Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Traveling with CLOTH- what I did and how it worked out :)

When DD was 4 weeks old, we traveled "home" (yes we go home a lot, all of our families are there). DD was about 8 pounds and wasn't quite fitting into our hybrids (she's short and they went up to her armpits) so I took all cloth. My brother and his pregnant wife are interested in cloth, so I took an assortment. I brought:
6 prefolds and 3 covers w/ 2 snappis
18 AIO's (bumgenius, thirsties)
6 OS pockets (Bumgenius 3.0)
4 fitteds w/ 1 wool cover
and a handful of disposables for night time.

Everything worked as well as it does at home. No problems there. There is just the logistics of actually "traveling" that need to be worked out. This is what I did:
DD wore a disposable w/ a cover for the first leg of the trip. This eliminated any 4 day old diapers in the batch when we returned. The oldest would be 3 days. If you have access to washing, this can be skipped, but my parents have well water and I didn't want to chance washing at their place and my in-laws have a front loader and I didn't want to deal with that either.
Pack the diaper bag w/ as many diapers as were needed for the time we'd be out. 1 for every hour is my rule. Pack a large wetbag. We use disposable wipes right now (lansinoh) so I brought a pack of them. When we returned to my mom's house in the evening, I emptied the wetbag into the pail liner I had at her place. (It's a zippered one, NO STINK!!) We were gone for 4 days. I had 1 disposable and 1 pocket leftover at the end of the trip. I found myself trying to decide what diapers would be best when...for example:
If we were going to be at the in-laws for 4 hours, I did prefolds w/ covers.
If we were going to be in the car for more than 15 minutes we did pockets etc. This was confusing to me and I decided that next time I needed to simplify things.

As soon as we walked in the door at our own house, I dumped the very full pail liner into the wash and ran the regular wash routine. They were VERY ripe after 3 days but washed totally clean and had no issues.

I used a vera bradley VERA tote for my diaper bag and it worked fine. I'm still looking for the "perfect" bag for me...

Traveling with hybrids- Gdiaper review

This past weekend we went "home" for 5 1/2 days. Each way in the car was 5 hours. I took nothing but Gdiapers and flushies. My family has a septic, so I didn't flush them, but the entire weekends worth was only enough to fill a small Target bag. (they don't have garbage collection either so I had to keep a bag available to throw away at the gas station on the way out of town).

I took 7 Gpants w/ snap in liners (loaded) and a full bag of flushies. We use disposables at night (she sleeps 7 hours at a time, I'm not messing with it thanks!). We returned with 7 flushies.

I aimed again, to change her every 2 hours. If we went more than 3, she felt slightly damp on the outside. Since it's hot, she wears dresses so it wasn't a clothing issue. We did use them in the car with no problems at all as long as I changed her every 2 hours (which I did since we had to do potty and nursing stops anyway). We had NO leaks at all.

Poo was a little more tricky than with the biosoakers, only because the flushies don't have the built in gussets, but the snap in liners held beautifully and we didn't end up with anything on the actual Gpants. I LOVE the gpants because the legs are super gentle (DD has little pudgy legs). We get very little by way of red marks with these (she has super sensitive skin, so this is wonderful!)

We did get poop on the snap in liners every time she pooped (which again, is only once a day so it's not a huge deal here). SO be aware if you are traveling and you have a breastfed baby that poops a lot...buy a few extra snap in liners. You don't really need more of the GPANTS- just liners. I rinsed them out in the sink then washed them by hand in the shower in the morning using baby shampoo. Easy and worked just fine. They dried SUPER fast.

These were great! Easy to travel with and worked well for us in the car and in the heat. The cotton outer allowed her buns to breathe and she didn't end up with heat rash. We'll use these again for sure!

Traveling with hybrids- Grobaby review!

We took a trip when DD was 6 weeks and took nothing but grobaby shells and biosoakers. At about 9 pounds, they fit her very well on the smallest setting. She's a once-a-day pooper, so I wasn't too worried about running out of shells if poo got on them, and it turns out that the biosoakers are freakin' AWESOME for containing breastfed explosiveness! In the 5 days we were gone (5 hours each way in the car too) we had ONE shell get poop on it, and it was totally MY fault when I changed her, I moved it and the wing fell into the mess. Not the biosoakers fault at all! Something I found when traveling is that you usually don't end up changing quite as often as you do at home. At home I change ASAP, sometimes every 20 minutes if I found she has wet. I shoot for every 2 hours at the most. But out and about, it wasn't always possible to change her ASAP. There were a couple times that she was in a diaper for 4 hours (someone else holding her, her sleep patterns were all off etc.). And once she was in one for 5. I felt SO bad, but she did not leak. The biosoakers hold a lot.

I like this system enough that we use them when out and about (sometimes we can be gone all day). I love not having a large wetbag to deal with. I bring a small one just in case, for the shells. The sticky stuff on the back of the biosoakers is too sticky to use in shells, BUT it works nicely if you want to roll up the diaper and stick it shut.

FWIW, I have also used biosoakers in Thirsties Duos, Gdiaper Gpants, and FLIP covers. All worked VERY well and are trim enough she can wear regular clothing, which is wonderful!