Have you ever changed a diaper?

[madison2000]

Poll question: Have you ever changed a diaper?

[trotsky]

1. What's worse is that I've *bought* and *thrown out* thousands of diapers.

Ugh. Only late into our 2nd child did we try (and love) cloth diapers. Wish we had been that smart from the beginning.

[GreenPartyVoter]

13. I used dispoables, even knowing how horrible they are. Just did not have

a washing system *other than by hand* to handle the cloth ones. One of my greatest guilts of all time, seriously!

[Reverend_Smitty]

2. I am almost 21 years old...

and a woman, and I've never changed a diaper in my life...and quite frankly I have no desire to ever do it.

BTW cute baby!

[madison2000]

4. Not mine, just a google picture

I have no kids so I think I have only done this while babysitting other peoples kids, and not very often!

[eyesroll]

3. No kids of my own, so only when babysitting

I have a feeling it'll come back to me if/when I need it too...

[Left Is Write]

5. I've gotten two children through diapers and am working on the third.

In addition to my own three and the thousands of diaper changes they have required, I have also changed the diapers of other people's children (usually my nieces or nephews).

[Lars39]

6. Cloth diapers, bud.

Two kids. :)

[yellowdogintexas]

19. same here: baby sister, daughter, and various other children over

the years.

Cloth diapers saved me a ton of money.

[yvr girl]

7. I've thrown up while changing a diaper

Actually on the baby on one memorable occasion.

[katinmn]

14. Funny :-) but rather insulting. I hope the baby isn't

scarred for life.

[candle_bright]

41. That's what I'm worried about too

I've never changed a diaper, but I lived with a host family in Europe for a couple years and they had a baby, and they always changed his diaper on the 2nd floor of the house. I could smell the poo wafting through the house and into my room...which was on the 3rd floor! I was dry heaving each time from just that.

I've heard it changes when you've got your own kids and I hope that's true! B-)

[MissMarple]

42. It's usually not too stinky until they get off breast milk.

It can be really bad when they are on "regular" food.

And no you do not give a baby McDonald's french fries, what ever anyone tells you about how cute it is. That may sound random, but someone I know actually did this, and my jaw still drops at the thought. :-)

[xmas74]

46. There are lots of things not to give a baby

and I have watched people do it all (soda or beer in a bottle comes to mind).

When I took my daughter off of breast milk-man I thought something had died in her diapers!

[fujiyama]

52. beer to a baby?

That's just nuts and sounds pretty close to abuse.

[khashka]

8. Hundreds. And it's really icky

but lots of stuff in life is icky.

I changed my daughter's diapers and my nephew's. I will pay good money to never have to do it again. But if, gods forbid, I do have to do it then cloth diapers all the way...

Khash.

[tinfoilinfor2005]

9. Cloth diapers, paper diapers, wet diapers,

dry diapers, poopy diapers, baby diapers, adult diapers (nurse here), many many many diapers. I much prefer the baby diapers over the adult, though, LOL!

[donsu]

10. cloth diapers and for nearly 20 yrs daily cleaned up a kennel full

of dog poo. big dogs, 1 pile to a shovel.

also worked for a waste treatment magazine and got a tour of the Wash. D.C. waste treatment plant when I was nauseous and pregnant with first child. that was a treat to smell :)

[RetroLounge]

11. With two kids I would say yes, 1000's

My dad said he never changed a diaper, that 50's male thing. My older brother has two kids and he refused to change a diaper too.

I could never understand that thinking...

RL

[CaliforniaPeggy]

12. Oh yes, thousands of diapers!

I raised my girls in the 60's and 70's; there were almost NO disposable diapers used back then. You could buy them, but I only used cloth and with a diaper service to boot! Disp. diapers were for special occasions only, like trips. There are lots of worse things in life than changing dirty diapers! Remember: this too shall pass...

