Travel Potty Seats?

We just carried a regular potty chair in our car. In desperate times, we could pull over, position the chair, our son could do his business, and we would then rinse it out with a bottle of water.

I realize how unsanitary this sounds, but I would rather have 'our' filth in the car than the filth of hundreds of other people in public restrooms. We, too, ran into issues with the automatic toilets (nice to know about the post it note trick). We also have a very curious child who wants to touch everything. He would try to hold on to the toilet seat and his underpants would rest against the front of the seat, etc. We tried the liners, which worked great, but to be honest, when he was potty training (at 2.5 yrs), he did not always have the bladder control to be able to hold it while we got the liner out, pulled off the sticky tabs, and positioned it.

We NEVER had a problem with having the potty chair in the car. We NEVER had a spill (although I would suggest that you bring an old towel and sit the chair on top of the towel just in case). We ALWAYS would clean the potty chair more thoroughly when we got home (and you can bring a can of Lysol for times when you won't be able to clean it right away -- we also keep wipes in our car at all times). We would put the potty chair in a plastic bag after rinsing it out.

Our son is now 3.5 and the potty chair has been out of our car for a good 6 months (plus, being a boy, he is now tall enough to stand and 'reach' to go potty). Your daughter will get to the point where she has a little more control with things, and at that point, you may have more success with public restrooms. :)

2 moms found this helpful

depends on what works for your DD :-)

We had one foldable insert and one of my girls wouldn't use it b/c the fold kinda pinched her once and she didn't want to use it ever again. So for her I just toted one of those cushiony nonfoldable inserts in a backpack - yeah it was a bit cumbersome, but at least I knew she would use it and I knew she would be sitting down on something clean (and I'd put one of those paper liners over the public toilet seat and under the insert), and much less stressful - for me *and* for her - than trying to hold her while she sits on the regular toilet

We also kept one of those one-piece baby bjorn potty chairs in the car or stroller for on the go (so to speak LOL) use. One tip I got from another parent in our twins club - put a plastic grocery bag (check to make sure it doesn't have any holes first!) *over* the potty and press part of the bag down into the collection area before sitting your LO on it - then after LO is done, wipe LO, bag up the business and discard the bag - no need to wash out the potty!

2 moms found this helpful

Neither....just winged it basically. If she really has to go badly, she'll use the toilet.

1 mom found this helpful

Good question, I didn't realize they made the foldable inserts. After reading about several different foldable ones it seems like mommy's helper cushie travel potty seat has really good reviews. Apparently it folds up to less than the length of a dollar (walmart.com has a place where shoppers can ask questions and an answerer posted pictures). So far I've been putting her in pull ups (this is the first week of no diapers) when we go out, but now that I found this I'll probably buy this and take her out in underwear :)

Update: Cool idea D. M. I once again didn't know they had them so I'm going to look into that too. I liked *Amber C*'s post b/c for long trips I was thinking about doing that. Having the normal potty chair in the car b/c a lot of times we are driving in the middle of nowhere or there are gas station bathrooms that are filthy as a trash dump lol.

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love love love my travel potty

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IT IS A LIFE SAVER! (well we have a car travel potty, not a folding toilet seat thing).
We have had ours since my eldest child was 2 years old.
STILL use it to this day.
All our friends' have one too.

Just go to Amazon, input "on the go potty" and many brands will turn up.

We even have one in Grandma's car.

Well, ours is the kind that you have in your car.
And can use it if stuck in traffic, at a park or anywhere where there is no bathroom, or no clean bathroom.

This is a stage though... when she's older she will 'acculturate' to public toilets.
Both my kids were like that too.
Many, are.

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We used Bjorn travel potty for outings. Use the regular one at home. LOVE those potties. Not alot of cracks to clean out and are SO comfortable for them. I carried it with a small bottle of Clorox bacterial spray and some wipes and some of those adult bed pads that are disposable that are close to adult diapers. I would use the large stall and place the potty on the pad on the floor and let them go. Then dump the contents in the big potty, spray out the travel potty, wipe and throw away the pad in the trash. Done. Packed it all in a small backpack and carried it under the stroller.
C.

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We took a foldable potty seat with us everywhere until they were able to hold their little butts on the regular toilet seats (restaraunts, stores, other homes we were visiting, etc). I remember it seeming so gross and stored in a zip lock back, but that thing went everywhere with us.... Thanks for bringing back this memory :-). We bought it at Walmart and it was inexpensive (under $10)

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Both of my kids were afraid of falling in the big potty too. We bought something similar to this on onestepahead.com. I love that website!
http://www.onestepahead.com/catalog/product.jsp?productId...
It really seemed to help them feel more secure when using the big public potties.

Just have to say I love the Post-it idea! I wish I had thought of it. Here was me with my hand over the sensor hoping that the darn thing didn't flush... :-)

We got a foldable insert. We used the Bjorn insert at home so he has never (to this day as far as I know) seen a 'potty'. DS was also 2 when he trained. He did become frightened of the automatic flush toilets because of the noise and I realized he could not tell which ones were automatic. If you cover the electric eye with a post it it will not flush - that helped a lot. If we had tried 'nothing' he would have fallen in or off.

one thing that scared my dd at stores was the automatic toilet. She would scream "it's going to automatic! I dont want it to automatic!" One of my coworkers came up with the idea of using a post it note. Put it over the sensor and it wont "automatic". It's easy and genius!

My daughter recently used one of the folding lightweight seats for such occasions and it worked very well....also, if it is an automatic flush toilet, that may scare a small child in a public restroom......

Being completely grossed out by those little potties and the whole idea of wasting all that time having to clean it all the time and having cats that would disturb it we opted for seat adapters for the house toilets and a foldable adapter to take with us that we throw in the diaper bag. We also always had post-it notes to stick on the sensors of automatic flushers so they would not constantly scare my kids.
We have step stools at home so they can reach the toilet and have somewhere to rest their feet when sitting. They are more comfortable when their feet aren't dangling.
I have had friends that have the travel potty in their trunk and honestly it seems too gross to me. Kind of unsanitary.
We've got 2 that are long since potty trained and one just starting. This is how we went with all of them.