How to Dress Her Giant Cloth Diaper Butt?

I always liked carters, but my kid is skinny. Gerber is good for plump, short babies, so maybe good for going up a size?

We found that Zutano and Mulberry Bush were very accomodating - you can find them at TinyTotsTogs. Also we were lucky enough to get great HandMeDowns from the UK and Europe where cloth diapering is the norm. We bought much larger pant sizes (age-wise) and folded them up on the inside. It didn't help that my 2nd son was 20lbs at 6mos and we had the cloth diaper, the doubler and the wrapper over his MichelinMan physique :P The funny thing was that when he was in underpants at 18mos we actually went back to the previously untapped 12mos box because he couldn't hold up the 18mos pants w/o a diaper!

I found Carter's onsies to be pretty streachy. But the best solution, order some onsie snap extenders. I have only seen them in a local natural baby boutique and in the catalog One Step Ahead, but I bet there are some on the web out there! And there will be times when she has to wear one size of pants at home to accomodate the cloth diaper and a smaller size with disposeables.

We're using Bum Genius on our rather large daughter - she's been off the growth charts since she was a few weeks old, and we started dressing her in 12 month clothing when she was just over four months old. Here's what we've learned:

Buy separates if you can, and get the bottoms one size larger than the tops. Unfortunately this will likely mean that while the waist and bottom fit perfectly there will be an extra two inches or so of fabric dangling past your baby's toes, but you do what you have to. Cuffing is your friend (until they start crawling, at which point you'll either spend all of your time re-rolling your baby's pants or ooohing and aahing over how adorable her little toes are just barely peeking out from the bottom of her pants.)

Go for pants with elastic all the way around the waist.

Avoid jeans, since denim is not a very forgiving fabric. They've figured out that women like stretch denim, but they're not doing that for babies yet! :) This has been tough for me, since I love jeans, especially little baby jeans.

Keep in mind that not only will your baby "shrink" when potty trained, her torso's width will probably shrink a little bit once she transitions to more solids and starts moving around. I have a few pairs of jeans that I had almost written off and passed on to a friend, but kept on the off chance that once her weight gain slowed she'd skinny up enough in her torso for them to work. Lo and behold, this morning my hubby brought her downstairs in said jeans! Hooray! They still look like they might be a little uncomfortable when she's sitting, but they're not affecting her ability to move around and she does have a good, thick layer of cotton padding preventing any pinching.

Don't look so much at sizes - look at what fits. I have a couple of pairs of shorts that I bought in size 4T that fit her wonderfully. I just kept holding up larger and larger sizes to her in this particular style, and it took that big until they would fit over her bum.

Shop thrift stores and baby sales. That way you're not spending a lot of money, so even if she can only wear it for a little while your cost per wear is low. We have found some ADORABLE pants that only cost us $1 or even less and have been worn many times.

I have the onesie extenders from One Step Ahead and have used them extensively at times when transitioning between sizes or if I really really wanted her to wear a slightly too small onesie one last time before we retired it.

Dresses are always adorable, and if the trunks that come with the dress are a little too small to fit over the diaper, well isn't that why they make such cute covers? :) If you're worried about her legs getting cold, get some Baby Legs (http://www.babylegs.com/) to keep 'em toasty and protect them once she starts crawling. They're selling Baby Legs in Target now.

Hope this all helps! Enjoy your little bubble bottomed beauty! :)

H

Hi J. :O)

How cute ;O)! I just love little diaper butts!

Honestly, the sizes on all baby are only a guide, and they MUST be according to the worlds smallest family :O)

From now on, buy the next size up for your daughter and they should fit almost perfect. That's what I had to do right from the start. If you want something to last a little longer....you might have to buy it 2 sizes larger.

Your daughter is going to grow, grow, grow this year! To get used to her growth spurts it's probably best to only buy up to 5 or 6 items at a time...she will grow too quickly and may not wear them otherwise :O)

It's normal to buy the size larger for your baby....

Congratulations on your first baby!

~N. :o)

There aren't many babies who actually fit those early sizes, except for preemies. Take all your stuff that doesn't fit to a baby clothes consignment store, so it won't be a total loss. Then see what you can find there that will fit her. There is absolutely NO reason to throw money away on new baby clothes! Reuse, reduce, recycle...

And have fun --- I tried cloth diapers with my first boy, for about five minutes. You are a trooper!

First of all: Yay for you for cloth diapering! It's really not that big a deal, huh?
Anyway, we pretty much skipped the 3 month size too, and my daughter is small. Maybe there's something about cloth diapers that the size jumps are bigger than clothes. My best advice is that you will probably have to steer clear of too many matching sets. It will probably work best to have her in bigger pants than bottoms. Also, don't be too quick to get rid of old clothes. When my daughter potty trained, she dropped 2-3 sizes! I had to go buy her clothes in the smaller size because I had given them all away!

J.,
It might help to buy separate tops and bottoms. I used cloth diapers too, so that's what I found worked best.
Anyway, I forwarded this link for a little levity on the situation.
I hope you're able to see it.

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individ...

I usually went slightly larger on clothes in general (as you are finding) and for more stretchy cotton pants (I have a boy) rather than fitted. We got given a number of clothes that just never fit over his diaper. Carters playclothes worked quite well.

E.

I don't know of any brand that caters to cloth diaper butt, but I feel for you b/c both my sons are cloth diaper butt babies and they just wear one size larger in the pants and onesies because of it. You can buy onesie extenders that will make the onesie longer to fit over the crotch area at babies r us or online- might be worth a try. I do know that Gerber brand cloths are really small and I always was using 2-3x's bigger the size it advertised. Your baby will be glad when they start to walk because the cloth gives more padding for falls
Enjoy!!

American Apparel's karate pants are great--they fit over the bulkiest cloth diaper, and are extremely cute, to boot. You can order three-packs for a good price on Amazon. Good luck!

Hi J.,

I use one-size pocket diapers, so am not sure if yours a little bulkier than mine, but what I've found that helps is using onesie extenders. I bought mine from One Step Ahead. They were $11 for 10 (2 each of 5 different snap types). It helped with the fit for us! Good luck & happy cloth diapering!

Cheers,
M.