How Many Diapers Do I Need?
This post contains references to products from one or more of our advertisers. We may receive compensation when you click on links to those products. Terms apply to the offers listed on this page. For an explanation of our Advertising Policy, visit this page.
As you’re preparing for a newborn, trying to figure out your diaper situation can be a bit stressful.
If you’re preparing for your first child, there are a lot of things to do to get ready. One of the questions that you’ll wonder is how many diapers you should have on hand. Diapers are a bit of a foreign object to most new parents. You’ve never had to buy them before, and you have no idea how many a baby actually needs.
You may already have some diapers on hand if you had a baby shower. If you don’t, then your first question will be how many you need of each size. There’s a special formula to figure this out. It’s called the “just wait” method. That’s right, you shouldn’t really be buying too many diapers before you bring your baby home. In fact, there’s an argument that you don’t need any diapers before you bring your baby home.
Buying a bunch of diapers before your child is born is a bad idea because you really have no idea how many diapers you will actually need. It’s very possible that you won’t need any newborn diapers at all, or at least not any more than how many they give you in the hospital. The hospital will send you home with at least a pack of diapers, and often if you ask they will give you more.
While most kids will need size 1 diapers, some kids can go through that size very quickly while others will use them for a few months. In other words, you can stock up on some of the larger size diapers (size 1 and 2), but you really shouldn’t get too many. My youngest child only wore size 1 diapers for about a month total before moving into size 2. Young babies will generally go through 6 to 12 diapers in a day, so that should help give you an idea of how many diapers you’ll need.
In terms of larger size diapers, you should not really buy any of those before they're ready to actually start wearing that size diaper. For my youngest child, we didn't even get to size 5 diapers before we had him potty trained. If we had stocked up on a bunch of diapers in advance, we would have just wasted a bunch of money on them. Our son is on the bigger side of things as well, so it’s very possible that if he was smaller, we wouldn’t have used size 4 either.
Unless you’re going to be using cloth diapers, you’re unfortunately going to be spending money on diapers. It’s one of those things that feels like such a waste of money as a parent, but something you have to buy. Do your best to buy diapers in large packs when it makes sense to do so, at places such as Costco and Sam’s Club.
When it comes to diapers, you’ll go through plenty of them with your kids. Don’t spend more money than you’ll need to, and try to buy only as many diapers as you’ll actually end up using.
