Pampers Easy Ups For Girls - "Better" Pull Up For Potty Training?
Written: Jun 20 '09 (Updated Jun 20 '09)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: good fit, had what we needed
Cons: see review
The Bottom Line: The Bottom Line is you may have a real need for this design of training pants.
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| KMINER's Full Review: Pampers Easy Ups For Girls |
It finally came a time when my middle child was ready for potty training. I was about to find out just how different it can be to train a boy versus a girl ... having already gone down this road with my 9 year old son. He was pretty easy to train, and by age 3 he was out of diapers. But this middle child, she was brought here I believe to truly teach me that two children from the same household can really be so different!
Our Girl
Around the age of 2 1/2 we started having Miss H sit on the potty seat. It would be hit or miss that she'd even go or make the connection, but she grew to liking visiting the potty. So last summer, when we visited her cousin who is only 4 months older than her, and he was in underwear, we thought it was time to be more serious about it.
We were hoping to not have to purchase "training" pants - our idea being that she would start to indicate when she needed to go and that we would maintain some sort of scheduled visit. Using diapers, it went okay ... up to a point. One of the major points was a Fall trip out of state. She started freaking out at every "foreign" potty and all the loud noises many of them made. By the end of the trip, she simply refused to go. For weeks after we got home she was adamant that she wasn't going to use the potty - and we were tired of taking diapers on and off of her.
What To Use?
We looked into some type of training pants and settled on Pampers Easy Ups For Girls. They are sold in packages in Sizes 4, 5, and 6. We've only had to use the Size 4 (16-34 pounds) for her size and weight. We pay around $10 to $12 for a package. Pampers Easy Ups come in Girl and Boy packages - currently the Girls feature Dora and the Boys feature Diego. Lord help us if my husband came home with the wrong package - my daughter refused to wear them! Over the course of the last 6 to 8 months of using this brand we've noticed that, though Dora has stayed consistent, the images and scenes of Dora have changed greatly. Currently all of hers have Dora in a pretty dress - something my daughter has picked up on readily. It used to be Dora was just in some kind of shorts or pants set. My daughter loves the dresses and will comb through the ones we have in the pile looking for her favorite Dora outfit!
There are only 2 main brands for sale in our area (the other being Huggies) and they are sold for about the same price. Huggies had Disney princesses on them and Pampers had Dora. Both would be of interest to her.
In using and looking at both we quickly noticed that the Huggies had these "tear away" sides, where the Pampers they were sealed with a seam you literally had to rip away. Also we felt the Pampers were softer and more cloth-like. (some have mentioned a powdery smell to theirs - we haven't really noticed this?) Additionally, the Pampers seemed thicker - but not "diaper-y". So in our minds, Easy Ups won over Pull-Ups. Really though, in our case we just call them pullups!
The Pampers Champion Emerges
There are many things to say about the Pampers Easy Ups For Girls. Ours all feature Dora, as mentioned, and have related stars, flowers, or other assorted small pictures on the lower front area that are designed to "fade" when wet. I guess this is so people get a quick visual of whether or not the child is wet. I don't really like this as an indicator and don't take much stock in it. I noticed overall that at times we'd still see the print even though the child was wet, and that Miss H never noticed this and made the connection. I personally feel the best indicator for whether the child is wet or not is the child themselves - otherwise, how will they learn? Regular underwear (or panties as they are called where we live) don't have cute indicators that change colors on them!
Also our current packages say they are both a "Feel & Learn" pants (meaning there's a liner that gets cool to the feel to indicate when they are wet) and a good resource for "Nighttime Protection". Not sure really why Pampers felt they had to say all that, and it sounds a little contradictory on their part. Again, our daughter never noticed fading, and never felt any "coolness" that she wanted to share with me. Matter of fact, if she ever wet through them she never really mentioned that either!
We rarely had leaks as well. Occasionally if we let her have too much juice at nighttime, etc, we did notice that her sheets were wet - but this was a rare occurrence. She never leaked during the day. We noticed that these Pampers Easy Ups For Girls were really, really absorbent. They could hold a lot of wet really well. We also noticed that it held just about any mess really well, which was another plus. I think part of that was the design, and the other part was making sure we had purchased the right size and fit. (because once we bought the Size 5's by accident and we had a lot of problems!)
We really felt that Pampers Easy Ups For Girls were the superior training pants for many reasons. Some were specific to our child and needs though, so keep that in mind when reading on. The Huggies Pull-Ups were very attractive, with adorable princesses and these uber cool, parent friendly strips to re-seal the pants back together. I totally get how that makes it easier to work with adult-wise. But I quickly noticed that "practice" of taking off the sides was way too similar for our daughter to a "diaper" and caused some additional setbacks for us. Plus, Miss H could pull apart the Huggies on her own - so we had some mornings where we entered her room to find them laying on the ground! She certainly tried to pull part the Pampers Easy Ups, but she could only pick at the seam, not rip it - so while we did often find little "white fuzzies" by her bed in the morning, she was never able to rip the thing off!
Basically, the Huggies have these sort of sealable strips so you can lay your child down and change on and off pretty easily, much like a diaper. They folded up really well to toss away as well. With the Pampers you can still rip them at the sides if needed (there is a seam, but it is rippable) but most likely you will have more of a mind to just pull the thing down and take it off. Yes, this totally makes for more changing, say, on an outing. You could rip off the sides to remove the soiled pants, but you'd have to take off the child's shoes and pants to get the new one up. But in reality our daughter was using these to transition to regular underwear, so I fully appreciated the Pampers company having one most like underwear. Sure it was more time and work, but it was most like the experience she'd have using regular underwear - and she picked up on this quickly. I think it made it an easy transition to the underwear next. This was especially a problem for us specifically because our daughter noticed the Huggies seals, and always wanted to "lay down and be changed." So much so that we had to have a conversation with daycare about not "sneaking" Miss H the Huggies, but rather making her use the Pampers we sent!
The drawbacks we saw to Pampers Easy Ups For Girls was that they were really comfortable and absorbent. Again, in a parent's mind, this is great. To convince a little girl to want to wear underwear, not so much. This brand never really made it uncomfortable for her to wear a "pull up" and so we started to notice over the months she was having no desire to transition out of them.
Leaving Pampers
Over the course of a month we switched her to regular underwear for the day, and allowed her to have a few accidents. She quickly learned she hated the feel of being wet, and after 2 days she never wet in those again. Right now, at age 3 years and 7 months she is completely potty trained except for nights - which is when we pull out our friend Pampers Easy Ups For Girls. She knows she only sees them at nighttime now, and is completely okay with that.
Overall
We really noticed the differences between the main 2 competing brands, and on many levels they make a very similar product. But in the ways that mattered to us and our potty training needs and beliefs, Pampers Easy Ups For Girls were clearly the superior choice.
Recommended:
Yes
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