Our Day Care is awesome. I’m kind of obsessed with how much I love our Day Care, but that’s for another post. One of the reasons I love our Day Care is that our provider didn’t bat an eye when I told her I’d be sending cloth diapers.
We were chatting the other day about my blog, and how she wished I would write more posts in French so she could read them. I told her I have been blogging in French, but that unless she wants to read about cloth diapers… well, she’s out of luck! (Of course, I will translate this one so she knows I’m bragging about her.)
Cub attends a home-based Day Care with up to six other children (if the whole gang is there), ranging in age from just over a year to almost four years old. He is the only one in cloth at the moment, but the second child our provider has ever cared for to wear cloth.
I recently mentioned to Nathalie that it was quite common for Day Cares to refuse cloth diapers. She told me she couldn’t really understand why. From her perspective, Cub’s cloth diapers are no more work than the disposables she uses on the other children.
We primarily send BumGenius 4.0s in velcro, stuffed with the newborn microfibre BumGenius insert and an รko Creations 2-ply hemp trifold. When Cub’s with me, I just use a trifold, but I’ve found adding a booster to each diaper means no matter which one she grabs, it’ll be absorbent enough for a long outing or a nap.
Nathalie’s diaper-changing routine with Cub is no different than the one she follows with her other children. He arrives between 8-9 AM, and she changes him roughly three times by the time I pick him up between 4-5 PM. Once in the morning, once before nap time (1 pm) and once after nap (3 pm). She simply puts all the dirty diapers in our wet bag, and I bring them home at the end of the day.
What about poop? Well, one of the reasons she loves Cub (besides his charm and all the words he uses in English) is that he likes to poop in the comfort of his own home. The odd time he does do a number two, she just puts it in the wet bag and I deal with it at home. I send two wet bags in Cub’s back pack, so that if he does do a stinker, she can always leave that one out on the deck if it’s too odoriferous. Assuming your child doesn’t show the same type of restraint, you can line all your diapers either with a fleece liner or with a disposable liner, and it’ll be up to your Day Care provider if they feel like flushing for you or just sending the whole kit and ka-poo-dle home with you. Like me, she doesn’t wipe Cub at every change, assuming it’s just pee (with stay dry diapers, I don’t find it necessary), but she has a pack of Naty disposable wipes if needed. When I first change his diaper after Day Care, I give him a good wipe down.
If you want your provider to use cloth wipes, I recommend sending a bunch of pre-moistened wipes each day, which is what Nathalie and I agreed upon until we realized he was saving all his poop just for me (yay?!). I packed them in a resuable wipes container meant for disposable wipes.
My favourite wet bag to send to Day Care is our Funky Fluff dual-pocket wet bag, simply for the sheer volume of diapers it can hold. Some children have longer days at Day Care, and younger children probably have more dirty diapers per day, so I recommend it to everyone for Day Care! He has a change of clothes that she keeps for him in case of an accident, and the odd time he’s had a nap time leak (a handful of times in the past 6 months, and almost never once I started adding the booster), she can tuck those clothes in the front pocket. In this picture, I think I shoved 10 diapers and inserts into the bag:
Cub arrives at Day Care in the morning with his Skip Hop Owl backpack equipped with four diapers and two wet bags. If he’s showing any redness, I’ll send his tube of Live Clean and put fleece liners in the diapers, but this is very infrequent. With four diapers from a maximum of 8 AM to 5 PM, she’s never run out, but I also work from home and live 5 minutes away. If this wasn’t the case, I think I’d just give her one of my least beloved diapers to keep in Cub’s cubby for emergencies.
Since he’s the only one in cloth, there’s no risk of the wrong diapers coming home with him. However, it has happened to my friends! I labelled some of his diapers with our Lovable Labels to test how durable they were (answer: super durable), and I would recommend doing so if your child attends a Day Care with other fluffy-butt buddies.
If you have a full stash of snap-closure diapers and you’re concerned about Day Care putting them on properly, you can use Snap Blockers to make them pretty much foolproof. Some parents like to buy a set of “Day Care Diapers.” I would recommend some gently-used BumGenius 4.0s in velcro, or else some budget-friendly Kawaii pockets.
Some related links:
- Cloth Diaper Revival / Full Time Cloth Diapering with Day Care
- Thinking About Cloth Diapers / How to Succeed with Cloth Diapers at Day Care
- Real Diaper Association / Tips for Using Cloth Diapers in Day Care
- Diaper Wrecker / Cloth Diapers in Day Care (US Regulations)
- All About Cloth Diapers / How to Convince Your Day Care to Use Cloth
Does your Day Care accept cloth diapers? What’s your routine?


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