Diaper Bag Tutorial

At the infant stage, many providers request specific items be brought to day care. However, as a parent you are left wondering if another child is wearing your child’s diapers, if your child is being changed frequently enough, if the clothing you have sent is appropriate for the weather, along with other common questions good parents ponder about their child’s day away.

These questions can be answered by following one specific rule. Send a prepared, organized diaper bag to day care each day with your child. As a parent, knowing that you have packed weather appropriate clothing, plenty of diapers that you can count upon picking your child up from day care to ensure the amount of times your child is being changed throughout the day, plus the comfort of knowing that you have sent every item you think your child may need throughout the day helps ease anxiety about sending your child to day care.

At this young developmental stage, your child has needs and desires that they cannot tell you. So by sending a prepared diaper bag to day care everyday you help eliminate both stress on your child and yourself. As a seasoned parent, and experienced day care professional my advice is as follows:

1. Talk to your day care provider to find out what they request each child bring to day care. Be sure to understand your provider’s requests and prepare your child’s diaper bag accordingly.

2. Prepare an emergency pack to be left at day care for your child in case of an emergency or forgotten bag. Having this emergency pack at day care will eliminate any unnecessary trips home to get your child’s necessities. In this emergency pack you should pack 5 diapers, a small container of wipes, and one weather neutral outfit labeled with your child’s name. I suggest packing these emergency items in a gallon Ziploc bag labeled with your child’s name. It is the best idea to request this emergency pack back with the change of the season. This will allow you to see what has been used and re-pack an outfit that is sized to your growing child and more weather appropriate.

3. Send a diaper bag that is both prepared and practical. Make a list of the necessities your child will need during the day while they are at day care. For example, 6 diapers, wipes, bottles, formula, food and utensils (age appropriate), a healthy snack (if the provider requests), burp cloth/bib, and a weather appropriate change of clothing. (Some parents like to also send an emergency medicine pack including a thermometer, Tylenol, etc.) A second list can be made meant for outings outside of the day care. A rule to remember is that your child care provider does not have time to shuffle through a cluttered diaper bag, so sending an organized, well prepared bag with your child is both beneficial for your provider and your child.

Choosing a day care for your child can be both exciting and scary. Clearly understanding what you want and need for your child will help you tremendously. Preparing an organized, well prepared diaper bag that your child takes with them to day care each day can help eliminate stress and frustrations as a parent allowing you to enjoy your child’s day care experience.

Over the last few decades the roles women play within our society has changed. Feminist activist proved that women were just as capable as men. It became acceptable, and was almost encouraged for women to obtain careers outside of their homes, attend college, and live life with higher ambition, greater intelligence, and more motivational drive.

How homes were run has also changed over time. With more women obtaining college degrees and working outside of the home, families were forced to change how their home life functioned. Home responsibilities were more equally divided between the man, woman, and children.

Then and now, men were viewed as the head of the household, yet women were the underlying reason to why one’s home was run smoothly. With that said, the products women used and needed changed over time. A busy family means that mothers have a need to be more organized. New, trendy products are being manufactured to aid mothers in this ever-changing world.

Products to aid both parents have been created to help parents become more organized. Diaper bags were on the top of this list. Because more mothers were spending time outside of the home, having a bag that was easy, accessible, and organized was a necessity to have a smooth transaction between the mother’s home and workplace. In the beginning diaper bags were used merely as a transporting aid, however, as times changed mother’s used diaper bags as organizers for their children’s lives. Diaper bags not only hold diapers and wipes, they house several other necessities that the child will need throughout the day when their mother is at work.

Today, the new trendy diaper bag has come onto the scene that offers new organizational pockets and extra accessories in varied colors and styles for all family members to enjoy, making it very easy to organize a diaper bag. School backpacks and binders have hidden storage compartments with new age accessories that allow children to attend school in style but encourage organization. Children are encouraged to use and be proficient with new technologies all because times are changing.

In conclusion, change is inevitable. How you cope with change is entirely up to you, yourself, and no one else. From the change within diaper bags to the change within ourselves, one must always accept the fact that change will happen; it is our job to accept it and move forward.

Nothing.  That’s right, you packed nothing.  No delicious applesauce.  No cheese sticks.  No fish crackers.  You forgot to send an utmost delicious, visibly nutritious snack for your absolutely adorable extremely loveable baby!  An old saying goes, “it’s like stealing candy from a baby.”  The problem is, there was no candy to be stolen!  You plum forgot to send a snack with me to day care!

Now normally I wouldn’t complain all that much, in fact, I’d probably just cry until I got something remotely similar to what my friends were having.  However, this was not the first time that I was embarrassed to have such an unprepared diaper bag sent with me while you were away.  So I thought I’d write this letter with a bit of advice.