:thumbsup:

[katinmn]

15. Lots. Glad that's over.

:)

[RevolutionaryActs]

16. Yes. Best friend had a kid.... had to change a couple.

:P

[Amaya]

17. changed thousands of diapers

it's no big deal... someone changed yours too.

[Lady Effingbroke]

18. Never!

Don't plan on changing any diapers, either!

[Bat Boy]

20. Not yet

But I probably should. People are starting to point at me.

[ET Awful]

21. I had two little sisters, the eldest of which was 9 years younger than me

so, yeah, I've done my share of diaper duty :).

[TrustingDog]

22. no, I've never changed a Huggies into another brand but...

putting a clean diaper on a baby, yes, probably thousands. (diapers, not babies)

[bilgewaterbill]

23. My wife and I figured it out once.

Between our 4 kids we changed close to 10,000 diapers. We had a big party the day our youngest was potty-trained.

[Bouncy Ball]

24. Yep.

Diapers so wet I was scared to open them, "blow out" diapers in which the poop actually went up and over the TOP of the BACK of the diaper and onto the clothing (yuck), etc.

We had a rule that whoever touched her last or noticed it first had to change it.

Before we had a child neither one of us had ever changed a diaper in our lives. We were as green as you could be when it came to babies.

She survived!

Raise your hand if you have ever had to hold a blow dryer (on COOL!!!) in front of a baby's naked butt to help clear up a "wet rash."

Raise your hand if you ever got so good at it, you could change a diaper half-asleep and with one hand.

[madison2000]

37. You're scaring the childless people!

I did have to do a lot of adult cleanup when I worked on a medical unit as a nursing asst many years ago. Same rule- you smell it of find it, its yours to cleanup. Took me a few weeks to figure out that Nurse Armstrong had no sense of smell at all due to some surgery she'd had years before- she couldn't smell a thing.

[jonnyblitz]

25. hell yeah! I am an uncle. nt

[iconoclastic cat]

26. Five months from now, I'll have to get back to this thread!

BTW, what's so great about cloth diapers, aside from the environmental benefits?

[Bouncy Ball]

27. The environmental benefits.

Oh and some babies do have reactions to the chemicals in disposables that make them so damn absorbent (little tiny gel capsules within the diaper).

And the cost. Cloth are WAY less expensive than disposable. And they are much better than they used to be. Nowdays they have the diapers, which you wash and the diaper covers, which have velcro fasteners, which generally keep the cloth diapers from leaking on anything. You can wash the covers, too.

If I could go back and do it over again, I'd do cloth.

[iconoclastic cat]

28. Where do you buy this kind of stuff? Wow, I am so unprepared for this kid.

And where do I go for advice? DU!

[Bouncy Ball]

32. You aren't unprepared.

If you have five months to go, you are right on schedule. Everyone feels unprepared.

Google "cloth diapers" but be forewarned, a lot of the sites want you to use their diaper service.

A better bet would be to visit the child care book section of Barnes and Noble and find a good book with a section about diapering. I just bought Dr. Sears' "The Natural Baby" book on clearance for $3.98 for my best friend, who is expecting twins in June and wants to nurse and do natural diapers. Dr. Sears has a lot of advice on cloth vs. disposable.

Oh and if you choose cloth, don't think that means you can't EVER use disposable. Most people keep a pack or two of disposable on hand for evenings out, trips, emergencies (haven't done laundry), etc.

There are also diaper services (depending on where you live) who will pick up the soiled and wet diapers, launder them and return them, but I think they are a bit pricey. I don't know, check your Yellow Pages if you want to call around for pricing.

Ask away, DU parents can be a great source of information, but always check up on us with other sources!

[Skittles]

34. I'd have to use a diaper service

no way would I be able to handle cleaning those dirty cloths!

[Bouncy Ball]

36. Yes you would.

You do what you have to do. I never thought I could, either.

[Skittles]

45. no, I am serious

it always made me barf - if I had the money, I'd do the diaper service.

