By Kimberlee Jensen Stedl

The character Bettina on Absolutely Fabulous once commented on eco-parenting, “We tried to be green, but it’s just not humanly possible.” While I love cloth diapers, eco-parenting on the road tested my mettle.

Pocket diapers such as Fuzzi Bunz (which are available at Nature Boy in Missoula) are genius. However, cloth diapering while traveling makes even these stylish and simple diapers difficult. In my son’s first year of life, we did three two-week trips. On trip one—a visit with grandparents—we compromised and used primarily disposables but cloth at night. Trip three included a stay in the jungle of Dominica, where the nearest place to buy disposables was 45 minutes away and open limited hours. So using cloth there was a no-brainer.

Trip two was the interesting one. My son Ivan and I tagged along with my husband as he went to New York City on business, then we headed up to Boston to visit my parents. On this trip, I insisted on reserving disposables just for plane and train rides.

My husband’s company puts people up only in ultra-swank hotels. After a few days there he called it the stiletto heel of hotels—looks gorgeous but is utterly dysfunctional—a great place for metrosexuals to have an affair, but good for little else. In our room we had a loofa sponge and candles, but no coffee maker or ice bucket. Most importantly, there were no coin-op laundry machines on the property.

Of course, this being New York City, everyone expects you to use a laundry service. My class-consciousness made me squeamish about someone else having to handle my son’s stinky mess. My practical mind told me that pigs would fly before a laundry service would wash the Fuzzi Bunz in Charlie’s Soap and line dry the diapers. So, off I set for the nearest laundromat, roughly 10 blocks away. I had cleared out room in one of our wheeling suitcases into which I stuffed our large wet bag of dirty dipes, along with a travel bottle of Charlie’s Soap, which of course leaked.

Did I mention it rained the first day I did the laundry? I, Ivan in my baby carrier, an umbrella, and a huge suitcase full of dirty diapers trekked out of the ultra-swank lobby, horrifying the bellhops on several levels including the notion that I was walking instead of taking a cab. I couldn’t imagine hauling a car seat along with me as well! The laundromat was an adventure—I met a Russian woman with a son Ivan’s age, an older woman who recounted standing in food lines in occupied France during World War II, and all sorts of other characters. Of course I lost a baby sock, but luckily retrieved it from the shop’s lost and found the next day.

Did I mention it snowed the second day that I had to do the laundry? Once again I hauled the baby, the umbrella, and the suitcase in the snow and ice. I began to see the error of my ways.

But my moment of clarity came when I was standing in a sleek Roman bathtub surrounded by mirrors, my feet covered in the poop I was rinsing. Right then I gave myself permission to use disposables when staying in a hotel where the nearest drug store is two blocks away and is open 24 hours a day, promising to re-use more Ziploc bags at home.

So when summer arrived with the topic of camping in tow, I once again faced the diaper quandary. This time, however, I found Nature Care—the disposables so eco-friendly that even the packaging is biodegradable. I disposed of most of my disposable-diaper guilt for travel.

Kimberlee Jensen Stedl welcomed her son Ivan into this world in 2008. She is married to Todd Stedl, PhD. Before creating a child, she and her husband birthed two books: Kimberlee is also co-author of Yoga for Scuba Divers and Yoga with a Friend: Develop trust, communication, strength, and compassion when you practice yoga with a partner. They also lead scuba diving and yoga trips in the Caribbean—not as frequently as they would like, but that time will come when their son can tolerate flying better.

Aside from the all-consuming roll of motherhood, Kimberlee is a yoga instructor, group fitness instructor, and a yoga and fitness teacher-trainer. She is also the creator of Punk Rock Yoga® . In Missoula, she often teaches at Down Dog Missoula and the Downtown Dance Collective. When she finds more time and stops slacking, she will return to her love of belly dance.

For her day job, she taught in the Information Technology departments in the Seattle Community Colleges District for more than five years and also worked as a data warehouse consulting. During pregnancy she could often be heard to say, “Sounds to me like a type two slowly-changing dimension.” Post-partum she can often be heard to say, “Please take your hand off your poop-covered penis” and “Let me clean the liver paste out of your hair.”

More about Kimberlee at her Web site