The morning after Kyleigh was born, my husband drove my mother home and left me alone with the new born in the hospital. Kyleigh was quietly sleeping in my arms, until she suddenly burst out crying. It was not feeding time, so I immediately had a horrifying thought: she needed her diaper changed.
I had never changed (or even seen) a diaper in my whole life. The nurses showed my husband how to do it, but no one had told me anything. I stared at her, crying her lungs out, and I hesitated. Shamefully, I thought I would take her to the Nursery and pretended that I did not know to check her diaper. Then, hopefully, the nurse would do it for me.
But that would make me a horrible and idiotic mother, wouldn't it? So I decided to tackle this on my own. I looked at the supply drawer. There were some size 1 diapers. "Shouldn't I be using size N (for new born)?" I thought to myself, "Ok, whatever." There were also dry wipes. I thought I had everything and I was ready, so I opened Kyleigh's diaper.
Yup. I was absolutely right. There was poop, and lots of it. So I needed to wet the dry wipes. I made the first mistake of leaving the dirty diaper unfastened. I grabbed 2 sheets of the dry wipes and went to the sink. I turned on the hot water faucet (who would want her cute bottom to get cold?), and waited for the hot water to come out.
The water never turned hot, and Kyleigh was crying like murder in the meantime. Out of frustration, I wetted the wipes with cold water, and rushed back to her. By then, she had already kicked open the dirty diaper, and stepped her tiny feet into the poop. Ugh. How stupid of me. I grabbed her feet and wiped them first, but it was not as easy as I had imagined. The poop was extremely sticky like asphalt and it wouldn't come off.
After I cleaned off her feet, I had only one wet wipe left. Of course it was not enough to deal with the whole pool of asphalt, and I made a huge mess. Needless to say, she was crying even harder because the cold wet wipe was uncomfortable. I grabbed more sheets of the dry wipes and wetted them again with cold water. When I came back to her, well guess what, her strong little feet kicked into the remaining poop again.
I finally got her cleaned off. I put the new diaper on her, but it was too big. The waist band was rubbing against her umbilical cord clip. Of course, no one had told me that I needed to fold the waist band down. I couldn't figure out what to do about it, and I was exhausted, so I decided to just leave it alone.
After everything was done, it felt like half an hour (or longer) had passed. Kyleigh finally stopped crying, and I was glad no one had called Child Abuse to report me. I threw away a huge pile of dirty wet wipes and the dirty diaper, and put 2 dirty blankets in the laundry bag. I sat back on my bed, and looked at her falling back to sleep. What a huge relief!
I have learned my lessons. These days, I am proud to say that I can get her cleaned up, without her crying, in just a few minutes.
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Comments: 15
Ina - I hope I can do that!
Another of our friends could never change a poopy diaper. She would gag and throw up after every poopy diaper. I don't know how she did it, but she somehow convinced her husband to change the poopy ones. I don't know what she did when he was at work. Probably changed them and got sick. The funniest thing about this was she was a nurse!
I agree that this should be covered in prenatal classes and in the hospital. The nurses do this so routinely they don't think about the fact that some parents have been in your situation. So many little girls get dolls when siblings are born and they are taught very young. I just never thought about only children who had never been around babies when they were being taken care of in that matter. I'm sure there are many who have experienced the same thing as you did and would love to have had a lesson on diapering.