Fitting Clothes Over Cloth Diapers

If you’re starting your cloth diapering journey after using disposables for a time, you may be noticing that your baby’s clothes aren’t fitting quite like they used to. Growth spurt? Maybe. Fluffy bums can be a little trickier to fit clothing over, though, as most baby clothes are designed to go over very trim disposables.

There are essentially three main options to work around fluffy bums: sizing up, buying clothing designed to accommodate fluffy butts, or using alternate clothing choices.

The easiest, at least if you were already gifted with lots of baby clothes at a shower or as hand-me-downs, is to just size up. Onesies in particular I’ve found get too short a lot faster when there’s a cloth diaper to fit in as well. Using the next size up from what your child would wear with a disposable generally fixes this. If you child has a shorter stature, this option may require rolling pants and long sleeves a bit. Parents of toddler girls, particularly taller girls, seem to have a harder time with this, as girls clothing seems to be cut more trim, even in toddler sizes.

If shopping at Target is proving frustrating, even sizing up, shopping brands that design a bigger booty and/or design clothing to be able to “grow” with a child can work out well. Hanna Andersson tends to make baby clothes that fit well around a cloth diaper, and are also designed with rolling cuffs on many of their long pants and long sleeves so children can wear them longer. The quality of clothing that is designed like this is typically high, but prices can be a bit high for many families as well. They can be very good finds in your local second hand store though, as they tend to last.

A third option is the “alternate” clothing choice method. Eschewing mainstream stores, some parents of cloth-bottomed babies essentially use the cloth diaper as part of the outfit (why waste those cute colorways and prints, right?). The simplest and least expensive is using Baby Legs instead of pants. No pants = no trying to squeeze slim pants over a fluffy bottom. For parents with existing large stashes of onesies and a sewing machine, cutting the bottom (snapping) portion off the onesie and hemming them makes a shirt that no longer has to be stretched to snap over a fluffy bottom too.

Wool-loving parents have moved on from just wool as a cover to be used at night and now can buy wool shorts, pants and leggings, all designed to be worn over a fitted diaper.

Meaghan Howard is a mom to three little boys, only one of whom is still in (cloth) diapers. She is trying to make the most of her family’s short time living abroad by experiencing as much as she can.