Do you really need a diaper bag?

Short answer. No.

Diaper bags are very cute. Tempting to drop a lot of money into a stylish brand-name diaper bag with hundreds of pockets specially designed for stuff you bring around with you when baby is in tow. If you're a slave to baby shopping, it is easy to find yourself at the check-out counter charging 4,000 on your credit card for a bag that will not find any use after baby is 8 months old. Don't do it, unless of course you are ok with spending that money. In which case, I envy you. But if like most moms you want to save that money for other purposes, say tickets to the Snow Patrol concert (kidding!), then hold off.

What makes a bag a diaper bag? Pockets and prints. That's all. Prints are for baby, or designs are so that they are chic, hiding the fact that inside you have soiled diapers and wipe cloths. I was gifted a diaper bag and used it for 2 months, then my husband and I both decided that it wasn't doing it's job well enough. It was too small and all the opaque pockets were making it annoying to look for things.

Diaper bags have to make all you need accessible at the time you need them. It is a delicate balancing act to change a baby on a changing table (if you're lucky to find one) in a public bathroom. The bag has to make everything easy to get to with one hand. That means all things have to be easy to find.

So for more than a month I obsessively went from mall to mall looking for a TRANSPARENT bag! I used to think these were so ugly. My aunt, years ago said they were the best things ever, she has two kids. I filed away that information for future use, but didn't really believe her. WHy would you want to world to see all the business you carry around with you? What about those tampons and half-eaten cookies I like to stash away in my bag? Will people see them? Yes. But it's a small price to pay for easy diaper changing and packing. All the transparent bags I found were just not large enough, or were too ugly to use a diaper bags. I mean, really, carrying around an ugly diaper bag is definitely too high a price to pay :)

We finally settled on a mesh backpack from Habagat (Not sure about exact price but it was under 2,000). It is the bomb I tell you. It is not so transparent that all your stuff is out for the world to see. Yet it is transparent enough that I don't have to open it to see if I need to put more diapers or wipes in there. I can see through all of the outside pockets, so no more fumbling about for rash cream with one hand while precariously holding a baby with poop with the other. It has enough pockets to organize baby stuff, and it is large enough for an overnight trip. The best part? Once baby outgrows it you have a perfectly nice backpack that anybody, baby or no baby, can use.

Case in point. Now at 8 months I find I no longer have to bring a ton of stuff with me when we go out. I only really need 2 diapers, a small pack of wipes, a nursing cover, and the plastic sheet for half-day outings. It will all fit into my purse. The diaper bag now only sees action when we are off for the entire day, or overnight.

So there, my recommendation is to not spend your hard earned cash on a diaper bag. Buy a decent regular bag or use one you already have. If you do buy look for a transparent one, or close to transparent one. Believe me, you will thank me later.

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.