Newborns outgrow their first diapers in weeks. Experts say so. California records show it, and several organizations that competed with Baby2Baby to run the state’s free diaper program made the same point.
One nonprofit pointed to a federal diaper pilot in California that found 83% of family requests were for Size 4 and up. Another warned that providing too many diapers of a single size “can lead to waste as babies may outgrow infant diaper sizes before they are used.”
Agency officials raised similar concerns with Baby2Baby, one of whose co-CEOs serves on the board of First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s California Partners Project. Baby2Baby ultimately won the multimillion-dollar contract to manufacture and distribute California-branded free diapers.
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Officials questioned Baby2Baby about its plan to send every new baby home from the hospital with 300 to 400 diapers in only the two smallest sizes. They noted that that many diapers at once “might be overwhelming” and that parents “may want alternative sizes… so not to waste product.”
The Newsom administration went with Baby2Baby’s plan anyway. The recently released contract locks in 400 California-branded diapers for every baby, limited to Newborn and Size 1, handed over once at hospital discharge with “no right to return or exchange diapers.”
Continuing coverage of California’s diaper program
CBS California Investigates has been following the state’s no-bid Baby2Baby diaper deal since May, when our fact-check found the loudest criticisms of the program were wrong, but the state refused to release the contract.
The Newsom administration then delayed releasing the records for 66 days while lawmakers weighed giving agencies even more time to respond to requests like these.
In the meantime, the investigation revealed that what the governor called a “competitive bid process” was actually “non-competitively bid”. It was legal, exempted by a single sentence in the state budget, one of dozens of similar exemptions covering more than $1 billion in state contracts.
Six hours after that investigation was published, the state released the 356 pages of records.
Thirty minutes later, the governor’s office responded, calling our reporting “demonstrably false.” CBS California then published a point-by-point review, checking every claim against the state’s own records. That review also revealed that the governor’s proposed budget funded the Baby2Baby program at the expense of traditional diaper bank funding, which lawmakers later restored.
