The Diaper Diaries
Disclosure: I was not financially compensated for this post. I received a product as compensation for this post. The opinions are my own.
My daughter, Keira, spent the first 2 months of her life in the NICU as she was born at 29 weeks gestation. While there isn’t much positive I took away from that period of time, the one thing I am grateful for is that I had the support of the nurses during the initial learning curve. Especially when it came to diaper changes.
Admittedly, I was not the most nurturing type of woman prior to becoming a mother myself. I did not take parenting classes in high school. I did not babysit anyone under the age of five. I did not have siblings so much younger than me that I could help out. The diaper, until about two weeks after Keira was born, remained a mystery.
I was shown by a nurse how to change her a couple times before being given the go ahead to do the job myself. She was tiny at just 3 lbs and the diaper change was a bit more complicated than is normal in a newborn. It involves folding of the disposable diaper to make it fit and avoiding all the wiring she was attached to. The first few times I was a little nervous and shaky but soon felt like a pro.
That is until the day of the great poonami and incubator swap.
I showed up one morning ready for diaper change, temperature check etc… and took on the duties myself. I used the hand sanitizer as you must prior to opening the incubator and got started. The diaper change involves sticking your hands into the two arm holes in the incubator after placing all diaper supplies inside. Things seemed to be going well, I had placed a new diaper ready under her and was in the midst of removing her dirty diaper when it happened.
I could tell by her body language that she was about to poo. I could just see it. I quickly moved to catch it all in the clean diaper but the newborn style liquid yellow poo out-manoeuvred me and sprayed all over the incubator and it kept going and going. Not to be gross, but it was running down the sides of the incubator, all over the sheets, all over Keira… it was quite possibly the most disgusting thing ever.
I quickly called over her nurse who looked at me like I was dumb and did something wrong, but together we got her cleaned up but there was no salvaging the incubator. Instead we had to transfer her and all her belongings to a clean incubator while the dirtied one was removed to be cleaned by some poor person.
When I left that day, I left feeling not too confident in my diaper changing skills.
The next day, when I showed up I noticed Keira was in yet another incubator. The nurse from the day before was there to greet me, and she laughingly told me Keira pulled the same trick on her just a few hours prior!
It just goes to show, it doesn’t matter how much you know about babies… you just have to be quicker than them.
Diaper Diaries
During the week of Sept. 23, the Playtex Mommyville Facebook page will be dedicated to Diaper Diaries, where fans can share their stories with others, creating a fun and informative dialogue all about the challenges of motherhood. You can share and read stories just like mine. I know that each one of you moms out there have at least one hilarious or crazy story to tell about an epic diaper change!
Elizabeth is an IT Professional and a Family Review Blogger at Frugal Mom Eh. She enjoys writing about a variety of topics including parenting and frugal living. When not writing she enjoys playing with her daughter ‘Keira’, painting and reading.
my son having an explosion at a restaurant..me having no spare diapers 🙁 I washed him in the sink in the bathroom, took off my tanktop (from under my shirt) and made a makeshift diaper..
I was changing my nephew’s poopy diaper and placed the open diaper on the wood floor away from me because I was changing him on a small surface. When I was done, I took a step back and stepped right into the diaper.
My nephew complains all the time about the smell. I am tired of it. It is like he is the only one in the world that suffers!
I have 2 diaper stories.. the first is when my son had a gastro infection.. I opened his diaper to change a pooping one, and was unaware he was about to poop again.. Due to the gastro the poop was like water, when I opened the diaper poop shot out of him all over him and hitting the wall 5 feet behind me!
#2 was the first time my husband tried to change a poopy bum, it was such a bad one when he opened the diaper he ran to the bathroom and started throwing up..Needless to say I had to change it 🙂
Would love to win so I can pass this on to a dear friend of mine who is a new mom.
I work with children that have disabilities and I can tell you I have changed a few dozon explosive diapers. These are ones where you wish you could remove everything and right into the shower they go.
About 7 months ago, I became a first time mom. When my son was about 3 months old, we were out visiting a friend who just had her third child. When we got there, I had to change a very wet diaper. In doing so, I realized that I was using the last diaper in the diaper bag. A little while later, my son had a poop, but guess what, I had no diapers left to change him and he was screaming for a diaper change. The only thing I could do was borrow a diaper from my friend, but their diapers were smaller for their baby. So I put my son in this tiny diaper and decided that we probably should get going so I could get home and put him in the proper size diaper before he did something that wouldn`t fit in that little diaper. Needless to say, I always check the diaper bag before going out now haha
could make good use of the diaper genie, with an incontinance problem placing a used product into a diaper genie would be great