Writer Sarah Hoover Uses This Fanny Pack As a (Minimalist) Diaper Bag
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Instagram ads with stuff I “needed” tocare for a babybegan to pop up the minute I Googled, “Am Ipregnantif my pregnancy test has two faint lines?” After a couple more searches — “What to do about a first-trimester identity crisis?” and “How to stop hating yourhusbandfor getting you pregnant even though all you wanted was for your husband to get you pregnant” — the ads went from occasional to overwhelming. More devilish than traditional ads, they seemed targeted to expose my deepest secret: I had no fucking clue what I was doing as a parent, or even if I really wanted to be one. They also suggested a solution to those problems: Buy lots of things.
Fromsound machines, to pacifiers withstuffed animalsattached, towipe warmers, tobassinets, tobounce seats, I began to dedicate my limited energy and mental capacity tomaking spreadsheetsofthese itemsand their recommended brands. Every time I added one, a new question would start violently swirling around in my brain: If you are stuck somewhere without asound machine, will your baby ever sleep again? Why are room-temperature wipes so bad? Do I need abassinetandacribif the crib is on wheels and can be moved from room to room? How does astroller costas much as a used car? Feeling woefully insecure with no maternal instincts that I could identify, the only apparent fix was to buy, buy, buy. Then my prepartum depression kicked in. It manifested in symptoms like “mom brain,”a melting of the mind that has zero scientific proof, but almost all birthing people report experiencing. Even with my spreadsheets, I couldn’t muster the energy to purchase almost anything for my unborn, whose arrival I feared and dreaded.
It turned out that I didn’t really need a lot of it. When I left for the hospital, I had only a crib,diapers, wipes (cold — because I’m a cruel witch), and a bunch of onesies. When I returned with my son, my supplies grew to include hospital-provided baby blankets, infant hats, formula bottles, diapers, and meshunderwear(restitution, I thought, for paying taxes to a government that seemingly could care less about its citizens’ general health). I got by just fine with this stuff for weeks, bathing my child in the sink (without a folding bathtub or inflatable neck buoy), swaddling him in hospital blankets (no sleep sackspour moi), and, with no desire to make space for a gargantuan diaper pail, disposing of his in apaper-grocery-bag-lined trash can. Eventually, it came time to leave the house and bring my son, too. That’s when I discovered that, for day-to-day excursions, afanny packis far superior to any properdiaper bag.
Bagstend to fill up with crap the way gaseous substances expand to fit the room that contains them. Having successfully navigated my son’s first few weeks without buying a lot of that crap, the thought of buying adiaper bagdesigned to tote it almost felt like a mockery of my threadbare parenting. Like a lot of the baby gear I added to my spreadsheet, a diaper bag also evoked terrifying thoughts about my failures as a mother that fed my depression as it evolved from prepartum to post. Looking nothing like a bag — diaper or otherwise — the Paravel fanny pack I chose to use instead did not conjure these thoughts. It has just enough room for the baby things I needed on daily excursions in my son’s first year: Two diapers, a little Ziploc of wipes, and an extra onesie just in case he took a blowout shit at the Odeon and I had to make a quick judgment call. Now that he is older, my load is lighter — a diaper and a couple of wipes — but the compact pack does not tempt me to stuff it with more. His supplies go in its larger back pouch, along with my cell phone, while my ChapStick, keys, and credit cards fit neatly in a smaller pouch in the front.
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Shown in navy, it comes in lots of other colors, includingblack,gray,olive green,red, and yellow.
The fanny-pack-as-diaper-bag has other practical benefits: As a parent, you want free hands. You don’t want a bag that’s big enough to take on anArctic expedition, nor one that will slip off your shoulder and smack your kid in the face. And you definitely do not need to invest in something with a designer label. Paravel’s pack, in its austerity and attention to smart design, goes well withjeansandsimple dresses, but has a price that makes me not too worried if it ends up with a little baby puke on it. Plus, it covers my little mom bulge that has not gone away even three years postpartum — and may never, because I got too bored to complete the 18 recommended weeks of physical therapy to properly close a pregnancy-generateddiastasis recti.
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