www.incontinentsupport.org

We are deep into summer for most folks. Those wearing cloth diapers might want to take a break from the bulk of cloth without giving up the convenience of going all day without changing diapers. Even a modest reduction in bulk can yeild more comfort on a sizzling day.

But that nice compact disposable diaper isn't going to last all day...or can it be made to?

For any of you wearing cloth all the time or just wearing cloth at night, you already have diaper laundry on a regular basis. Folks wearing only disposables won't be interested in this since they don't do diaper laundry.

I've experimented with wearing a cloth insert within a disposable diaper. The cloth holds some liquid itself, of course, but the real value is it will wick wetness and carry the wetness all the way up the back of the diaper, thus utilizing a part of the disposable diaper that hardly ever gets wet...since the crotch will load up with wetness and the diaper leaks forcing a change while the whole back of the diaper is pretty much dry.

I've had good success now on a number of occasions with a middle line diaper-in the 50-60 cent range, like Attends 10. I wouldn't trust a low end generic diaper for an all day wearing-there just isn't enough absorbant stuff to try it.

Neither would I recommend the high end, $1.35 Abena X-Plus, since it can go the whole day by itself. When I put a cloth insert into the Abena X-plus, I feel that I haven't gained enough "lightness" from my day time cloth diaper. I feel about the same bulkiness/comfort level in my cloth diaper as the Abena with the cloth insert.

And after all day, with the cloth insert, the Abena was pretty dry-lots of dry material in both the front and back. Yet, after 12 hrs (max) your skin needs to get cleansed, so the diaper had to come off and was sort of a waste!

Hence, the mid line disposable that will be pretty well utilized after all day only cost me 50 cents and the insert goes in the diaper pail. I got a whole day of wearing a lighter thinner diaper than normal, and was more comfortable in the process. Not a bad deal.

The inserts, BTW, are probably offered by most cloth diaper sources- be sure to get one long enough to reach from nearly the front waist to the back waist, which gives the wicking surface to get wetness to all parts of the disposable fluff and gel materials. A light youth size diaper may work if it's around 24-25" long. Fold it into thirds lenght-wise and there's your 8oz cloth insert to enhance the performance of your 50 cent diaper and allow it to last all day (8-10 hrs).

A baby cloth diaper just isn't long enough to work well.

Joe K

Gary Owens at XP Medical goes the extra mile to please his customers!

Since I am an Abena fan, usually wearing the top of the line X-Plus when I wear disposable diapers, I stayed with Abena for my lighten up experiment, selecting the Plus which is the lightest diaper in the line of four absorbancies: Plus, Super, Extra and X Plus.

The light weight Plus @71 cents performed all day (8-10 hrs) with the 8 oz cloth diaper which wicked wetness all the way up the back of the diaper. No leaks and the light diaper was 100% utilized at change time.

I found the tapes were just terrible for lack of holding power, popping just minutes after application. I complained to Gary at XP, hoping he could get Abena to do something about tapes for future. I really did NOT expect to get satisfaction for the diapers I had purchased, since tapes can fail for a lot of reasons, and often we consumers do things that lead to, or contribute to, tape failures.

So I was pleasantly surprised to find Gary would exchange the unopened bags. He recommended the next one up, the Super, saying it was a big mover, compared to the Plus, and if the tapes were bad, he would have heard something.

I continue to be amazed that our premium diapers have tape problems while the "junky" store brand diapers generally have tapes that stick like crazy and you have to literally rip the diaper apart at change time.

All I can figure is the high end mrfs want the "refastenable" feature since the diapers can hold so much and are going to get checked by untaping and then retaping. The cheap store brands don't hold much, so once taped, they stay taped.

But I just don't see the big deal in "refastenable" for checking diaper condition! Sticking a finger down a waist band or a thumb in a leg opening works for me! The only practical use I can see for refastenable tapes is using the toilet. Even at that, a diaper can usually be pulled down and then back up without untaping.

OK, there's my two cents worth!