2 in nappies on longhaul flight - help!

[tania]

I am about to travel, not as long-haul as you and I decided whilst I would love to do cloth, essentially we leave home this Sunday at around lunchtime and won't get to our destination till Monday lunchtime (staying overnight at airport hotel because of 6am flight). I am taking cloth to use while there, but I personally can't get my head around having a bag big enough to carry 24 hours worth of nappies yk. I don't want to be going through airports and staying at a hotel the night before and lugging around a wet bag with maybe 7 or 8 nappies in it, plus clean ones. And I am taking and using trim-ish pockets. For me, I bought some single-use nappies for the 24 hours in transit and I will use cloth once we are in New Zealand.
I would say go with what causes the least stress. However I found the most stressful part was buying the darn things. I haven't bought a single use nappy in two and a half years and I felt weird going through the checkout and almost like I needed to explain to the checkout lady why I was buying them. Then I thought oh she'll think I'm a nutcase

[tania]

I just wanted to add I have used cloth on every domestic holiday/travel I've done - see there you go - feeling a need to justify something! Good luck with your decision.

[Eilleen]

Okay have flown to the US in both 'sposies (only 1 child though) and cloth so I thought I'd elaborate the pros and cons of both:

Sposies all the way - 1 x 9 month old baby, poo'ed at every feed. Daytime flight going there, nighttime flight coming back:

Pros:
- not much luggage required for nappies.
- no "smell" for the pooey nappies
- disposable nappy lasted a little longer wee wise so didn't change as much.

Cons:
- during long haul flight, the bins in the toilets got very very full, and was made worse by the sposies I was putting in there. So the loo closest to our seat got very very smelly.
- Poo blowouts at a couple of nappy changes, so had to ask for extra luggage (the strong plastic kind that you see at airports) to hold the pooey clothes.


Cloth - 1 x 2 yr old and 1 x 11 month old. Used eco-sposies on the way there, used cloth on the way back. Daytime flight on the way there, nighttime flight on the way back.

Eco-Sposies Pros:
- Didn't have the yucky chemical smell when the kids wee'd - so less smelly.
- Could throw in the bin (though whether it would decompose properly as a result is another story).
- Took up less room than cloth.

Eco-Sposies Cons:
- As per flight with Sposies - flight bins got very very full. But it was less smelly.
- Was a little more bulky than the "normal" disposables, but less bulky than cloth - so less luggage.
- Ended up with 1 poo blow out each, so still ended up carrying clothes for both kids. However was more prepared and had a spare wetbag with tea tree oil inside it. Was also prepared and had extra luggage just to carry this.

Cloth Pros:
- No poo or wee blowouts! Yippeee.
- Flight bins got full but it wasn't a problem I had to worry about anymore.
- Planned on using just the night nappies, but carried 6 x flats, 6 x hemp boosters and 4 x PUL covers as spares. Bulk therefore was not that much more luggage than carrying eco-sposies.

Cloth Cons:
- Put day nappies for domestic flight beforehand, then changed just before international flight. So went on board carrying 2 x wee'd on day nappies. Again, using wetbag with tea tree oil inside it.

We changed as soon as we got in the airport into 2 x daytime fitted nappies. (So total hand luggage space was 6 x flats, 4 x PUL covers, 6 x hemp boosters and 4 x daytime nappies).

Hope this helps!
E

[Lucy]

that's great Eilleen, thanks for putting the time in

Appreciate your thoughts and contributions ladies

[Obsi]

I don't know what I'd use, except that I put Tahlia (and I) in disposables when we had a few days down in Tassie, rather than worrying about washing while we were there.... and both of us got rashes so I vowed then not to do that again.

If going on a long flight though, I'd be tempted by the disposable option.... for the factor of having the extra baggage to lug around with cloth, and lugging smelly wetbags and having to do laundry as soon as you get there to avoid running out of nappies.... and the eco issue is bad, but a once (or twice) off is better than using it full time... but the health issue would be my main concern, since it horrifies me. So if going disposable, I'd at the very least make some polarfleece liners to throw away so that there is no contact with the disposables

[Ali]

option for getting your hands on some sposies for trial if you want them - email the companies and ask for samples.

