Diapers at Night

Sometimes, your little one will start waking in the night all because of a diaper. The diaper will be overly wet, making your baby uncomfortable and unable to sleep. This can happen even in the young newborn months. Sometimes you child will get so wet he will leak through and get his clothes all wet. I always hated that the most because not only did you have a diaper change, but a wardrobe change as well, which really wakes baby up. Here is how I avoid diaper issues at night. CHANGE OF CLOTHES First, I keep a couple pairs of pajamas on the changing table at night just in case I need them. Diaper leaks are going to happen despite your best efforts, and it seems they happen much more often with boys. The change of clothes makes it easier on everyone because you don’t have to turn on the light and search through a drawer all while holding a crying baby. I do this until baby dosen’t wake up wet anymore on a pretty regular basis. FRESH DIAPER In order to prevent nighttime leaking, I always change the diaper at the dreamfeed until baby sleeps from dreamfeed to desired waketime. The more baby eats, the more baby pees. By changing the diaper at the dreamfeed, I usually don’t have to change the diaper at the night feed if there is just one. However, in the first few weeks, I change the diaper at every single feeding. If you have a sleepy newborn, changing the diaper between sides or halfway through the bottle can help rouse baby to hopefully take a full feed. If your baby is completely roused by a diaper change, do it before you start the feeding so you can put a sleepy baby back in bed rather than a wired baby. I like to do this because I am already up with baby. This way, baby will hopefully only wake when hungry without adding wet and cold to the mix. BIGGER DIAPER At night, I put the next diaper size up on baby if baby is close enough to the upper weight limit of the diaper. Let me explain in case that is confusing. Say baby is wearing size one diapers during the day. Say size one diapers are for 8-12 pound babies. While baby is 8-9 pounds, I leave baby in size one for the night. A diaper too large will cause leaks more often than one that is the right size. But pretty soon baby is 10-11 pounds. Baby is still in size one range, but very close to size two range. At this point, I put baby in size two just at night. This works very well to keep baby comfortable. And a great thing is that you won’t be wasting diapers because your baby will be in a size two some day (believe it or not). HUGGIES OVERNIGHTS I also hear from a lot of parents who say they love Huggies Overnights, so that is an alternative option to the larger size at night. We love them, also. We often go one size up and in the overnights if the baby is a super peer at night 🙂 DIAPER OINTMENT Remember to put your favorite diaper ointment on your baby’s bottom at that last diaper change of the night to protect the skin. I have tried several, and my top three are Boudreaux’s Butt Paste, Lansinoh Diaper Ointment, and Burt’s Bees Diaper Ointment. The Lansinoh and Burt’s Bees worked best on McKenna with eczema. The Butt Paste was great on Brayden and Kaitlyn–who had normal skin.