Diaper changing when out and about

Road trips, walks in the mall, walks everywhere, or at dinner parties, your baby will poop whenever and wherever he chooses. There are many lucky moms out there whose infants will have a scheduled poop once a day, some will even poop every 3-4 days. My little man will let his loose bowel movements loose every two hours. He did this for more than two months! Then after that it became 3 times a day until he was 6 months. Once he started solids he was down to 1 poop a day or every other day.

If your baby is like mine, and you don't want to be homebound for months, you gotta get over the dread  of dealing with runny breastmilk poop-cleaning in public bathrooms. My husband and I have mastered diaper changing, and myself, well, I have bullied salesclerks into letting me change in the oddest places in the mall. (photos posted were lifted online, unfortunately we did not take photos of our own diaper changing activities)

On road trips, we often make nappy changes on top of the trunk of our car. Decent changing tables are difficult to come by once you take that off-ramp on SLEX or NLEX. You are much better off looking for a safe place to pull over (not too close to the road) where there is decent shade so your baby's "gadgets" are not all out in the sun, and doing a quick change. Or if you have a roomy car, kneeling on the floor and putting the baby on the seat works too, but definitely pull over first.

This is a brilliant idea, changing inside a shopping cart, if I ever find myself in a pinch I just might do this. However, inside stores I have charmed/bullied salespeople and clerks to let me change the baby behind the counter. They will be nervous, they will ask the manager, they will hem and haw, but they almost always relent. You just have to be comfortable with the looky-loos who will make comments about how cute your baby is, not a bad thing. OH, and be polite, throw your dirty nappies out yourself and wipe down their counter with a wet wipe before and after.

When out with my husband, we will often sit in a coffee shop that has a long couch and just change the baby there. Since we are both so seasoned we can do this in under a minute, nobody's the wiser. 

Establishments really have to learn that men are equal partners in child care (ideally), that means putting changing tables in men's restrooms! Gee is that so hard to do?

Some tips for finding changing tables:

1. If not in the ladies room there is sometimes a changing table in the room for the disabled (true for Nuvali shopping area and a couple of other places).

2. If not a full-on changing table, most restrooms in large gas stations on the main highways have long counters that will give you enough space to change.

3. Breastfeeding/nursing rooms almost always has a nice changing area. Moms who do not nurse may not be aware of this because they don't go into these rooms.