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Thursday, April 26, 2012

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Cruising With Cloth

For some strange reason, my husband and I thought it would be a great idea to take four small children on a cruise to visit Central America - 2 first graders, one preschooler and Baby R - just about 18 months old. As the cruise approached, I realized that there were some details that I hadn’t thought out too clearly. One of which was our cloth diaper routine.

Generally, day to day, we like to use a variety of pockets, all-in-ones, and flats and covers. At night, we add some extra hemp liners and throw on some fleece pants or wool shorties. I wash my diapers twice a week and hang them up to dry. At this point, our system is pretty stable. When we travel to visit friends or family, I can usually stick to this routine, but as I contemplated the 6 of us in a tiny room at sea, I realized that I needed a plan B.

Our cruise ship room had a shower, a tiny sink, and a toilet. There would be no way that I could soak and hand wash more than a few flats at a time - this would certainly not do. I refused to give in to a complete disposable diapering siutation so I compromised by buying three packages of disposable Flip inserts and using them with our covers. I interspersed flats here and there to give his little bum a break but, for the most part, he did fine with the switch.


We were gone for about 8 days so I brought 3 packages of disposable Flip inserts, 8 covers, fleece pants, wool shorties and longies and some Charlie’s soap. I tossed the Flip inserts into the trash and rinsed and hung the covers to dry on the clothesline in the bathroom. As needed, I soaked the covers in some Charlie’s soap and water in the bathroom sink and gave them a little bit of an extra scrub.

For swimming, we brought our favorite swim diapers - we love the ones from Bummis. At the beach, he just wore a regular Bummis swim diaper and at the pool, we put a disposable swim diaper underneath the Bummis swim diaper to give us an extra layer of protection.

All in all, our adventure went well! The kids loved the trip, I was able to modify our cloth diaper routine just enough so that we could enjoy our vacation and not feel too guilty about using some disposables. If you have a trip planned soon, definitely check out your options with inserts!

By Erin Brighton

4 comments:

Jentri said...

Why the disposable swim diaper under the bummis at the pool? I've never used a swim diaper so I'm curious

fets18 said...

We took our 9 month old and two older children on a cruise and we used cloth diapers in a combo. We used pockets at night, trend lab during the day and grovia disposable inserts on the flight. We also used grovia inserts and shell for my 5year old at the time. She developed a bladder infection on one of our layovers and didn't have any more clean underwear. They worked awesome for both kids.

Lara said...

I was wondering why the disposable also. Neither disposable nor reusable swim diapers are designed to catch pee, just poop (think about it...how would a diaper be able to absorb pee without absorbing the surrounding water?). I could see possibly wanting extra protection for runny newborn pee, but once it's solidified a bit I doubt adding the extra disposable layer did much! :)

Erin said...

Jentri - Most public pools around us require a "double" system so that there is absolutely no chance of any leaks that might close down the whole pool! I have never had any issues when I have just used our Bummis swim diapers but I wouldn't want to take the chance and ruin it for others!