As many parents of babies go through, I change a tremendous amount of diapers. It is nothing that has ever worried me the least bit about impending parenthood, and I don’t really see what the big deal is all about honestly. I’m thinking it has a lot to do with the fact that I’ve been a pet owner for the better part of the last 20+ years, and cleaning the pee and poop of animals has conditioned me to where baby human excrement seems like nothing at all, especially since it’s mostly encapsulated inside of diapers.
Anyway, what I wanted to new dad brog about today was the fact that over the span of the last six months, I’ve gotten to give some pretty good sampling to several baby wipes varieties out on the market, and I think I’ve become somewhat qualified to be able to rate and impart my opinions on my zero readers, in case the day comes in which they are in the market for baby wipes and decide to use my ratings as a baseline to sway their opinions.
I judge based on performance criteria, and not necessarily cost; mythical wife had gone through months of cerebral couponing and deal-hunting to stock up on baby supplies prior to the arrival of our child, so the factor of cost was somewhat irrelevant by the time we got to starting to use all the supplies that we’d hoarded, plus it’s safe to say that at no point have we ever paid full price on any baby wipes.
So the things that I judge baby wipes are on:
- Thickness – too thin and you’re wearing excrement; too thick and you might as well be trying to wedge a beach towel into the sensitive areas of your baby
- Softness – the softer the better as babies’ skin is delicate and gentle, especially down there
- Moisture – too little and you might as well be using sandpaper, too much and you’re leaving too much moisture which could lead to irritation
- And most importantly, when your baby has exploded, and you’ve only got one hand free because the other hand is holding their legs up so they don’t dip their heels into feces, how well the packaging dispenses, because I’m convinced that they’re all perfectly engineered to sense urgency and make it impossible to pull out anything other than the entire fucking package when all you need is one at a time
Dollar General’s Gentle Steps
Honestly, I didn’t expect great things from these, as they are a private label brand that isn’t tremendously known for their overall quality. But mythical wife has learned that DG is a couponer/deal hunter’s holy land, as through enough exploits, app usage and guile, it’s entirely possible to regularly ream them for massive hauls at low costs, and at one point we got some of their baby wipes for basically pennies.
- Thickness – they’re super thick which is helpful when cleaning up big poo, but overkill when it comes to average #1s
- Softness – not particularly soft either, almost like a very good quality pre-moistened restaurant napkin
- Moisture – they’re moist enough, but combined with how thick they are, you have a very short pot life to use them, as they will dry out quickly
- Their failure is what actually served to be the impetus to this post, as I’d grown exasperated with how many wipe makers can’t seem to make a good package that dispenses smoothly
Needless to say, I’m not being stingy with these particular wipes, and won’t be sad to move onto the next package when we finally run through them.
Huggies Natural Care / Special Delivery
In all fairness, this ranks as low as it does not because they suck, it’s just that I like all the others more.
- Thickness – pretty thick, almost to a detriment
- Softness – pretty soft and glides smoothly on a baby’s skin without causing any redness or irritation
- Moisture – decent moisture, but overall feels like a moist paper towel
- Also does not perform well on the dispensing test, as when you need to get just one is when the perforations will betray you, and you’ll yank out five sheets
Huggies Special Delivery is basically the upgraded version of Natural Care, but made with more organic ingredients. Performance-wise, they’re very similar, plus I don’t feel like re-writing the same shit more or less because I’m also tremendously lazy at moments like right now.
WaterWipes
These are what we started with, as our rationale was to use the most natural-sounding products first, to ease our little baby’s body into the world, and since we have basically two primary changing stations in our house, one of them still exclusively is running WaterWipes until we run out.
- Thickness – pretty thin, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, as you want agility when getting into the folds of a chonky baby
- Softness – fairly soft, as they’re more like a fabric and not a soggy towel like all the brands that preceded this
- Moisture – WaterWipes are soaking wet, and I sometimes feel the need to let my baby air out for an extra minute or two before putting the diaper back on, because I don’t want to trap moisture inside and cause potential irritation, and we’re not powder users
- Often fails on the dispensing test, and regularly I end up pulling anywhere from 3-5 extra wipes when all I ever want is one
Pampers Sensitive / Pure
Like Huggies, I’m consolidating these guys, because they’re basically two levels of quality by the same maker. Sensitive is the regular, and Pure is basically the same thing, but made with higher quality ingredients, allegedly.
- Thickness – thin, but like WaterWipes, they’re made of a fabric and not paper, so they’re nimble and easy to use
- Softness – soft and gentle feeling
- Moisture – Where WaterWipes is too wet, Pampers goes the other direction, but when the day is over, I’d rather have less moisture than too much, so I’m happier with these than WaterWipes
- Also does not perform well on the dispensing test, especially when you get towards the end of the package and the weight of their existence has crammed down onto the bottom, leading to more failures the lower you get
CVSHealth-branded Baby Wipes
No joke, these are the best wipes that I’ve used so far. And to think mythical wife picked these up mostly because of expiring Extra Care bucks stacked on top of some other rando coupon she had, making these things cost maybe a quarter.
- Thickness – thin, but like WaterWipes and Pampers, are made from a fabric and not paper, which leads to good agility
- Softness – soft, kind of in between WaterWipes and Pampers in quality
- Moisture – decent moisture, not too wet and not too dry
- Is the only packaging that dispenses well from first wipe to the last. Blew my mind at how consistently smooth I could pull for one sheet, and actually get one sheet, and when the shit hits the fan, performance in this area is very welcome
And there we have it; CVS’s private label baby wipes beats all the competitors from major baby product manufacturers, and if it were up to me, and were remotely possible, I’d swap out all of our existing wipes in our stockpile, for CVS’s, because I change the vast majority of the diapers in this house, and I should get the biggest say on what we should be using in the future.
