Many mothers that I’ve chatted to about breastfeeding, initally express some concern about not being able to guage how much breastmilk their baby is recieving.

Inaccrurate advice, has them attempting to measure their supply by expressing - which is foolish, because a baby is much more efficient at extracting breastmilk from you, and your supply will fluctuate dependent on a never endling list of factors.

An effective way to put your mind at ease, that your child is getting enough breastmilk, is to check for 6 to 8 wet nappies a day. Clear urine (not smelly yellow urine) is a good indicator.

The only trouble with this is, that disposable diapers (I call the disgustables…) tend to be so absorbant, it’s hard to tell how much wee is in them.

Cloth nappies come to the party to solve this problem, as it’s super easy to guage just how much liquid is in them.  If you don’t want to invest in a fulltime cloth nappy venture, perhaps running a few cheap prefolds up for those first few days, so you can put your mind at ease, and reassure yourself you’re giving your baby enough. (Which, if you’re feeding on demand, allowing the baby to drain the breast, and not restricting it’s access to feeds is highly likely)

Cloth prefolds are super easy to sew, and with practise you can knock one up in about 15 minutes.  A set of 6 or so will cost you less than $20 if you use nappy flanellette, and if you don’t end up using cloth diapers, they make good all purpose mop up cloths or burpies!