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Alternatives to Pull Up Pants
What: GroVia My Choice Cloth Trainer
When: Potty training
Why: Resuable, absorbent, adjustable fit
Where: Amazon
If you tire of taking out piles of disposable pull-ups while potty training your child, try this cloth alternative. The Grovia trainer acts like a cloth diaper, but goes on like underwear, only with much more absorbency.
The Grovia Trainer has elastic sides, much like the popular disposable brands of pull up training pants. It includes snaps to adjust the rise height of the training pants. The sides can also snap on and off, for extra easy removal. The Grovia training pants also have a pocket lined with absorbent hemp and cotton material that helps prevent accidents from spreading. For overnight, you can also stuff more inserts into the pocket to increase absorbency. Since accidents are rare in our household, I haven’t tried that, though the trainer itself can’t withstand a full bladder emptying.
You can peek at the hemp and cotton lining the pocket, which can be stuffed with inserts to increase absorbency.
I had never heard of the Grovia brand, but my beloved Thirsties doesn’t make a cloth training pant. My third child potty trained much earlier than my first two, and only needed diapers overnight. I switched to Honest Company’s disposable diapers for a variety of reasons, but I got sick of hunting them down in stores or paying extra online. I finally bit the bullet and bought the more popular disposable brands at our local store. Once my son wanted to go to underwear, I wanted something that felt more like underwear and that he didn’t associate with diapering.
The elastic sides make these cloth training pants super easy to get on and off, and feel more like underwear. The snaps help for removal in case of accidents.
I probably could’ve used my trusty Thirsties diaper cover over his regular underwear, but I had passed those along to a relative and they don’t have any built in absorbency. Plus, at 35 pounds, my son doesn’t fit well into a lot of adjustable covers.
I ordered a Grovia trainer online and it worked great with one caveat. The sides, meant for kids ages 1 to 3, were too tight. We still used it until I could get my hands on their larger size of side panels. The Plus Size panels fit ages 3 to 5, so their longer size offers more room. The newer panel design features two rows of snaps for more adjustable fits. You can snap one side on the inner row and the opposite on the outer row, so the panels offer three different size options to grow with your child.
A Plus Size panel on top with a regular panel on bottom. You can see the extra row of snaps on the new design of the Plus Size panel that offers more adjustable fits.
I love being able to pull the cover on and off along with his underwear. My son loves the feel and that I got the cover in his favorite color. It comes in a wide range of color options, and you can mix and match the main part with the side panels for even more looks.
You can mix and match colors and sizes of side panels with the Grovia trainer.
we use cloth nappies and have just started potty training so naturally i’m interested in these. However, i’ve heard a lot of toddlers get confused as these feel to similar to nappies and so are more likely to wee/poop in these. Have you found this to be true?
We used these training pants exclusively over regular underpants, so perhaps we avoided confusion that way. It probably depends on what kind of cloth nappies you use, and how similar they seem if you use the Grovia training pants without anything underneath.
Practically Apparent 
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