It was a rainy day on the tail-end of March 2023, when my mother and I drove down to Esher for London’s instalment of The Baby & Toddler Show. We thought it would be a fun day out and a chance to have some mother, daughter and grand-daughter time before mum was due to fly out of the country with my dad the following day (😭 They were missed ). And of course it was a chance to find some baby items that could help me along in my new motherhood journey. We scoured the venue looking for a few bits and bobs and were impressed with some of the vendor’s offerings. I was mainly looking for a baby sling to wear inside the house so I could wear baby whilst attempting to do some household chores, however I didn’t come across the one that I had in mind so I passed on that. There were a few stalls that caught my eye, but the one that really caught my attention was the Cuddledry stall. One of their lovely staff members that day explained the concept of the towel to me and I was sold! I would understand if you argued that this towel is towel-overkill, but at the time, anything that I thought would make bathing a newborn easier was worth it, in my book.

Instead of negotiating with a towel to dry baby after you’ve given him or her a bath, you can wear this towel, apron style, where the towel is looped over your neck and is secured by two snap buttons around your collar bone area. This means that whilst you are bathing baby, you can remain somewhat dry, or drier than usual, and immediately after baby has been washed, you can bring baby up close to your chest onto the towel and you can fold the bottom half of the towel upwards and dry baby’s head with it’s integrated towel-hood that’s been conveniently sewn in at the bottom. To me, it was so clever, I couldn’t pass it up. I paid £35.00 on the day, but was told the RRP for this towel was £40.00.

Now, I love the towel, but I realised that as baby grew to around the 4 month mark, she sort of out-grew the towel, so it got to the stage where I couldn’t comfortably fold the towel in half over and on top of her to use it optimally, as in, using the hooded-towel part by folding it upwards above and over baby’s head wasn’t going to happen, but it was still used my me to dry baby’s neck-down. This may, however, and quite most definitely had been exacerbated by the fact that after washing the towel in the washing machine, I dried this towel in our tumble dryer after one bath-time with baby and unfortunately the towel shrunk! The original towel size is about 75cm wide and an impressive 1.12m in length. I remember when we first got the towel, I was impressed by the over encompassing size that it was for a baby towel, and at least size-wise, you get what you pay for. Also, we come from a tall family, so if your baby is tall, consider that possibly you may not be able to use the towel for it’s complete wrap-around feature for a worthy about of time.

Once I had left the event, I looked at myself and realised I paid £35.00 for a towel, but it is a good towel to have among the the other towels we have for baby. I will say that the towel does hold true to it’s claims, and it has stayed soft after every wash, and that must be down to it’s bamboo composition. But part of me thinks I could’ve just made do with any cotton towel/ bath sheet for baby, and use that for her bath times instead.

The Cuddledry towel comes in 4 colour ways. The two I prefer are the white and the oatmeal tones. The other two, I’m not the greatest fan of them (blue piping and stars on the piping on the grey one??) but I’m so happy they have plain neutral tones to pick from. The grey one would’ve been a contender, but I’m not a fan of stars AT ALL when it comes to design, to me I can’t lie, stars look so cheap to me, hence why I passed on the grey also. Additionally, the white towel is a good “bulker” for a white-wash laundry load. Sometimes you find that you want to do a white-wash, but you don’t have enough whites to run a cycle, so buying the white towel helps with this. Bear in mind I only wash baby’s things together and separate from our things. As a side note, we use the Fairy Non-Bio Washing Powder and fabric conditioner. For tough stains, including number-two stains, we use Napisan.

Middle: Two snap buttons closure

Right: Cuddledry emblem on towel (after a few washes)

I think this towel would make a great gift for a new mum who hasn’t got any baby towels yet. I think the Cuddledry will come in handy when she’s confident and able to bath baby by herself. In the first few months bathing a baby is a two person job regardless of what towel you have, but having a handsfree towel makes it easier to wash baby as you exit the newborn/3 months phase… For this reason I would recommend.

If you’ve tried this towel, let me know how you found it!

Afia 💜