About two weeks ago I packed up some shorts, some bathing suits and about half of our stash of Thirsties Cloth Diapers and Cooper and I flew from Colorado to Florida to visit my parents for a long weekend. As promised, I used cloth diapers on the plane and the whole time we were there. I packed my little bag of soap nuts to launder them with, thanks to a tip from a reader, and I was ready to go. And so was Cooper--to go Number One or Number Two, that is.
Our flight left before eight so we were up before dawn and driving in the dark. I had Cooper sleeping in his traveling outfit so I just woke him up, popped a clean Duo Fab Fitted and a cover on him and right on time, my sister and her 6 month old pulled up and we headed to the airport.
I checked Cooper's diaper as soon as we had checked our bags. It was still dry, no surprise since he had only briefly nursed before getting into the car. I had packed four clean Duo Fab Fitteds and two extra covers, as well as two emergency disposables. Amazingly enough the flight was not full--not even close--and both my sister and I each got a whole row of three seats to ourselves. That's the one plus to open seating--if you have a baby on your lap, many folks keep right on walking and though they might smile or tell me how cute Cooper is, they'd much rather sit next to a quiet stranger who is planning on reading, sleeping or working on his laptop for the whole flight than seemingly charming toddler.
I changed Cooper only one time on the flight, right on my lap since I was alone in the row. It was like any other diaper change because it was only wet. I tossed the wet diaper into my wetbag and cinched it tight, thankful that I wasn't going to be the "lady with the funny smell" coming out from under her seat." I suppose if it had been a poopy diaper I would have dumped the solid waste in the airplane toilet like I would have a home, but thankfully, I didn't have to worry about it.
At my parents' house I did a full load of diapers on Saturday--which meant all of Fridays dirty diapers and all of Saturdays except for the last two. Then I did a smaller load Sunday night as we packed up for our return trip. I put the wet diaper Cooper had slept in in a wetbag and stuffed it into the suitcase to wash when we were back home in Colorado.
All in all, traveling with cloth was much easier than I had anticipated. Sure the diapers took up room in my suitcase and diaper bag, but other than that, there wasn't a single reason why I wouldn't do it again. Of course, I failed to mention Cooper's behavior, not to mention lack of sleeping on both four-hour flights...so cloth or disposable, I'm not in a rush to get back on a plane with him anytime soon.
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I completely agree about traveling with cloth diapers. I did it while traveling across the country and found it so much simplier. I will never go back to disposables again. :)
I am getting ready to travel with cloth for the first time and am a little bit worried. I have always just switch to disposables whenever we go somewhere, but this time we will be staying at a family members house and not a hotel so we are going to try it!
Traveling with baby and hubby on an 8 hr road trip soon. First trip with baby and cloth…nervous!!
We have traveled by plane twice since we started cloth diapering. I must admit we use disposable inserts in our Thirsties covers on the actual flights. Once we are at our destination we use our CDs.
So glad your trip was a success!! Got to love the Thirsties Duo Wrap!
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