Mama Bear Baby Wear
Throwback Story from (October 30, 2021)
I rarely do shout-outs that are unrequested; but this one? Oh my goodness!
About thirteen years ago, I was looking for a handmade option to the discontinued Gerber squares I had been using for cloth diapers and found the story of the shop (discovered it online while researching PUL fabric) called “Mama Bear Baby Wear.” The story made me cry. The products were really neat. I was researched PUL fabric because we had been using four washable chux from my work (a nursing home, at that time) for nighttime bedwetter pads – they worked amazing and though my work had thrown them out, we got years more life out of them!
The research on PUL fabric led to super expensive designer washable diapers made with PUL fabric, with lots of reviews about how looooong it took to dry them. Mama Bear Baby Wear sold “washable training pants” with mixed reviews, mostly good for what I was looking for. I wanted a washable “oh no mom!” because we don’t do disposable, she was super independent and waiting for us to get to her and remove diaper pins was just “too much,” and I didn’t like cleaning up the baby seat. Washable training pants that held a small amount of “oops” yet were NOT “comfortable” (aka, whisked the pee away so the toddler never learns that wet is uncomfortable!) were exactly what I was looking for.
I ordered a four pack of “odds” – bargain training pants in assorted colors that were a dollar and a half less each than the pick-a-color training pants. See the yellow, red, and one green in that picture? Yes, those are three of the four original pack! I loved them and ordered the green and blues (three not pictured were washing) as part of a six pack four years later.
Just so you know, these weren’t “occasionally” used. I literally used all four of them every other day for almost three months, washed with my cloth diapers (I had a toddler potty training and watched a toddler who used my cloth diapers) on hot water with regular detergent (NO softener) and line dried in the Florida sun.
Skip to next potty-trainer.
Washed and line dried every other day again for about eight months.
Skip to next potty-trainer. My husband started using them like diapers because we had a magician who escaped from pins but loved the training pants. I purchased the additional six so we now had ten working pairs of Mama Bear Baby Wear washable training pants.
Now we had a dryer! They were washed and dried on high heat every other day or every third day with the diaper squares that we now used as spit rags. This bout lasted almost a year and a half because we moved twice and toddler reset her potty training every time we moved.
Skip to next potty-trainer. A friend gave me thirty washable cloth diapers with the snaps (or I would have purchased them from Mama Bear) when our son was born. I used those until he was potty training and I switched him up to the same training pants his sisters had all used. No dryer. They were washed and line dried every other day for almost six months.
Skip to current potty-trainer. We again have a dryer! She started potty training early and we used the same batch of washable diapers (minus a few retired ones, stash started for her with twenty-three) and nine of the ten Mama Bear Baby Wear training pants. We wash on hot and dry on high with regular detergent (NO fabric softener or dryer sheets) every other to every third day for about eight months. We are using them now only for gym school because I work at gym and don’t want any “mom, I forgot to quit playing and go potty” accidents to mess up the floor… she’s been potty trained for almost a year.
Still using the same nine of ten!! Only seven of the ten are in “giveaway” condition (see the worn areas near the snaps? Those three I consider unacceptable hand-me-down material as I only give away great condition stuff) but all of them are still fully intact and waterproof! Five of the ten are in what I consider excellent condition! Thank you, Mama Bear Baby Wear for a dependable, perfect potty-training “pull-up” alternative that has served us for nine and thirteen years, respectively – and if we have another potty-trainer or another to hand them down to, will continue!
Thank you for reading! (Check out Mama Bear Baby Wear’s shop!)
~Type at you next time!
~Nancy Tart
