Cloth Diaper Review: FuzziBunz One Size Elite Diapers

FuzziBunz were my first one-size pocket diapers. When I was pregnant, Zulily.com ran a sale where I got several for something unbelievable like $12. They were also easy to get on Amazon. I’d read a lot of good things, and a few bad things, and these slowly but surely came to comprise the bulk of my cloth diaper stash.

In some ways, FuzziBunz are very standard cloth diapers. They have a waterproof cover lined with fleece to wick moisture away from baby’s skin, and a microfiber insert that stuffs into the “pocket.” They have fairly standard 3-snap closures around the waist.

In other ways, FuzziBunz kind of go off the beaten path. The main difference between FuzziBunz and most other diapers is the unique way you resize the diapers as baby grows. They have elastic bands around the legs you can adjust for the leg and rise settings by loosening and tightening the bands around a set of buttons inside the diaper. On the one hand, this gets a very snug, customized fit for baby–no leaks with FuzziBunz! On the other hand, having to adjust your entire stash of diapers using this tedious elastic band system is the sort of trial that requires a bottle of wine to get through. (It’s worth noting that I have very little patience and limited manual dexterity, so more patient, more nimble-fingered parents would probably find them a lot less challenging.)

I have very complicated feelings toward FuzziBunz because, after all, they were my first, and they work very well. Still. They’re kind of a pain in the ass.

Pros

• Good custom fit. FuzziBunz probably has the most customizable fit thanks to the elastic band adjustment system. I found that these probably adjust down to the smallest size, easily usable on a larger newborn (after the cord falls off and heals.) This is notable because most one-size cloth diapers, even when they say they will start fitting at 8 lbs., usually won’t. In the case of FuzziBunz, they really will fit an 8 lb. baby.
• Replacement parts. FuzziBunz does send replacement elastic with all of their diapers. Elastic giving out on diapers at some point is more or less inevitable so it’s nice to have a back-up, and the elastic would be easier to replace in FuzziBunz than in a more conventional cloth diaper.
• Easy to wash. These diapers are just as easy to wash as all the rest of my cloth diapers, and the inserts usually agitate out. I find this nothing short of miraculous, considering what a pain they are to get in, but there you go.
• Range. We started putting Isla in FuzziBunz at 6 weeks old when she weighed under 10 lbs. She is still able to wear these at 2 years, 2 months at nearly 30 lbs, and there’s another setting we can go up to if we need to.

Cons

• The elastic band adjustment system. It’s supposed to be easy, but it’s not. It’s time consuming. It’s tedious. I hate having to fight the elastics onto the buttons, because the button holes have a very snug fit. The last thing I want to do is spend half an hour trying to figure out what size Isla is now, and then another hour adjusting the entire rest of my stash to match. Plus, the end of the elastic bands are supposed to tuck into holes in the lining of the diaper, but when they are on the smaller settings, the elastic bunches under the fabric, and when the diapers are on the largest setting, the elastics don’t go into the holes. Either way, the elastic rubs and leaves marks.  Also, I’ve had problems where on a couple of diapers, the elastics don’t stay tucked in very well when Isla gets going (which is always).
• Ill-fitting inserts. This is a really baffling issue to me, but the inserts pretty obviously do not fit the diaper properly. They’re too wide, and no matter how I stuff them, they bunch. It’s so bad that when I first started using them, I thought they’d failed to send me the newborn inserts. But no, it’s just that the newborn inserts don’t fit on the smallest or the largest setting. Isla always has a bumpy, lumpy crotch and behind in these.
• Difficult to stuff. An obvious challenge when the inserts are too wide for the diaper is that the diaper is difficult to stuff. Plus, the waterproof lining on the inside of the diaper is much stickier than most of my other diapers. The result is, I spend a lot of time trying to wrestle these inserts into the diapers, and the inserts always bunch. 
  
• Bulky. For a diaper that has such a good custom fit around the legs and in the rise, the diapers are surprisingly bulky. I think this is mostly because the inserts are so bulky and ill-fitting, particularly in the crotch.
• The colors aren’t very cute. It may seem sort of silly, but FuzziBunz doesn’t have the cutest colors, and I’ve never seen any prints.
• No aplix option. FuzziBunz pretty much only come with snaps. When your baby starts doing death rolls every time you have to change them, you will come to see the benefits of velcro over snaps. Although velcro also has its drawbacks, it’s nice to have options.
• 3-point snap closures at the waist. While I understand that this type of arrangement for waist snaps is in order to prevent wing droop, having two rows of snaps, where the bottom row is skewed from the top row, is kind of a pain to get on. I have this gripe for every cloth diaper we own that has this sort of snap set-up. I much prefer the double rows of parallel snaps.
• Natty fleece lining. Over time, the fleece lining in our FuzziBunz have gotten very natty and coarse. None of our other diapers with fleece lining have this problem, even though they get used just as much and are just as old. I think this has to do with the kind of fleece.

In all, FuzziBunz are high maintenance diapers. They are labor intensive just to get adjusted to the right size and stuffed. They are labor intensive to get on. I just don’t have the time or the patience for these diapers. We keep using them, because I’m not made of money, and if we have them, by gum, they’ll get used until they fall apart or we have no more babies in diapers. Still, these are my least favorite cloth diapers, and if I could go back, I wouldn’t have purchased them. Unless you just like doing a lot of extra work for not much benefit (feed your inner martyr complex?), this may not be the diaper for you.

However: no leaks. I can’t say that about many of my other diapers.

Edited and republished on June 9, 2014. Original ran on January 7, 2013.