I have also tried the Marvels AIO as a day diaper, but before and after nap, but I won’t do a whole blog post on them. I’ll jump straight to the conclusion!
The Kissaluvs website advertises the Marvels’ features as follow:
- “Waterproof exterior
- Super soft, stay-dry fleece next to skin keeps baby dry and comfortable
- Self cleaning: the soaker agitates out in the wash yet stays attached
- No stuffing or hunting for soakers in your washing machine!
- Gentle but effective elastic at legs and waist contains all messes
- Pocket in the back to stuff additional soakers if needed
- No messy Velcro. Adjustable snaps and overlapping wings ensures the diaper fits skinny and chubby babies alike
- One sized, fitting babies 7-35* pounds
- Super simple design, will be loved by dads and babysitters alike!
- Available in staple White (with White inner) and fashion colors with complimentary inside colors: Butter (with yellow), Raspberry (with Pink), Kelly Green (with Yellow) and Summer Sky (with White).
* All babies are shaped differently, so these can be only size guidelines.”
Definitely, it is simple in designs, and will be easy to use by those who are not used to cloth diapers and/or cannot fuss with lots of layers and snaps, such as daycare providers changing 5 kids at the same time. 😉 You just pack them in your bag as is, and whoever is changing the diaper picks it up, snaps it on, and throws the old one in the wetbag as is, no different than throwing a diaper in a DiaperGenie.
The fit was pretty good. I have one of those tall and skinny toddlers – at almost 3 ft tall, my daughter only weights about 25 lbs – wet. There’s lots of snaps on the front to accommodate many sizes, and there’s the fold down snaps to accommodate height from newborn(ish) to toddlers. I think that I would have liked more than just one row of snaps to secure it around the waist – that way you get a better fit both at the waist and at the tights. We DID get 1 or 2 leaks with it, but the first time was due to TOO many fleece add-ons by me for an overnight use (oops), and the second time my mom had put it on and she was wondering if maybe she didn’t snap it correctly. We’ve otherwise had good experiences with it, and we mostly use it for naptime use at this point – which can be quite heavy pee quantity.
There’s not a whole lot of colours or prints offered, but the colour that we got, “Raspberry” (a really hot pink with light pink inside) is pretty nice.
I got a first impression of the washing and drying from the usual pre-washes. For washing, it’s just like any regular cloth diapers: cold rinse (with 1/3 of soap), hot/cold wash, with a 2nd rinse. It does flip over well with agitation, meaning the whole diaper gets a good clean, even though it’s attached in one piece. For drying, it does go in the dryer at regular heat, which is what we did the first time around. It took a fair while to dry though, longer than just the fitted diaper of the Happy Heinys stuffing, perhaps because it’s all attached together. The stuffing is definitely made much easier, and quicker – no more guiding the insert, you just flip the diaper back right side up.
It is, however, always advisable to air-dry covers and outer pockets of diapers, as this saves the elastics around the legs, which otherwise eventually dries up and breaks. So I gave that a try as well. Compared to the Happy Heinys outer covers, which air-dry without the stuffing inside, this was insanely long to dry… It took about 2 days for the insert part to be completely dry. Now say that you use about 10 diapers a day (or average at the moment), and you want to wash every 3 days. You would need AT LEAST 50-60 diapers in order to rotate them while the ones you washed dry out. At a suggested retail of $22.95, that’s $1,147.50 to $1,377.00.
All and all, not a bad diaper, although I would probably not make it a staple of my stash. On the plus side, it is very easy to use, childcare provider & extended family friendly, it’s a well-known & well established brand in cloth diapering, and the materials are of quality. However, it’s too long to dry unless you tumble dry it, which would eventually ruin the elastic, making it non-cost effective for long term use and/or multiple sibling use, as well as bringing down the resale value. In order to have a decent turn-around between washes, you would need WAY too many diapers, which would cost way too much (we’ve currently spent just under half the prices mentioned above for our whole stash & accessories, through 2 years of cloth diapering, and I launder every 3 days approx.) Also, I like to have a bit of variety in colours in designs to choose from, and these do not offer much choice in that department. 🙂
Legal Bits Reminder
Please note that I am otherwise not endorsed by any of the cloth diaper companies I state and link, and that they themselves did not offer me anything for the review. The opinions expressed are simply my own views on their product, made for my reviewing pleasure. I have solely received the free Marvels diaper to try out from my local baby boutique in exchange for this review.
So anyway, I’ve also just joined a new book club (I know – where do I find the time? I still don’t know – but I can say that I’m a night owl and read before bed every night…). This time it’s an online book club, hosted by SimpleMom.net. She has 4 books a year, and you can join in to all or just 1 of them, at any time. The next selection is “In Defense of Food”, by Michael Pollan, and the first online discussion, covering Part I of the book, is on May 6th, with discussions every following Thursdays until June 10th. Nutrition, and eating well and as naturally as possible, is a subject of high interest for me, so I thought it would be interesting to join in the discussion, and see what the book had to say!
... ~ At Home With My Girls ~ ... 