We just got back from the Big Apple yesterday and while it was fun, I am TIRED! I caused myself a great deal of anxiety trying to pack and prep for flying with little Squally, so I thought I’d detail our packing and airport journey with you all!
First of all, the anxiety of properly packing a carry-on bag for a cloth diapering baby was almost UNBEARABLE! I recently fell down the JuJuBe diaper bag rabbit hole and consequently got a GREAT deal on a BePrepared bag in Magic Merlot print from Bohemian Baby in Knoxville! It is indeed a diaper bag, but it’s HUGE and came highly recommended for traveling or for a mom of two in diapers! We also have a JuJuBe BFF in Pixie Dust bag that we use for everyday use, but fitting all of Squally’s clothes and diapers for the post-blizzard New York City weather was no walk in the park, BUT I did manage to get all of her stuff in HER bags and get through airport security twice with 0 problems!! Here are the sweet deats on that:
The black and red bag is the JuJuBe BePrepred Magic Merlot print and the blue and white bag is the JuJuBe Pixie Dust BFF bag! The green and grey bag in the bottom left corner is my bag with all of my clothes, etc in it!
Cloth diapering and traveling can be hard, but it’s definitely doable WITHOUT having to pay extra to check a bag! We flew with United Airlines Economy class because I’m a broke college student and mom (hahahaha) and each adult was allowed a carry-on and a personal bag. Since we were traveling with “infant” by airline standards, we were also allowed a diaper bag. We got a REALLY good deal on the tickets and therefore were unwilling to pay to check bags. So my carry-on bag was Lariah’s BePrepared, my personal bag was my Nike Mini Dufflebag, and Lariah’s BFF was our diaper bag!
When traveling, I’m always afraid of the space that the cloth diapers were going to take up, so I turned to my handy dandy Grovia brand diapers! We packed 8 AIOs, 4 hybrids with 2 inserts each, and 3 ONE diapers for our 4 day, 3 night New York Extravaganza! These, along with 3 double layer outfits, 3 pairs of pajamas, 5 pairs of regular socks and 5 pairs of fuzzy socks, a couple hats, a couple gloves, some wet bags, and quite a few other things all fit snugly into our BePrepared! And spoiler alert, we got through the trip with those AND managed to fit some new outfits that we bought into the same bag for the trip back! Talk about Tons of space!!
For her toiletries and snacks…
we bought a couple of 3oz bottles and a clear 1 quart size ziplock bag to meet airport standards. I just transferred some of our products into the bottles: that included some TruKid Eczema Body Cream, TruKid Eczema Body Wash, and Aunt Jackie’s Curly Hair Moisturizer. Luckily, CJs BUTTer has a 0.35oz 9 count scent sampling box, so we just took a couple of those too. That all fit in the bag along with our Rasperberry Flavored all Natural toothpaste!
For her snacks…
we had a couple of pouches of Plum Organics and fruit snacks, an Apple and Eve Apple Juice Box, and some organic suckers and fruit snacks. This was also inside a clear 1 quart ziplock bag and placed into her BFF. You’re only supposed to have 1 bag of liquids per carry-on item. We also had a couple of diapers, baby wipes, hand santizer, her iPad, an EZPZ Mini Mat, and a couple of other random things in the diaper bag.
Last, but certainly not least, our saving grace was our Tula! We didn’t want to bring a stroller for 2 reasons: she wants to walk and does so very well and who wants to be struggling with a stroller in a city CROWDED with people and full of snow?! So we wore Squally in her Tula in the airport, mostly the Newark Airport since it is SIGNIFICANTLY bigger than the Knoxville one. It also came in handy in the city to avoid her potentially getting trampled, but rude, negligent people! (They were many who were very nice, but most just weren’t paying attention!)
This post was not at all meant to detail how our trip went, although it was great! There’s a separate post for that!
