Even if your baby doesn't have diarrhea, breastfed infants are known to have looser stools than those who drink formula, so carrying a change of clothes for both you and the baby is probably a wise idea anytime you venture far away from home. Think of it as your own little insurance policy against accidents.

Speaking of messes caused by baby's bodily functions, spit up can cause more of a spectacle than many parents can imagine when packing the diaper bag the first few times. Babies eat around the clock during the first few months, and spitting up can be a frequent occurrence. Throw in anxious parents and a different setting and you can have a recipe for disaster.

"A full feeding distends the abdomen quite a lot, and throwing up, though common in any case, is also a common response to stress, in this case, being in public with lots of unfamiliar smells and sounds, and with Mom probably transmitting some of her own discomfort and stress in the public setting to the baby," Dr. Belilovsky says.

As the mother of a 14-month-old, Amanda Snook from Lansing, Mich., has experienced a wide range of embarrassing moments with her son. While in a posh department store dressing room with her son, she tried unsuccessfully to get him to burp after a nursing session.

Snook picked him up, put his head on her shoulder and carried him out into the store to tell her husband she couldn't get him to burp. As if on cue, her son opened his mouth and spit up what seemed like the entire contents of his stomach onto the polished floor of the cosmetics department.

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