Pocket diapers vs. all-in-ones

Why might I buy pocket diapers vs. all-in-ones? Are the reasons for buying one or the other purely cost or convenience? I want to know more ladies. Can you help?

Pockets dry a lot faster because its not just one big piece of cloth. Another benefit to pockets is you can easily change what you're inserting. You can easily add more inserts or change from microfiber to cotton/bamboo/hemp.

You don't have to stuff AIOs so that cuts down on laundry handling time.

I figured you might have some advice on this. Love you Erin!

Yep, what Erin said. I like my pockets so that I can change the absorbency as needed. At night that means 3 inserts. During the day 1 insert. On a long car trip, 2 inserts. Plus I can change the type of insert used. Plus since it comes apart, it dries super fast. Up until this winter I dried my pockets outside on a line without any issues.
AIOs are nice, but the one that we use right now takes FOREVER to dry. DH likes it though, so I keep it around.

Love you too, Daisha! Can't wait to see David in a few weeks! Teagan may have picked out a little something for her cousin at the toy store yesterday. It'll be stuffed in the giant box of stuff you're getting!

So, I started off with prefolds and covers, and then had AIOs as well... and I just COULDN'T get my head around pockets and all that extra work. :) Now, when we first started CDing I had a dryer, and my AIOs never took longer than anything else to dry (I would put them on 120mins on low before I went to bed, and would have a dryer of dry dipes in the morn). Now, I don't have a dryer, and I have to air dry everything- yes, the AIOs take longer, but, still only about 24-36 hours. I do diaper laundry every two days, and I have enough diapers to not run out- even while waiting for them to dry.
What I will say though- I don't think the AIOs are as sturdy as pockets- at least not BG brand. We used our AIOs as a night time diaper for the first 6 mos, and then pretty full time after that, and by a year, I had quite a few BG AIOs that were full of holes.
I think if I had to do it over again, I would skip the AIOs (never get addicted to them in the first place!) and just make prefolds and pockets my go-tos.

And how many will I need to get???? Baby will start wearing them around 7 weeks or so at daycare. I don't know if you will use them at home exclusively, too. We will see how prefolds go.

How many if only at daycare (about 8 hours)?

How many if used all the time?

I know Erin has told me once, but I didn't write it down and I have pregnancy brain bad.

Well, goodness, in the beginning they can go through like 12 diapers a day...and you want enough to not wash every day (I'm assuming), and then if you need enough to last you while you're waiting on them to dry... I'd say you need 3 days worth! That is what I had in prefolds for sure, but we never used ONLY AIOs ever (even now we have FLIPs in conjunction with our AIOs)... I think I have 12 FLIPs and 16 AIOs. Like I said, I wash every other day, and I have enough to get us through waiting for diapers to dry 24 hours. I know when I started though I had either 24 or 36 prefolds and only 8 AIOs. I bought more AIOs (and the FLIPs) when she outgrew the pfs.

Daycare will typically change baby every 2 hours at a minimum. So, for 8 hours you need about 5. I would want at least 10 more for the rest of the day. That will give you enough to get through the day plus a few extra to have in the diaper bag/left at daycare/in the car. Washing every third day is nice. So, you'll need about 45.

Some diaper websites have trial packages. You can take different kinds for a "test drive" and then return the ones you don't like. (Return diapers? Who does such a crazy thing?) Maybe you can arrange to get them when baby is about 6 weeks. Try these sites for such packages:

http://www.diaperjunction.com/try-cloth-diapers.html
http://jilliansdrawers.com/products/.../tryclothfor10

I'm sure their are a ton more such offers if you just google it.

I agree that I thought the idea of pockets was silly (why make extra work?) until I was diapering and realized that I actually hated AIOs because of the cost and extra drying time (I had to put them through two dryer cycles instead of one--that's a pretty big difference in energy use/cost!) but that pockets were no big deal to stuff and otherwise just as convenient as AIOs, with the added flexibility factor. Especially great for daycare.

I had 24 diapers to start with and washed every 3rd day, but all babies are different. You might start with that and see what kind of baby you end up with--you can always buy more! Teagan was a mega-eliminator at first, and Addy was just average. (Now I think they have swapped.)