Last year, I wrote a 4 part post about my thoughts about the future of cloth diapering. In part 4 I mentioned that I’d love to see a diaper with snaps, that also had a Velcro strip and tabs that could snap on and off at a whim. I’d mentioned this to a few WAHMs, and as far as I know, no one had made such a thing. At least one WAHM had made a diaper with both snaps and Velcro, and you just affixed whichever you wanted, but I thought you really needed to be able to remove the Velcro.
Anyhoo, a little while ago, GoGreen Pocket Diapers posted on their Facebook page that they were coming out with a snap-to-aplix conversion kit that sounded exactly like what I was talking about! I’m a little embarrassed to say that I got pretty excited. I mean, really. Who gets all bouncy and squealy about a cloth diaper accessory? Well, me I guess. Largely because I was like OMG, YES! Someone else thinks this is a good idea! I’m not crazy!!
OK, so here’s how it works. You can get either white or black, and you can buy them with matching snaps (so you hardly notice them) or multicolor snaps (so they have the cool look of the GoGreen Champ, with the ease of Velcro.) It just snaps right on the front of the diaper.
The tabs snap on the same way.
I wasn’t sure how well the tabs would stick, since there are snap caps all along the Velcro strip, but it’s as if they aren’t even there, they stick just fine.
You can overlap the tabs since they have the loop texture on the reverse side.
You can also reverse the way the tab is snapped in to make it close up even smaller.
When you reverse both tabs, you can close it up just as small as when it’s snapped, or even smaller. (Only one tab is reversed in the pictures above & below.)
So obviously, I tested this with a Bumgenius diaper. The adapter will work with The Champ, or any other diaper with 1″ snap spacing, and two rows of 10 snaps. The obvious thing would be to test the adapter with the Champ, but when I received it, my Champ was dirty and I was anxious to try the adapter! This means I was extremely confused by what I thought of as “the mystery tab.”
It is slightly smaller than the closure tabs (closer to square) and has male snaps on one side (caps on the other) and loop (fuzzy Velcro) on both sides. I couldn’t figure out what it did. I contacted Leah at GoGreen, washed my Champ, and it all made sense. (LOL)
I totally forgot that the Champ has an additional set of female snaps on the wing, so you can overlap the tabs for tiny babies. I sound like such a dummy, but since I’ve never needed the overlap, it just totally slipped my mind.
This additional adapter snaps to the newborn overlap snaps and attaches to the hook of the other closure tab. There’s no hook on the underside of this adapter since it sits up against PUL (hook might snag it.)
Using this adapter on the newborn snap gets the diaper even tinier for really small babies. Since a baby that small isn’t going to be mobile, you shouldn’t have wing droop issues from the tabs attaching to each other vs. having them both attach to the front of the diaper.
You already know the adapter works on the Bumgenius, so obviously, it works on the Flip as well.
Rumparooz, check! I was trying to figure out what else I could try it on. I’m more of a Velcro gal myself, so I will choose that over snaps if it’s available. I was mentally inventorying my diapers and thought maybe it would work on the Oh Katy (especially since I remembered that had a newborn overlap snap!)
As it turns out, the snaps aren’t quite the right distance apart, and it only has 8 snaps!
Even so, I made it work! The adapter is pretty forgiving! The end of the Velcro strip might rub baby’s tummy this way though!
So, why would you want an adapt-a-snap? I’ve heard so many people say they started out with Velcro because it was simple (also an easy transition from sposies in my opinion), and it was great until their baby figured out just how easy it was to undo! So then they were stuck buying snap diapers, or trying to stop their streaker wannabe. With these adapters, you can buy snap diapers, but use them as Velcro until you need the snaps. Or, if you always love snaps, but want something easier for babysitters, this is it.
The other problem with Velcro is the longevity. The laundry tabs of many diapers aren’t exactly great, so you end up with curling closure tabs, snagged diapers etc. etc. It’s so easy to just pop the tabs off before you toss them in the wet bag, then snap them back on when they’re dry. Alternately, you could get a strip of fuzzy Velcro, cut rectangles, and slap ’em on the closure tabs before you wash.
At $6.99 each (edit: The price isn’t set in stone since this is still really a prototype. They may end up being less!), the adapters might be a little too pricey to buy one for each diaper in your stash, but it doesn’t take too long to attach them, so you could definitely get away with having just a few. I wouldn’t want to try to snap all 20 snaps on a new diaper with a wiggly, naked baby waiting. So you’d probably want to at least have enough to have one or two already on diapers, waiting in the wings so to speak!
Hooray for GoGreen reading my mind! What do you think? Could you use one of these?
FTC compliance: I received the adapt-a-snap at no charge in order to review it. I was not otherwise compensated for this post, and all opinions are my own.