When my son was a baby, he would spit up milk many times in a day. Sometimes it felt like he had spit up all the milk I just fed him! When I look at his baby photos before he turned 1, in almost all of them he was wearing a bib. I was using muslin bibs — mostly Aden & Anais, a few ones I got from Amazon, and gifts from family and friends. I had more bibs than newborn baby wear! When my son spit up, it was absorbed by the bib, but it got through to his clothes or my clothes if I’m burping him, and milk spit up is kusai! So I had to change his clothes or mine, more times than normal which increased laundry days. So after feeding, I had been putting a folded muslin towel over his bib which absorbed most of the spit up, but then I ended up with a lot of towels to wash, and sometimes they would fall off… So I thought, forget the towels and find a way to just keep the spit up on the bib.

Here was one “strategy” by my husband. Nice… LOL!

So I had an idea! I’m not claiming I’m the first person who thought of this, but I did come up with it myself. Though I’m sure there were other moms who have done it too. The idea was to use a waterproof bib — usually the ones used once the baby starts eating, but the PVC coated fabric or plastic ones, not the silicon ones — under the muslin bib. Coincidentally, my mom gave us a couple quite early, so I tried using them. She gave us the ones with detachable silicon pockets, so I kept the pockets detached. It looked like below. There’s a waterproof grey bib under the muslin bib.

It solved my problem and I didn’t have to change my son’s clothes each time he spit up. Yey! I only needed to change the muslin bib, and wipe the waterproof bib with antibacterial wet tissue. I did change the waterproof bib everyday, but it’s only one extra bib added to the laundry, compared to 4-6 clothes each day. Sometimes though, when my son spit up too much, it would spread out and drip from the bib so I had to change his clothes whenever that happened, but it was rare so it wasn’t a big deal. Other times, my son would pull one bib and they would be overly misaligned, so I got some plastic clips to hold them together in place. Something like this, from Amazon.

The set was doing great as it is, but after a while, my mom got us new fabric waterproof bibs but with pockets that you turnover. They’re a game changer! I was able to tuck the muslin bib in the pocket, and the pocket caught the extra spit up so no more dripping. It also held the muslin bib in place, but my son was still pulling the top bib sometimes, so I still used the clip. Here’s a photo of how it looked like.

The pocket was also helpful when my son started crawling. He was using pacifiers attached to pacifier clips, and he would drag them while crawling on the floor. So when he wasn’t using the paci, I put it in the pocket and that kept it clean. The paci clips also held the bibs together, so it felt like the perfect baby bib and pacifier set! It looked like below. The paci is hidden in the pocket behind his left hand.

This set really made dealing with my sons spit up problem easier. I’m hoping my next baby wouldn’t spit up too much. But if she did, I know now what to do!

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*kusai (臭い, Japanese), unpleasant smell, smells bad