The Use Of Baby Changing Bags

For most people, the presence of a new human life normally brings with it the insanity of buying new things; unnecessary things that most parents will never use, including baby shoes for the legendary “walking-baby”, knee pads for babies that can’t quite walk, but do crawl “an extraordinary amount” and the infamous diaper genie repository; a repository into which one can put dirty nappies before removing them and putting them in the bin...which one was probably about to do anyway.
But never fear; these may be icebergs in the sea of useless and overpriced baby products, but there are also some genuinely useful lifeboat-products drifting around out there as well.   

One such lifeboat is the baby changing bag – a bag specially designed with baby-needs in mind.  Although you could technically use any old bag to carry around your baby-stuff, the advantages to proper baby changing bags are obvious to anybody who has tried dealing with babies before; the large and accessible pockets that keep dirty nappies separate from clean clothes; the instantly deployable changing mat for unexpected changings; the wipe-clean interior that makes cleaning up the inevitable mess as swift as possible; the insulated bottle pocket to keep food and drink cool or warm – need I go on?

As a mother of three, I only discovered nappy changing bags the second time round and, let me tell you, they make a huge difference to day-to-day life!  Whilst they cannot work miracles, baby changing bags do make it much easier to organise yourself and your baby, offering a rare peace of mind that is hard to maintain whilst fumbling for the talc!  Nowadays, as a midwife and parental advisor, I always advise new parents and veterans alike to invest in a good quality changing bag; they come in a variety of shapes and sizes, from small day bags for older babies to large hold-alls that can handle everything your baby could ever need, changing bags are available in a host of modern and classic designs so as not to compromise your style too much.  

However, if you are thinking of buying yourself or somebody else one of these bags, it is worth paying some attention to the type of material that it is made from.  Shockingly, a recent study from the Centre for Environmental Health in the USA found safety-standard defying levels of lead in 10% of vinyl changing pads from changing bags that they tested!  As such, it may be worth steering your purchase towards woven or recycled changing bags, avoiding the vinyl altogether!  The chances of anything too nasty coming from having a changing pad with over 600 lead parts per million are very slim but hey, in the case of babies there’s little point messing around when the safer option is probably just as efficient and the same price!