I assume you mean diapers.
I did not have a choice. I had a baby and had to change him. I figured it out on my own.
I read the instructions on the back of the box. Honestly. I was twelve, and was watching the baby for an hour or so - no one thought I would need to change him, and no one had ever shown me how.
You apparently can be much less gentle with a baby’s scrotum than an adult’s. Earlier tonight I was watching a friend change her 1-year-old boy’s diaper, and repeatedly winced as she swabbed around his boy-parts. The kid didn’t seem to mind at all, but that kind of treatment to my scrotal region would hurt like hell…
makes notes in his Golden Boy brand notebook
About the boy-baby-peeing-in-your-face, girls are capable of the same thing. I know, I have three daughters and a granddaughter, and they were (are) all capable of an impressive stream.
On the contrary, they seem to think it’s funny. They especially seem to think it’s funny to giggle and grab themselves and pull in that area when your MIL is standing next to you while you get him changed. :rolleyes:
About the peeing in the face - I must be lucky - he’s never peed in my face or on me - it’s always just dribbled downwards. I’ve been hit with projectile poop, though.
Oh - for little boys - make sure their little penis is pointing DOWN when you put the diaper on. Otherwise, it makes for a fun little fountain directly out of the diaper :eek: .
And for cloth diapers, there are several different kinds, so you’d probably need a crash course from the mom on how to work those particular diapers - my husband hates the ones we have with snaps (except for one particular kind), but loves the velcro’d kind that work just like disposables. And if they’re pocket diapers, you will probably want to shake the inserts out into the diaper pail and drop the dirty diaper on top of it (it sounds gross, but I do it all the time, and I never touch anything nasty - I can shake out the inserts by holding the outside of the diaper, and everything I have, bag and all, goes right into the washer.).
It’s not hard. Once you change a few, you’ll be a pro.
Those squirmy toddlers are easier to change when they’re standing, preferably on a chair with a back to it. This won’t work with poopy diapers, but with wet-only diapers. Stand 'em on the chair holding the back. They’ll be so delighted and distracted with maintaining their balance, they won’t roll away on you. NEVER walk away - make sure you have the clean diaper in easy reaching distance!
Someone mentioned wiping a girl only front to back, but let me be more explicit: poop in the vagina is very bad. It can lead to bad infections. Any poop that squishes its way in there before you get to change it isn’t going to kill her, but it should not be added to by poop you’re wiping UP from the butt, and it should be cleaned away ASAP.
That means you’ll have to use two fingers to gently spread the labia (lips of the vagina) and clean any poop out of there, wiping it towards her butt. For the poop already on the butt, wipe towards her back, not towards her vagina.
Little girls often have a white discharge, looks like old diaper creme (and often is), up between their labia. It’s okay, it’s nothing to freak out about. Just gently clean it out, again wiping towards the butt.
As for the boys, make sure you clean any poop out from under their scrotum (ballsack) and under their penis on top of the scrotum. Those are places that diaper rash can really, really hurt if they’re not cleaned thoroughly. Don’t get weirded out if a baby boy has or gets an erection while you’re changing him (or any other time, actually). Perfectly normal; neither you nor he is a pervert.
For *both *genders, make sure you get into their leg creases. Especially little chubby babies - they have more leg rolls than you’d believe!
If they’re in disposable diapers, I generally don’t bother with wipes for just wet diapers - the superabsorbent crystals really do “lock away wetness”, and since neither I nor they particularly like the wiping process, we just skip it. If you get a kid with ultra-sensitive skin, you might not be able to get away with that, but for most, wipes post-poo (and pre-bedtime) are all they need.
I think my mom first showed me how to change a diaper on my teddy bear when I started babysitting. Back then it was cloth and pins. The subtleties of the thing I worked out for myself over the years! (But I am SO stealing that diaper cream on the wipe thing! Never thought of that! Brilliant!)
I’ll join y’all. I’m sure I could deal with it if I had to but I have no desire to ever get that close to another person’s shit. Bleh.
The Kiddo was born via an emergency C-Section. Rhiannon8404’s doctor told her she was not allowed to lift anything over 10 pounds until she healed. Unfortunately for her, that included our bouncing baby boy, who came into life at just under 11 lbs. So I got to learn to change a diaper the first time his diaper needed changing in the hospital room.
