The Great Fluffy Review: Gerber Prefolds

10 years ago, I had a baby. She was cute, she was sweet, and she had a fluffy butt. A saggy saggy fluffy butt.

Rumor has it that Fuzzi Bunz had been invented, but I didn't know about them, so we went the pins and prefolds with plastic pants route. As she got older we expanded into birdseye flats.

When she had poop it was time to dunk and swish.

They went into the wet pail and soaked until wash day, were washed with dreft and bleach, rinsed an extra time, and hung on the line. (I would NEVER recommend this wash routine now. Now we rinse using a diaper sprayer, store in a dry pail, and usually wash with Rockin' Green Soap.)

Pinning them on was a pain. I admit it, I didn't love the pins, but they worked. Folding them just right was a chore, but not hard.

The real question is did they work.

Yes. They work.

They work just fine.

You change them about every two to three hours and they work just peachy without requiring special complicated wash routines.

The good:

Inexpensive. Very inexpensive. For the price of two or three packages of disposables, you can be set to go, washing every two or three days with prefolds, plastic pants, and pins.

They can be personalized by sewing a strip of awesome down the middle so they don't feel so bland. Your prefolds can also be dyed. Don't believe me? Check out the Enchanted Dandelions Etsy shop where April does just that, albeit with DSQ prefolds. I embellished ours.

We always used regular old Desitin with the prefolds back in the day, and we never had a problem with repelling.

The not so good:

If you don't want baby's bottom in constant contact with the damp, then these are not for you. There is no layer of microfleece or anything else to wick the moisture away from baby's butt.

I really HATE the plastic pants. The elastic on the legs tends to leave nasty red marks that seem to take a whole day to fade.

Pins can make a body nervous.

Suggestions: I find that 10 years later I still love using prefolds IFF I am using them in a wraping cover so I can fold them in thirds and lay them in as a soaker instead of having to pin them.

Hate pins? Snappis work well for closing an un-embelished prefold under a pull up cover such as the plastic pants of doom or a nice fleece or wool soaker.

Bottom line: everyone should have some prefolds in their diaper stash, but you'll be happier if you spring for the wrapping covers.