalls for Alia because we hope to have more children & will use them again. Some of my friends who have switched to gDiapers and don’t plan on having more babies opted to just get everything they need for medium and start once their baby reached that size. I believe the cost of disposable diapers for 3 months and what you need to gDiaper in size small are comparable, so your best option would just depend on your family’s needs/goals.

Also, the gCloth & pouches only comes in 2 sizes – newborn/small or medium/large, so once your child moves from medium to large all you have to buy is new gPants, not new cloth or pouches (unless of course your child potty trains before then, in which case, I could use some advice from you πŸ˜‰

What you need

To cloth diaper your baby, I recommend starting with:

  • 6-8 gPants (6 is totally fine, 8 will give you a little less laundry.)
  • 24 Cloth
  • 2 extra packs gPouches (as mentioned, these sometimes need changed with a dirty diaper. Replace a clean one into the gPant & it’s ready to go again.)
  • 2 large & 2 small wet bags – this is one of the best parts of cloth diapering. Everything dirty goes in the wet bag. Wet bags gets dumped in the washer, and then the wet bag goes in too. Everything comes out clean. We use Planetwise and really like them. I suggest having 2 large for home (to rotate when one is in the wash) and 2 small if you plan to cloth diaper out of the house. We do sometimes, especially if we’re going somewhere I know we’ll have easy access to changing like at my mom’s house.

Where to buy

I’ve bought all my gDiapers on www.gdiapers.com or amazon. You may be able to find them in stores at Babies R Us, Whole Foods, or Target, depending on where you live. Online, Amazon has free shipping for prime members or for anyone on $25+ purchases. gDiapers has free shipping on orders of $100+, as well as $10 off your first order when it’s over $100 with code TRYIT.

Here’s what you need on either site:

If you’re interested in cloth wipes, they’re very easy to make (I’ll show ya how here), or you can buy them on amazon too.

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Total cost for everything to diaper in medium or small is in the ballpark of $300, so a little less than twice that to get both sizes. I figured we were spending about $100 a month on disposable diapers, so the initial investment paid off very quickly. And approaching 3 years later, we’re still very happy with them!

And, I’m really thrilled to tell you that next week we’ll be sharing an exciting announcement from gDiapers, complete with a giveaway! You won’t want to miss this πŸ™‚

Happy Thursday everyone!

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*disposable inserts are biodegradable in home composts per ASTM standards by a third party independent lab (wet ones only please). Nothing truly biodegrades in a landfill. But gDiapers give you 3 options for disposal. Flush, compost or toss. The choice is yours.

8 Comments

  1. Abby

    April 4, 2013 at 11:37 pm

    Great post! Well organized and your blog looks lovely! We have also been using gDiapers exclusively, although we do both cloth and biodegradable.

    1. Katelyn Perkins

      April 5, 2013 at 12:43 pm

      Thank you Abby! I think we’re going to try out gRefills as an overnight diaper, have you had any luck with that?

      1. Abby @BabyBirdsFarm

        April 5, 2013 at 1:57 pm

        That’s exactly what we do. We use the biodegradable for nights and her nap (now that it is one long one.) They really hold a lot more than cloth.

        I recently wrote a post, too, on essentials for getting started with gdiapers. If you don’t mind me linking to my own blog, it doesnt look as nice as yours, but also has some tips for the whole changing station:
        http://babybirdsfarm.com/everything-you-need-to-set-up-a-cloth-diaper-changing-station/

        And if you might be curious about composting the biodegradable inserts, it is really easy! Check out:
        http://babybirdsfarm.com/composting-diapers/

        1. Katelyn Perkins

          April 5, 2013 at 2:00 pm

          awesome! I am going to try that πŸ™‚

  2. Mandy

    April 5, 2013 at 12:34 pm

    This is so helpful! Thank you for this post. My husband an I were talking this morning about what we need for cloth diapering. This truly is the best way to go now that you lay it out!

    1. Katelyn Perkins

      April 5, 2013 at 12:44 pm

      Thanks Mandy! So glad I was able to help out πŸ™‚

  3. Jeneal Southern

    April 5, 2013 at 12:54 pm

    I wish a post like this could be found when I started gDiapering. Nicely organized. I would like to add a few thoughts from my own experience:

    When I found out I was pregnant with my second, I knew I wanted to save money and cloth diapering seemed very doable. I had a 2-almost-3-year-old, so I switched her to cloth diapers to give them a try and my experience with that wasn’t very pleasant. Though the diapers didn’t “leak” whenever my oldest daughter peed, the diaper seemed to get moist and/or damp, and I don’t mean just a spot, but the whole bottom and front of the diaper. I’m still at a loss as to why that occurred.

    Still, we went forward and bought a newborn starter pack – which would have saved us a bundle if they had worked properly. I strongly discourage anyone from trying the newborn gDiapers. The button to supposedly keep the diaper off the umbilical cord did not work (it didn’t make the diaper smaller, just creased it) and caused my second daughter’s stump to fall off after just a few days. I ended up using disposables until she was big enough to fit in the small sized diapers in order to keep her belly-button/umbilical stump clean. The small sized diapers leaked SO much, that I was ready to throw in the towel several times, but I refused because I’d already spent hundreds of dollars! As she got bigger, the leaks happened less and less, thankfully!

    Now my daughter is 3-months-old and in the medium sized gDiapers and they are Wonderful! No leaks! No moisture! Very easy to pop out the inserts (I use cloth) without having to touch them (which can be tricky sometimes). Over-all, I’d say it’s only worth the money spent if you start at medium and go from there.

    I buy the green and orange pack because it’s so much less expensive and only 1 extra box of pouches, with 12-18 cloth inserts and that is plenty for us (though I also use Elimination Communication, which cuts down on wet diapers a lot).

    Thanks for the helpful post! I hope my added info helps out other moms who are just starting out. πŸ™‚

    1. Kati A

      April 5, 2013 at 5:15 pm

      Sorry to hear the newborn bundle did not work for you. We used them for our daughter without any problems around the umbilical cord. It’s also nice to start with the all in one gPant/liner at that stage when just figuring out how to load the diaper. Definitely need the number of gPants in the newborn bundle thanks to newborns frequent potty schedule.

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