The obvious contents within a diaper bag are diapers and wipes.  Being the practical parents that you are, I am always clean and dry.  However, Joey’s mom packed A and D ointment in his bag.  When he got a bit of a rash, Miss Amy lathered up the A and D to make him feel better.  And boy did he!  He was running around pulling the books off the shelves in no time!  Personally, I’d like to have some diaper rash ointment in case I get a rash.

I’d love to have a change of clothes and it’s always nice to have an extra sweater just in case the weather changes.

Remember, when I was 12 months old and you forgot my binki so I had to chew on my sock?  How would you like to chew on your sock?  On that particular day, my teeth were hurting and I really needed some soothing rubber to chew on to sooth my gums.  For now on Mom and Dad, please pack me a tether or a pacifier, because socks really don’t taste good.

Gracie’s mom packs her this funny wiggly caterpillar that moves when you pull its string.  Michael has a cool mirror he likes to play with…. All I could find in my bag was an old, already used spoon and a plastic bag.  Trust me, these are neither fun nor safe for me to play with.  So please pack me a few extra toys to play with just in case we have to go to one of those not so fun, noisy adult places where you expect me to be quiet.  I can tell you this; I will no longer be sitting patiently in a grocery cart waiting for you to choose what type of peanut butter you’d like to have.  So take this as fair warning, bring extra toys to keep me occupied.

Michael’s parents who are overly protective, but extremely prepared organized an emergency bag that is kept in the pocket of his diaper bag.  In this emergency bag you will find: band aids, hand sanitizer, tissues, extra formula, baby Tylenol, feeding utensils, an extra sippy cup, a changing pad, she even packs a camera just incase something cute or memorable happens!

So Mom and Dad, as you can see, you really need to be more prepared in the future.  All of my friends parents have jumped on the organized bus of prepared diaper bags, I really feel as if you should jump on that bus too!

• Diapers
• Wipes
• Hand sanitizer and lotion
• Extra breast pads
• At least 1 maxi pad
• Dr Boudreux’s butt paste(like desitin, but works better IMHO)
• Infant tylenol
• Ibuprofen for mommy in case of headache
• Spare set of clothes for baby
• Spare pacifier if using one
• Small toy or rattle
• 2 receiving blankets
• Baby bottle (when they start solids they need water at that point)
• Bottled water
• Spare set of house keys and $20 in case of emergencies
• Extra set of clothes including bra and panties if you have a reflux baby
• As they get older and mobile you’ll want to add a travel sized first aid kit for boo boos
• The Camera with a fully charged battery is nice to have
• Bib

Some people may think this list is extreme and you don’t need all this stuff. I have seen some lists with just: diapers, wipers, sanitizer, bottle, blanket and nail clippers. I don’t see why you would need to clip your babies nails all the time but who knows maybe this person did. I mean it isn’t like we are packing away our baby safety monitors.

The diaper bag is a really nice accessory to have, especially for a guy. Guys normally don’t have purses so I guess you may call the diaper bag sort of a man purse. I mean, my lunchbag is sort of my man purse. It has a pocket in the front that I put things in that I want to be sure I bring home. Or I’ll put things in there at home that I may need throughout the day. I have to admit it is rather nice to have. I am pretty sure I will be using my diaper bag alot, especially because my wife and I are pretty active and we like to do stuff and I think that will just be compounded when our new baby arrives.

So to wrap this up, try to be prepared as much as you can because you never know what life is going to throw at you these days.

We went to target to do our baby registry and they didn’t have a ton of diaper bag choices. The brand that Target has is Eddie Bauer. I was totally cool with the one that my wife chose. She chose a brown and black diaper bag that didn’t have any fancy bunnies or princesses on it. But I guess that makes sense because we are going to be having a boy.  My wife liked it because since the diaper bag has both brown and black in it you can wear it with almost any color. Brown and black seem to be pretty good staples around here anyway, so that worked out good.

Some things to consider when looking for a diaper bag. You want to make sure that it has enough space in it for what you are going to need. For example my wife and I are going to use cloth diapers and they take up a bit more space than your normal diaper would and also you can’t throw them away you have to put them in a separate bag and take them home and clean them. This isn’t that big of a deal and we are cool with it since we won’t be spending all that money on disposable diapers.

You also want to make sure that you have plenty of room for other things. For example, it is also nice to an ipod and headphones along for a walk and a beverage also. So its a good idea to have places for baby things such as bottles and toys but also don’t disregard your need for stuff as well.

I also looked at messenger bags to use as a diaper bag but I could not find any that were going to be big enough for our needs. I used a messenger bag in high school for my book bag and it worked out great for that but I think for us a messenger bag would have been too small especially for cloth diapers.

So my search has ended for a diaper and we got the Eddie Bauer one from Target. We are really happy with it so far, but that doesn’t say much since we haven’t had our baby yet. I will be sure and update you how it goes.