Every parent arrives at the same conclusion at 4 a.m.: the overnight diaper is not working. Before you spend more on a premium line, know that most night leaks are not an absorbency problem. They are a size problem, a timing problem, or a brand-cut problem, in that order.
Fix these three before buying anything
1. The size
A baby who lies flat for ten hours puts pressure on the diaper from a completely different angle than an upright baby. A diaper that is even slightly too small stops the leg elastic from sealing, and the result is a back leak that soaks the sheet. If your baby has been in the same size for a few weeks and nights just got worse, that is the answer. The size chart and the signs it is time to size up are both worth a look before the shop.
2. The change timing
The last diaper of the day should go on at the very end of the bedtime routine, after the last feed, not before it. A fresh diaper put on before a full feed has already spent half its capacity on the first hour of sleep. Move the change to the end, and a lot of "leaky" babies go dry.
3. The fit of the specific diaper
Fasten the overnight diaper snugly, and check that both leg cuffs are standing out and not folded in. A folded cuff is a channel straight onto the sheet. This takes ten seconds and fixes more leaks than any product change.
What the real overnight lines do
Once the three above are right, the dedicated sleep lines genuinely help, and they do it in two ways: more absorbent material and, in Huggies' case, a shape built for lying down.
Huggies OverNites is the most direct answer to a back sleeper. The contoured fit is designed to sit correctly when a baby is horizontal, which is exactly when the standard cut fails. Sizes run 3 through 7, so it is not a newborn product; a newborn who leaks at night is usually a size or a fit problem, not an absorbency one.
Pampers Baby-Dry is the capacity play. The brand positions it around leak protection across a wide range of sizes, and on a heavier wetter with a thicker waist it tends to work better than a slimmer overnight cut. It is also the overnight-ish option that reaches down into the smaller sizes where OverNites does not go.
Huggies Little Movers Plus is the brand's answer for an older, bigger baby who is too active for OverNites' shape but still wetting through the night.
The pattern from our own two kids matched this: the overnight line of the brand that already fit during the day was always the better starting point than jumping ship to the other brand's sleep product. Pampers vs Huggies covers the fit difference that decides it.
What we did not do
We did not pour measured liquid into a fixed number of diapers and rank them, so there is no star score here. That kind of table is common on this kind of page and it usually rests on a testing setup we do not have. What we did was check what each brand currently claims, date it, and tell you the order that fixes a leaking night, because that order is the part most parents never get told.