It really wasn’t a big deal, and it’s not at all difficult. I think it’s a psychological thing more than anything else…
Another trick I learned from my wife - if they have a rash, rub a bit of vaseline on the wipe before wiping away poo.
All in all, I have found that the secret to successful diaper changing of a sqirmy toddler is distraction. I use peek-a-boo and small toys to keep him in a good and compliant mood - though admittedly it works best when there are two of us, sometimes simply handing him a toy to fiddle with prevents him from attempting the “doing naked handstands while covered in poo” thing.
I’m a preschool teaching assistant. My personal best is an uncooperative 2 1/2 year old wearing a onesie, tights, a turtleneck, jeans, a fleece sweater, a hat, mittens, a scarf, a snowsuit… and a diaper that contained a truly impressive amount of, ahem, fecal matter :eek: Turn around time, less than five minutes, and my bruises only took a week to heal 
Seriously, I think I learned on younger cousins when I was a kid. By the time my older son was born, diaper changing was what I was most confident about. Like the others have said, you need to put the diaper on tight enough that it won’t fall off, loose enough that the kid can breathe. That’s the only trick to it, really. Chances are all but the most dedicated cloth-diaperin’ mammas will make sure the kids are wearing disposable diapers to go to the church nursery, and modern disposables are about as idiot-proof as anything out there.
If they’re wearing disposable pull-ups, by the way, you can tear them open at the sides so you don’t have to pull a poopy diaper down the kid’s legs. You want to tear it open if there’s anything more than pee in there. Trust me on this one.
edit: Oh, yeah, and breathing through your mouth helps. It isn’t perfect, but it helps.
I learned in the hospital the day my first daughter was born. It took about 20 seconds to learn. It’s not quantum physics. The disposables are pretty self-explanatory and anyone with a brain should already know better than to wipe shit into other orifices.
&#$@% Pull-ups. Hates 'em…we haaaaaates them, Precioussssss!
I see absolutely no benefit to the suckers. I ban them in my daycare. The kids treat them like diapers, only they’re more of a pain in the ass to change. Sure, you can rip the sides off and treat them like diapers when they’re soiled. But then you have to take the shoes and pants off to get another one on - and then the soiled one doesn’t roll up in a nice neat ball sealed with tabs to keep the poop contained - no, it flops around like a dead jellyfish and drops poo-balls all over the floor as you try to get it into the garbage! Yuck!
Didja know the “tear away sides” on Pull-ups were a mistake? They were supposed to work just like underpants, only be disposable. (The original concept was that parents would use them after bowel control was mastered, but before bladder control.) The scientists designing them were panicked when it was discovered that their design had a flaw - the stupid things came apart at the seams with just a little tug. Imagine their relief when early product testing revealed mothers raving about the “easy tear-away sides”!
Some of the pull-ups now have sticky, peel-away sides so that you can unpeel them, put them on like diapers and stick them back together without having to take the kid’s pants or shoes off. The sticky swaths are even broad enough to allow you to adjust the snugness. We use them with our 2-year-old.
I was always told that cleaning up the shit was not as repulsive as it sounded. “You get used to it!” I was told.
Well, yeah. You get used to being repulsed. It’s not like it’s any less disgusting simply because it’s your 500th diaper.
I’m glad I have a daughter for that reason. Hasn’t stopped her peeing on me, just not in my face.
I learned by changing my daughter’s first nappy, that was a surprise :eek:
Ooooh…now those I would allow.
But I still have to ask: what’s the point? How are these not diapers? Is it just that it’s a “rah-rah”, you’re a big boy now thing? Is it physically or psychologically different for the kid? Do you think it aids in potty training? Should this be another thread?
We’re in the middle of trying to potty train so it allows her to be able to pull down her own pull-up and sit on the potty if she takes the fancy to do it. It also allows for practice sitting and false alarms without having to replace a whole diaper every time.
And since she runs around in nothing but her pull-up a lot most of the time she’s at home, they’re actually easier to put on her than diapers.
That makes sense, thanks!
The baby has to want to change. rimshot
My wife’s aunt was a nurse. I think we practiced in Lamaze on a doll once, but when we got our daughter home, like Dio said, it took about 20 seconds to get it right. We had two girls, so never any shooting problems, but sometimes they’d go right when we put the new diaper under them.
I have no aversion to poop, so I was never turned off by the process.