Wednesday 30 September 2015

Cloth Diapering on a vacation

Cloth Diapering On a Vacation


Sunset !!
Kabini, One of my favorite destinations. The calm serene back waters of Kabini dam , a resort on the river bank! It is one of the awesome place to relax ! All set for vacation and to cloth diaper my bub as always!

My kids enjoying the sunset
 I try my best to cloth diaper my son on our travel.  I have been able to cloth diaper fully in most of our travels. This time, I used much lesser diapers may be because he is ‘almost ‘potty trained. This is the story for last 6 months. I’m enjoying this too, as I can use CD’s till I can. (Happy Grin)


What do you need?
Usually, I take lot of pocket diapers and few AIO’s for my son when we are travelling. Pockets are stuffed with CB inserts or bamboo cotton and I will have few flats for standby, wet bags. He is a light wetter and any insert will work for him. This time, I packed FAP’s, few pockets, Training pants and pant styled diapers.
 
That's my lil monkey helping me ;)!
How many do you need?
It depends on how many days you travel, how often you plan to wash and how big is your stash? If you are planning for 3 day vacation, you may need around 15- 20 diapers assuming you will be able to wash them in between. On an average, 1 year old baby needs 8 diapers a day!  Smaller babies need even more.

I carried around 5 (training pants/pant style pockets), 2 FAP’s,  5 pockets stuffed with flats.
For the training pants, I had put a small hemp insert. The small insert that comes with fitted diapers.  They could hold more and very trim!
As I carried pant styled diapers, I took my son to the rest room as when possible,  so he didnt soil his diapers much.  I changed them every 4 hours even if isn’t wet.  I used FAP’s for the nights! He is usually dry at night.  He was unwell and I couldn’t take a chance!

Washing:
Hand washing them in a wash basin
I hand wash the diapers as when possible and line dry them. I had forgotten my detergent and I ended up using the soap which was available in the resort. I don’t have any problem with the diapers till now!! Thank God... That doesn’t mean, you use some random soap and you wouldn’t have problems with the diapers.  I didn’t have an option . At the end of the week, I counted my blessings as everything had gone wonderfully well and my cloth diapers had all come clean on vacation.





A small video clip; how I washed my diapers in the wash basin.




Poopy diapers:
He did poop once in his diapers. I managed to clean the same way which I normally do at home. I used the health faucet that is attached the toilet and clean the poop. 

Drying:
The biggest hurdle is the drying time of the diapers. In my few vacations, rain god was so merciful showered his blessings and I ended up using spoises :(.


Dried Diapers kept aside to capture a pic  :)


This time we had a towel rod which is kept near the swimming pool.   Yay!!  I could use them to dry all my diapers!!! Even otherwise, I usually carry a nylon rope and manage to tie them between some rods or pillars and use them to dry my diapers! We had a nice sunshine every day, diapers were dry quickly and we enjoyed rain every night! I could reuse a pocket, CB insert and flats! Flats (receiving blanket turned to a flat) was dry in less than hour.    



Flats were the quickest to dry



Finally, it’s OK if you decide to just use disposables while travelling. You don’t have to feel bad about it. A few days of using disposables to save your sanity is totally worth it. You might just be downright excited to get your little one back in fluff as soon as you get home but don’t stress a few days of not using cloth. Even part-time cloth diapering helps to save space in our landfills.

We’d love to hear your story if you have successfully used cloth diapers while travelling! Lots of our readers are scared of it and always ask what everyone else is doing!



Note :
If you wish to contribute your article on cloth diapering, you are welcome.  Your story can be a motivation to lot of parents who wish to switch to cloth!! It can be on night time diapering, cloth diapering on travel, cloth diapering on budget or how you switched to cloth, anything! Please send an email to clothdiapershopindia@gmail.com to send your story! You will be featured on our blog.