Diaper Review: bumGenius Freetime

We have officially been using cloth diapers for about a year now. What a year! We've learned a lot. We've bought diapers we wanted to try, bought some cutesy ones and bought some that friends have told us to try. I kid you not, though, when I say that we always go back to our favorite brand--bumGenius.

Tried and true, they rarely, if ever, have failed us. We started out with a stash of 12 bumGenius 4.0 OS pocket diapers. Now, we love these pockets. We have our system down, we get them done (laundered) efficiently. They are stuffed and ready to go at a moments notice. You can not argue that cloth is harder than disposables. There's a little prep work involved.. but, hey. That's parenting, my friend. But 4.0s aren't the title of this post, are they? Nope!

About 6, or so, months ago, bumGenius released their brand new All-In-One (AIO), One Size (OS) diaper -- the Freetime. (They already had one, the Elemental, which I'll mention later.) Now, Freetimes were pre-order only for a long time, then on backorder for a long time after that. Then my local Nappy Shoppe got them, but they'd sell out freakishly quick, and I have a feeling their employees snatched them up when they did restock. (lucky!) I sent Hector and our friend Patrick with baby Coco up to the Nappy Shoppe one day (I was at work) when they announced on Facebook that they'd restocked a few Freetimes. Hector managed to score two of them in the glorious "Mirror" and "Sassy" colors. I instructed him to wash all of our diapers immediately when he got home so he could wash those and get them ready for Coco. (You have to pre-wash cloth diapers to get them ready to absorb.)

We used the Freetime diapers and fell in love. Hard. These diapers were so easy. They have two semi-attached stay-dry panels that you can adjust a little to put them where your child needs the most absorbency. The semi-attached-ness makes it a super easy diaper to clean. Each panel gets a good soak in the washing machine and because it's not thick, it is quick to dry. It's also very easy for us to still use our disposable liners with these diapers. (I like the pocket diapers, because it gives you a place to tuck the end of the liner, to help hold it in place. But see pics below to see how we do the liner with Freetimes.)

Today, while at the Nappy Shoppe, we were restocking on Bummis biodegradable liners and to my surprise... Freetimes were in stock! We HAD to grab two more. We got Lovelace and Albert. :) :)

Have you EVER seen a prettier diaper? Blog, meet Lovelace. Lovelace, meet blog. 

And for anyone who thinks this diaper is only for girls, keep your opinions to yourself. My husband insisted we get this one for Coco. It has blue and green and is ADORBS.

See how we wrap the liner around the top panel? It's actually very trim and the liner doesn't stick out the leg opening, like it sometimes can with our pockets.

See how the panels are each attached at opposite ends of the diaper? You can even add doublers and soakers in, under the panels! It's very versatile. 

Cohen loves his "Di-tuhs" (diapers) and was about to grab this one out of the photo shoot. Look at those snaps! How cute are they?? sigghhhh... I just love this diaper.

That bum! 

Show me your diaper!! (Ok.. maybe I said, "Where's your bellybutton??!") But it worked!

Playing with "caahs".

Found a marker....

Trying to open said marker....

My big boy! 

One last bum view... can't get enough!

I mentioned the other AIO bumGenius diaper we tried out.. the Elemental. We thought we liked it, but quickly learned that we did NOT. It was super trim, which I liked. But it was never dry after all the other diapers were dry (in the dryer, on lowest heat setting). And it stained the first time poop touched it. No amount of sun-bleaching would fix it. It didn't absorb much from our heavy-wetter. I'm embarrassed to say that in a moment of sheer frustration and grossed-out-ness I threw this diaper in the trash. We were at the mall, the poop completely missed the liner, made a gag-inducing mess, and we weren't going home right away... you get the drift. Not my proudest mama-moment. But I had had it. Here's the Elemental. And maybe some people like it.. but not us.

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Freetimes cost about $20/diaper. I feel this is a spectacular price. Yea, it sounds expensive for one singular diaper, yea, I'd love to pay $5/diaper, but come on. This is a good diaper and is better quality than cheaper ones we've tried. A lot of hard work goes into making cloth diapers. And they last FOREVER. I can't wait to use all of Cohen's diapers on his siblings some day. Yea, we might have to replace elastic at some point. But whatever. This is the other diaper we got:

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I introduce: Albert. :) This diaper instantly make Cohen smarter than other babies. :)

Ahhh, cloth. I could literally sit around and talk about cloth diapers for hours. Do you have any questions about cloth you've been dying to ask? :)