Talk me through your "on-the-go" system

[dayxday]

I must say, the more research I'm doing on cloth diapering, the more of a no brainer it is! As much poop as I dealt with with my now 4-year old when he was in disposables, I cannot believe all the money I wasted...not to mention that whole environmental footprint thingie ;-) 

Anyway, that being said...if my memory serves me well, we dealt with a number of poop explosions from our son with the disposables, especially as an infant solely on breast milk. We called them back-scratchers. Bringing me to my questions (several in a long line of questions I've been posing in this forum):

1.) How have you cloth-diaperers dealt with poop explosions? 

2.) Especially poop explosions on the go? 

3.) Do you think cloth diapers eliminate said explosions from exploding quite so...explosively? 

4.) Especially explosions in pre-folds held together with snappies?

5.) Could you please walk me through your system of cloth diapering on the go? By this I mean, you're at a restaurant or other public family outing...baby poops...you change him/her with or without the aid of a changing table...where do you put the dirty diaper? How do you store it? What do you do with the poop? Do you substitute a disposable in this case?

Thanks again! So many questions...but lots of enlightening answers.  

[inkandpaper]

I can answer a couple of your questions.

4)  We use snappied prefolds on our EBF dd.  I use the jellyroll fold pulled snug around her legs.  When I've used disposables, I noticed that the absorbent pad ends a few inches below the top of the diaper in the back.  This means that any poop that runs past the end of the absorbent pad is likely going to squish out of the diaper (especially if she's lying on her back).  The prefold is absorbent all the way to the top, so it soaks it all up.  I've rarely had leak issues with my prefolds, and the couple of times it did happen, it just got the cover dirty.

5) Here's how I do it: Change baby as usual.  Put dirty diaper in a small wet bag/ziploc bag/platic grocery bag.  Stick it in the diaper bag. Wash it with the next load of diaper laundry. 

[LeighPF]

For me with cloth, a leak was when the poop got out of the prefolds and on the inside of the cover. With two in cloth only a handful of poops escaped the diaper. Real elastic is brilliant and keeps it in.

On the go. I bring a wet bag that can hold all the cloth diapers we could go through when we are out. Also useful for older kids accidents and wet swimsuits. I put in back in my bag or the bottom of the stroller. No fuss.

[LeighPF]

I also want to add you are asking great questions in a thoughtful way. Keep it up.

[Chloe'sMama]

When my girls were just nursing, I would just fold the diapers up and put them in my wet bag and rinse when I got home.  

I used pocket diapers with DD1 (Happy Heiney) and never had a single problem with explosions (although, when she wore disposable, I did...)

DD2 I used the pocket diapers as well as Bum Genius elementals, I also didn't have any problems with explosions.

[LaughingHyena]

I can only remember a couple of occasions where I ended up changing clothes, usually the poo was fairly contained for us. On those occasions I just added the dirty clothes to the wet bag and stuck the whole lot in the wash when we got home. The worst part was my habit of folding the pushchair without remembering to take the wet bag out of the basket. Several days later when I came to use it again Id find the bag, Yuk.

I had a couple of wet bags, a drawstring one and a zip closing one. I preferred the zipped one as it seemed to contain smells better. The drawstring one I had never seemed to pull up quite enough to me.

When they were a bit older and the poo a bit more solid we used flushable liners at the times we were expecting a poo. I'd either flush the liner or bag it in a nappy sack to throw away seperate from the washable stuff.

[scrunchiiface]

We have only had two blowouts with cloth on out 17 month old and both leaked from around the legs. We used prefds until he ate solds around 6 months old. Both blowouts we after solids and when using pockets. We keep dirties in a wet bag with a zipper closure. If we forget that I have some extra plastic grocery bags in the car that we use.
On overnight, or longer trips we use disposables.

[merbear0929]

I used disposables with my son the first 6 months, and I had way more blowouts with them than with cloth. We used CDs with my daughter from the beginning and rarely had issues. The few problems we had, usually the diaper was not put on correctly.

I have two zippered wet bags that each hold 5-6 diapers. One is always in my diaper bag for wet or dirty diapers when we are out. If possible, I will dump the solids in the toilet before putting the diaper in the wet bag. If that isnt possible, then I just wrap it up inside the cover and put it in the bag to wash out at home. (we also keep a changing pad in the diaper bag so i won't have to put her down on a dirty surface to change her.)

[newbie_mary]

We definitely had more poo blowouts with disposables than with cloth, especially snappi'd prefolds.  

There are lots of cute wetbags out there which are designed for cloth diapering on-the-go.  I like the kind that has 2 pockets - one for wet stuff, and the other to hold clean dipes.  You can just throw them in the wash with the diapers when you wash, so it is helpful to have at least 2 of these kinds of bags.

With an EBF baby, you don't have to do anything with the poop - just put the poopy diaper in the bag.  Once they start solids, I personally use flushable diaper liners and generally the poop is on the liner and you can just flush it.  On the rare occasion that the liner gets twisted up and the poop ends up on the diaper, I just take it home in the wetbag and deal with it at home if it isn't able to be shaken into the toilet.

I tend to use disposables when we go on overnight trips (more than 2 nights) because I haven't had any luck washing diapers at other peoples' houses...generally the people we visit use detergents with all sorts of additives that coat their washing machine and then screw up my diapers when I wash them in their machines (even with my own detergent).