One size fits all (Mother-ease One Size)

Member Name: kiwiii85

Product:	Mother-ease One Size
Date:	28/11/08 (144 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: No leaks, no weekly nappy bill, never run out

Disadvantages: Bulky, expensive to start, time consuming

One thing i didn't really think about when i was pregnant was the nappies i would use. You get so many offers through the post for disposables that unless someone mentions cloth to you, you probably wouldn't think about it. So what made me think about it and why motherease? Well my sisters uses them on her two children and a nice lady from our local scheme came to an antenatal class to discuss using cloth nappies.

Your next decision, how on earth do you decide which cloth nappies? Well motherease make a few but the appeal for me was one size of nappy from birth to potty.

******Motherease One Size******

Well the name gives it away, one size of nappy that fits from birth until potty training. This is approximately 8lbs(3.5kgs) to 35lbs (16kgs). This has certain benefits over other nappies - for example, motherease also do a sandy's nappy that comes in different sizes (small, medium, large, extra large) but to me these worked out too expensive as you'd have to buy a certain amount of every size to fit your baby and the costs would be every 6 months or so. Cost is a definite benefit of these. On the plus side though, the nappies rarely leaked whereas our disposables leaked everyday.

On the downside, they are intended to fit a toddler aswell as a newborn, so on a small baby these are extremely bulky. We used disposable nappies for the first 6 weeks as we felt we had enough to deal with without the added pressure of washing and drying nappies but when we put these on my daughter they made her bum look huge! We also had problems finding trousers that would fit over the nappy (she wasn't exactly a small baby to start with) and found ourselves using 6-9month trousers when she was only 3 months old. Not ideal as this meant the trousers were way too long.

******Design******

There are various different designs of cloth nappies these days but we looked for one that didn't need folding and didn't require sticking pins into it (ok so they aren't like old fashioned pins that you could stab yourself with but still too much hassle for my liking!). So you might wonder what's left, the shaped nappy! These are, in my opinion, the easiest nappy to use when you've never tried cloth nappies before. The way you use the nappy does depend on the age of the baby to start with but every stage uses the same method of adjustment which is poppers.

The legs on the nappies have slight elastication and i mean slight because i didn't actually notice at first. This also helps to prevent leaks by the legs.

A newborn baby has the nappy on like normal, but you fold the front bit down to reveal 4 poppers that can be adjusted. This just pulls the nappy up further to prevent leaks.

As your baby gets older and reaches the furthest point at the newborn stage, you would then stop folding the front of it over and you now have a choice of 6 poppers to choose from. These poppers are around the waist still and should last until your baby is potty trained.

Along with the actual nappies, it's worth mentioning the boosters that can pop in (these are only usually used after the newborn stage) to give added protection and increased absorbancy. They pop in to avoid the boosters from moving when your baby moves and it is definately a good system if you ask me. On top of these you need to get liners (either washable or disposable) but the motherease ones are shaped like the nappy so are perfect for this design.

Motherease have also designed the wraps to go with these (these are the waterproof part of the nappy that holds everything in). You can get the Motherease Airflow wraps - my choice - which also work on a popper system and work very well, or you can use the Motherease Rikki system which are velcro.

******Materials******

A quick mention of the different nappies you can buy should be in order. The motherease one size come in different materials - natural cotton, white cotton, dry natural cotton, organic, rainbow and bamboo. We used a combination of white cotton, dry natural cotton and bamboo and this worked extremely well for us. The dry cotton nappies have a polyester lining that helps to protect your babies bottom at night - these are more expensive though and we cheated a little and used the stay dry liners with normal white nappies and they worked just the same.


******Laundry******

When we first purchased these, we were very worried about the washing and drying part as we didn't have a tumble and had no idea how long they would take to dry. The label on the nappies say to wash at 70 degrees but ours were always washed at 40 and once a week at 60 without a problem (and always came out stain free!) A comment left has reminded me that you're meant to wash them in non bio without softener so they stay more absorbant and are better for the skin.

Drying was also an easy experience for us. You can dry them naturally outside or inside on a radiator or you can put them into the tumble. They come out in a fantastic condition and are very soft when out of the tumble. If you are going to dry them without a tumble i'd recommend putting them in for 10 minutes after they've been outside, just to soften them out a bit as we found they tended to go a little bit hard.

******Prices******

It is ideal to have around 20 nappies (we had 24 incase of emergencies) along with the same amount of boosters (and liners if you're getting washable) and 4 or 5 wraps of each size.

Depending on which material you want and where you want to buy them from the costs can vary greatly. On the motherease website itself, the natural cotton and white cotton nappies are £8.25 each with the dry natural, organic and bamboo nappies at £10.00 each. When we ordered our bamboo nappies they did discount if you bought a certain amount. You can also buy from their website in a pack of 5 or 10. 5 white/natural nappies are £38.95 or 10 nappies are £74.25. The natural dry, organic and bamboo nappies are £47.50 for 5 or £90 for 10.

The boosters start at £1.75 for the white/natural and is £2.25 for the other materials.

The Airflow and Rikki wraps start at around £8.50 on the motherease website but again these can be bought in packs with discount.

There are also a variety of starter kits available that include most of the above, however, i felt it was better to buy things seperately then you can choose exactly what you want to buy.

We were extremely lucky when we bought ours and got 24 nappies, 17 boosters and 8 wraps for £75 - these had been used once by a friend who decided they weren't for her. If you search on the internet there are a number of sites that will all try to attract you with certain discounts.

The best bit about buying these? They sell for pretty much the same price. We sold ours for over £150 when we had finished with them so it's definately a good investment.

******Cost effective?******

We were told how much we would save by using cloth nappies but in all honesty if you're going to tumble them then i don't think it is that cost effective. It probably is if you're going to line dry them, but in the working world how many people actually have time to do this? These motherease nappies do take a while to dry outwith the tumble so always ended up in our tumble!

******Verdict******

The cloth debate over the disposable debate will probably be one that never ends, but these in particular are fantastic nappies. They hold in the leaks, cost outlay is at the start so you don't need to include them in your weekly shopping bill, you'll never run out (so long as you remember to wash them of course) and they're proven to help your child with potty training (i for one don't believe this).

Unfortunately for us, my daughter has a milk and soya allergy so her nappies can be extra explosive if one of these things enters her system (it's not as easy as you think to avoid) and because of this she would get extremely bad nappy rash. For this reason, when my lo reached 6 months we stopped using them and turned to the trusty disposbales. (they leak and they're awful but my daughters bum is clear as can be). If it wasn't for this, we'd continue using them for her and any other children we may have.

Just remember though, these are bulkier than other sized nappies but they do work out cheaper.

A big thumbs up for us bar the nappy rash.

Summary: A thumbs up for the cloth nappy, if we didn't have the allergies we'd willingly use them.