Personally my entire onflight experience in cloth was a flight from adelaide to melbourne, melb to launceston.
THen from hobart to adelaide.
So not at all a long flight. (oh, with one 10 month old, i should add)
I was using PUL pockets at that stage (rory hadn't really developed his sensitivity to them yet - that was about 2 weeks away...) and had no leaks.
BUT there was an enormous poo towards the end of the flight from melb to launceston, which meant i was trying to change a small child in the tiny toilets in the middle of turbulence when the seatbelt light came on and the hostess started banging on the door - ergh there's an experience i never want to repeat. HOwever, containment was fine, so i didn't have too big a mess to clean up.
I carried waay too many nappies just for that flight, but learnt my lesson on the flight back. And the poo smell didn't get out of the wetbag at all either.

Ali

[suey]

Lucy you can so do it! We did cloth the whole way a few months ago and I'm a bit of a staunch cloth user - perhaps would use cloth in situations others wouldn't, but I really didn't think it was that much of a problem. I just used nappies and changed as normal, I think we used maybe 3-4 nappies on each leg of the flight, took a wetbag on board and put them in there - I did get some of those stinky sacks though to try and contain the smell - Maia has stinky wee lol.

I had a giant wetbag which we put in the bottom of the luggage just before checking in, so that all we were taking on board was clean nappies - apart from the one we changed just before boarding. I took a smaller wetbag on the plane - one of those double ended jobbies - with one side having wipes, dry nappies, stinker bags etc and putting the wet nappies in the other end, so when I went to change a nappy, I just took the whole bag and it was fairly painless.

And just to prove you can do it even without night nappies or having special nappies for the plane etc, this is a funny story about what happened to us coming back. We were in a huge rush to get to one of the flights as the bus to London was late and a we were a bit panicky that we were going to miss the flight, so just rushed to the counter and checked the bags in. Then as we were boarding we realised that we forgot to swap the wet nappies from the day so far over for dry ones and only had two dry nappies left for a 13 hour flight!!! I had do do some improvising - I had one itti and a spare set of boosters and a PUL pocket nappy, plus a flanny flat and some cloth wipes - somehow we managed to get through the flight - we had some flushable liners, so I reused the pocket with the flanny flat and I reused the itti shell with laying in cloth wipes and putting a flushable liner over the top. She leaked/wicked out of the last 'nappy' at the airport before we could get our bags, but it was pretty funny that we managed to get through (although it was not so funny at the time when we discovered we had no nappies ).

Anyway, I reckon it is easy, being on a plane doesn't make it that different to changing a nappy anywhere else, it just means you have to carry the wet ones with you, but really that is no different to what you do when staying a night at someone's house, or being out all day, or going away camping etc. You can do cloth for sure!!

What airline are you flying btw?

[alineanne]

oh and i didn't change my babes in the toilets either. either on my plane seat or in the bassinet. so if the nappies were only wet, they went straight in the wetbag.

[Nicole_M]

My recent experience two weeks ago I flew Dubai to Edinburgh, stopover in Heathrow.

The whole journey should have been 11 hours door to door but took 22 because of unexpected and unavoidable flight delays and missed connection.

I took GK pockets, because we have great success with them, they're lightweight and dry fast. I also carried some disposables 'just in case' and it was very fortunate that I did because I didn't have enough cloth to cover the extra hours. I also took a bummis wrap as I knew the disposables wouldn't contain a poo blowout and it was worth it's weight in gold!

Hope your journey goes well.

[bilbylove]

just reading this out of interest

(haven't flown with cloth at all)

what about if you took all your night nappies and just used those for the flights? They are bulky but last longer. Just thinking out loud.

Is there an option for changing baby anywhere else BUT plane toilet, on the long haul flights? Is there a parents change room? somewhere horizontal to change your bub?

I don't even know how babies travel on planes, are there the plane equivalent of car seats with the five point harness?

(I haven't flown for a long time, can you tell? lol)

I changed my baby at our local airport (picking up stepchild) and noticed, that even for an airport built to service a city of one million, the baby facilities in a brand new airport were barely existent and not user friendly.