I was talking to my friend Sabrina Miller (@sabrina_pdx on Twitter by the way) and I asked her what I should write about today. Without missing a beat, she said, “poop.”
Huh?
Actually, it made alot of sense. I’ve never really written about it. I’ve TALKED about it with friends and fellow papas out there, but I had never written anything on the dirty subject.
In my short time as a father, there have been many schools of thought about the ‘ol dirty diaper. Some don’t much care for it, others see the dirty diaper as something that is de rigeur for fathers. I am of the latter school. If you’ve been changing diapers, you have to take the good with the bad. Sabrina brought up a really good point on this: if you’re not changing a soiled diaper as a dad, you’d better be doing a bunch of other things to make up for it. That’s a GREAT point. I think that missing one nasty diaper change should equate to a father doing the following: vacuuming the house, doing the dishes, collecting trash from every bin in the house and maybe cooking a meal.
That’s for just one bad diaper change — and something to consider if you turn your nose up to the dirty deed. You owe your wife/partner at least that if you’re going to shy away from it.
Sabrina also said I should talk about my worst diaper experience. That one is easy. Ollie was about 4 months old and I took him over to a friend’s house to show him off. It was one of the earlier times I went out by myself and I still hadn’t quite perfected the technique. I was good, but not nearly as proficient as I am today. The boy was also transitioning into a larger size of diaper, but I was intent on using what we had left to save a little extra money. This turned out to be a bad idea. The other bad idea was that I had forgotten a change of clothes.
Most of you have heard the term “blowout.” That word would vastly understate what happened. It was an absolute mess. I grabbed my daddy-diaper-bag, plopped the bright orange changing pad it came with on our friend’s very nice couch and went to work. Imagine the worst “surprise” you’ve ever had. Then multiply it by 10. I was staring at a four-alarm epic. Plus, Ollie decided to start rolling around. I did everything in my power to keep him from squirming too much — and managed to barely succeed. I got the diaper off and tied it up, then grabbed about 15 wipes — and that wasn’t even enough. I snapped up the new diaper and in a somewhat fluid motion, managed to get it on the wriggly child. It took another 5 wipes to clean up his clothes and 5 more for me. I avoided creating a new color on our friend’s couch but I can’t say that the same thing happened to my shirt. There was much noise and commotion from this change — akin to the very best scenes from your favorite hospital drama (“I need a new diaper and 500 wipes STAT!”).
Exhausted, I picked the boy up and he gave a big smile. I’m not sure if he was proud of me or just giving a Cheshire grin that said, “this ain’t the last time this is going to happen, dad.” Either way, it was fine by me. I had scaled a large, nasty mountain and emerged relatively unscathed.
Suffice to say, I’ve never forgotten a change of clothes since.
