Sleeping with the diaper-free.

Well, not really.  Diapers are involved, as you'll see.  But I thought I would write a bit about what I do to sleep in the same bed with a naked-bottomed baby, without getting soaked.

First off, why not just put the baby in diapers?  The short answer is:  Because I'm lazy, and I need my sleep.  I don't like to get up to change diapers in the middle of the night, and this method makes for faster changes (no getting out of bed; maybe not even any sitting up).  

The long answer is also because I'm lazy, and I need my sleep.   I suspect this method helps the baby be dry at night sooner than conventional nighttime diapering.

Here's how I set it up on my bed:

1. Mattress
2. Mattress protector
3. Ordinary cotton fitted sheet (so far this is just my "normal" bedding)
4. A big piece of polar fleece that goes all the way across the bed
5. A small 25"x30" wool "puddle pad"  (optional, but nice -- see below)
6. A couple of overlapping regular-size cloth flat or prefold diapers
7. The naked baby
8. A flannel  receiving blanket
9. The rest of the blankets

When the baby wets, the diapers under him get wet.  But the wool puddle pad and the fleece will not absorb the urine, because the diapers are so much more hydrophilic than either wool or fleece.   Urine won't wick from the diapers to the fleece.

Wool is truly superb for this purpose, much better than the fleece.  The wool will not let the urine through at all, really.  Fleece works pretty well without the wool pad, except that if the baby happens to pee directly on it -- say the diaper layer shifts under the baby -- the urine will pass through the fleece and be wicked into your cotton sheet.  

(If your mattress is well protected, this still isn't much of a problem.  You will stay dry and comfortable because the fleece, which is between you and the wet sheet, won't wick the urine to where you are.  You can deal with the wet sheet in the morning.)

So why bother with the fleece at all -- why not just have a giant wool pad?  The answer is:  Giant wool pads are expensive, as you will see if you follow the link above.  A small one isn't so bad, considering how useful it is.  Oh, and also, I find wool a little scratchy to sleep on.  I'd rather put it just under the baby, and protect the rest of the bed with the lesser power of fleece.

Much cheaper, synthetic waterproof pads can also be bought, and work fine in place of the wool.  I just don't think they are as comfortable in the bed as wool.  

So anyway.  When the baby wets, he complains.  I reach under him and pull the wet diapers out from under him.  I throw them over the side of the bed into a waiting diaper pail.  If the flannel receiving blanket on top of him got wet -- it doesn't always, depends on the "fountain" -- I toss that over the edge too.  Then I reach for the stack of clean diapers that's on the bed with us, slide two of them under the baby, and if necessary replace the receiving blanket with one from the stack.   Then we go back to sleep.  I don't even have to sit up.

For a little extra insurance that your blankets won't get wet, have the layer that's directly on top of you be a synthetic -- either a light fleece, or one of those thermal foam blankets.  It won't wick moisture away from the flannel.

I admit that if I've had a few nights in a row of poor sleep, I will put the baby in a disposable for one night just to cut down on the number of my wakings and give myself a break.

Comments

[Christy P]

Another cloth diapering family here -- with our 1st baby, she stayed dry from about 6 weeks. This baby, not so much, and we finally settled on paper diapers for overnight. Primarily because he would wet and not wake up and then wet again and I get wet.

[bearing]

Interesting -- our first also stayed dry at night from about six weeks, enough that we let him sleep barebottomed and without even a pad under him -- the air exposure was a nice antidote to daytime diaper rash.

Neither the second nor the third were reliably dry at night until age three.

[Amy F]

We started loosely EC'ing with baby #2 -- our version involves offering the potty often but only going bare-bottomed in the summers. The only time my 30-times-a-day-he-pees son reliably stayed pretty dry was at night. He'd still pee, but it would be in a little potty we kept by the bed, maybe twice a night. He only rarely goes all night without peeing now that he just turned 4. He has always fought the potty, but at night he was willing. He has not been the model EC kid by any means -- he began pooping in the toilet at 33 months and doesn't always use the toilet to pee without constant reminders still. Today I think he had 4 accidents, but we're in crazy birthday world and everybody's off-kilter. It's more standard to have a couple a week. We've even had him tested for a couple things because he seemed to pee more than was reasonable and I had ureter reflux as a young child.

I'd like to EC our next baby but part of me wonders if I somehow made things worse and turned it into a 4 year power struggle.

[Amy F]

Oh, I meant to say that he has been in underwear at night since maybe 18 months -- far earlier than he was during the day. Skipping the pee-soaked ammonia-stinking night diapers was a big draw of ECing for us.

[bearing]

My anecdote is that my loosely-ec'ed two potty trained (mostly) at around 18 months, compared to my non-ec'ed one who trained at 3 years 2 months. I'm sold -- I am too much of a slacker to be a diligent ec'er, but I am just slacker enough to do it loosely (i.e. when it's easy).

I maintain that teaching kids to pee on cue in a toilet as soon as possible, even if they remain in diapers for years afterward, is one of the most useful things a parent can do to reduce frustration in the toddler years. And it's not hard to do either -- Leo already has it figured out, and he's a mostly-diapered six-week-old.

[mandamum]

Your reason for being diaper-free at night is similar to why I first went diaper-free with a 4 mo old. We had been team-changing her (I would nurse, dh would quickly change her, we'd all go back to sleep without crying) and then he had a business trip, and I couldn't do up the diapers while nursing.

Dry at night is a lovely thing :)