Ellyn wrote:
sometimes a slow flow, sometimes a flood. In the mornings, when I awake and stand, I nearly always flood, which by itself makes the necessity for good protection essential. Sometimes during the day I’ll also flood when standing up from a chair or bending over. Without good protection, I will definitely leak past a pad, pull-up, or even a cheaper tape-on diaper. The daytime flooding seems to go in cycles though, and I’ve learned to recognize the beginning of the cycle pretty well.
Disposable products and combos are best used when I’m leaving home for extended periods of time.
What a great post Ellyn! I'm glad I'm not alone in the whole "I flood every morning and sometimes when I stand up" situation. I have been wearing cloth more and more often as I get more comfortable with my situation. For me, I typically wear 2 night weight contour diapers in Birdseye or gauze with plastic pants around the house and am becoming more comfortable wearing them out and about. They are a bit more bulky and harder to conceal than a MegaMax, but are generally fine with an untucked shirt and pants or shorts a sixe too large. If I am going to be "up close and personal" with people (out to eat, in a meeting, teaching, speaking engagement, etc.) I will commonly wear a MegaMax.
When I double up the contour diapers, I lay the first one out flat, then reverse the direction of the second one and place it on top of the first. This puts the narrow "front" portion of the second on top of the wide "rear" portion of the first diaper. I then fold the wings of the wide "rear" portion of the top diaper in, effectively creating a double or triple layer in the front, giving me the bulk where I need it most. This also makes pinning them easier as there is just a single layer of cloth where I pin mine. I use 2 pins on each side, always in the same order: bottom right, bottom left, top left, top right. One thing that does frustrate me at times about cloth, however, is that I find I need to re-pin them a couple times throughout the day to keep them tight, as they have a tendency to stretch and loosen up with a lot of activity. I have found that some plastic pants are better than others at keeping things in place, but I imagine it is very dependent on the individual's body style. As my wife says, I have "no butt," so I don't have enough junk in the trunk to keep 'em up, LOL.
In my experience, I've found that the hustle and bustle of the world creates more than enough noise to drown out any crinkling from plastic backed diapers or plastic pants, but I do take steps to minimize sounds depending on what I am doing. Rearz sells a plastic pant (maybe vinyl?) that is thin, frosted, and completely silent, as far as I can tell, and they were recently on sale for less than $4 US. I will frequently wear this over a disposable when I want to ensure extra protection from flooding, as the MegaMax does an admirable job handling one flood, but can't always handle a second.