[xmas74]

53. I wanted to do cloth, but I couldn't find any babysitters

who would go along w/ it.

[BlackVelvetElvis]

29. Once, I fed my baby niece undiluted fruit juice.

I had to clean up the after effects all day!
I never minded it either.

[liberalitch]

30. The experience did not grow on me and I knew that...

I did not want it to become a daily thing

[Withywindle]

31. Nope.

35-year-old woman here, never have. Never babysat, no babies in the family (the American side anyway) since the 70s.

If it ever comes up I'd give it a try, but I can't say I'm gonna seek out the opportunity. :P

[Skittles]

33. baby brother's and baby cousin

and a few when I was babysitting. I'll never forget the twin boys I babysat for - they were supposed to be sleeping and I heard some giggling - when I went in their room one of them had gotten his diaper off and there was poo smeared EVERYWHERE - the cribs, the walls, each other (the cribs were next to each other). OMG it took me two hours to clean it all up, change them and bathe them. I certainly earned my money on THAT one. :(

[WindRavenX]

35. yuppers

Comes with babysitting...it's not that bad =)

[trof]

38. I've changed REAL diapers.

Not these wimpy chickenshit plastic throwaway things y'all got now.
Yard square pieces of actual cotton cloth you had to fold all manner of ways to get them to fit a squirming 1 year old who didn't want to wear the damn things in the first place.

And fasten them on with great big SHARP "safety" pins.
Safety, my ass. Those things were lethal. Usually for the diaperer and not the diaperee. I still got scars.

Honey, you ain't lived until you lifted the lid of a half-full diaper pail to drop a loaded one in. One tiny whif of that pustulating godawful mess would send you to bed with a sick headache and the jim-jams for the better part of the morning. Hooweee.

And whatever we paid the guy who collected the contents of that pail and left a mountain of snowy clean ones it wasn't near enough.

And the diaper service was just a special treat for the first few weeks after we brought Leigh home from the hospital. From then on we swished the lumpy (if we were lucky) bits off in the toilet and washed our own. Hundreds of them. We used those diapers as dish towels until our daughter was in high school.

Yeah, I changed diapers.
;-)

[fluffernutter]

39. what an adorable brand new baby pic.

[Telly Savalas]

43. No way. That pic gives me meconium flashbacks. Eeewww.

[fluffernutter]

44. lol, true, but a newborn babe always tugs at my heart.

[MissMarple]

40. Yeeesss. Since I was in the third grade, maybe earlier.

Has anyone tried to pin (with big safety pin)a cloth diaper on a rundabout baby whose only goal is to run about...while he's peeing on everything? Some memories are best forgotten. :D

[NNadir]

47. I became a first time father at 41. I spent my whole life dreading

diapers but it was a piece of cake, except that I put the first one on backwards.

With two children (now thankfully out of diapers) I could now do that in my sleep.

[madison2000]

48. its funny how you can get used to it once you realize its no big deal

[NNadir]

49. Yeah the big deals in parenting are not what you expect.

I really have to laugh at all the "When I'm a father..." thinking I used to do when I was young. Basically everything is much different than what I expected. My boys are 10 and 5 though, and I'm loving it. There is really no greater pleasure other than my wife. They were worth every diaper, and both toilet trained late.

[Radical Activist]

50. Are you kidding? That's a woman's job!

:evilgrin:
I'm kidding of course, but there's at least one man in my family who apparently had that attitude about it. I suppose that was common in another generation.

[madison2000]

51. I can guarantee you that my own father never changed a diaper

and there were three of us.

[Radical Activist]

54. I remember my Mom complaining once

about how few times my Dad changed diapers. She also said she came home a couple times to find me laying there without a diaper since I guess he didn't want to finish the job.

[Rabrrrrrr]

55. I once changed a diaper into an IBM Selectric Typewriter

but man, was I tired after that. That was a tough transformation.