YB LAST SAY
98 | JULY & AUGUST 2019
THE ART OF
CHANGING
NAPPIES
THERE ARE TWO things that terrify
first-time (and seasoned) fathers –
incessant crying and nappy changes.
Despite what most people would
tell you, it’s easier to negotiate your
way out of the former. A nap, some
food or, in severe cases, a bribe by way
of a treat usually calms a baby down
quicker than you can say “tantrum”. If
worse comes to worst, you could even
let your baby “cry it out”.
Nappy changes, on the other hand,
are another monster altogether.
According to a study, small babies
wee up to 20 times a day during the
first couple of months of their lives.
In short, there’s no getting around
it: you’re going to have to change your
baby’s nappies. Often. But the last
thing you want to do is make a mess
of things.
For the first-time father, nappy
changing might feel like a calculated
science. When’s the right time to
change a nappy?
How do you avoid messing things
up, and how do you actually get to the
work of changing a nappy when your
child is kicking at you like a refined
black-belt martial artist?
The good news is it’s a skill that
doesn’t take much mastering. It took
me a little under a week to learn
how to change my son’s nappy. The
regularity of the changes (and the factthat his mother was recovering from
her c-section) meant I had to learn
p r e t t y q u i c k ly.
As you’d expect, the first change
was horrible. I managed to get poo
on his changing mat, my clothes and
his mother’s pillow, and used close to
three nappies before getting anywhere
close to a proper nappy change.WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
First, you need three things – wipes,
a dedicated place to change your baby,
and nappies.
During the first few months of my
son’s life, my partner and I either
used my son’s cot or his compactum
as his dedicated nappy-changing
station. Besides fostering a sense of
familiarity (he eventually started
noticing a change was on the horizon
if we dropped him into his cot), it
made it easy because if there was a
mess, it was contained to one area of
the house.
Changing a wet nappy has always
been the easiest (and most preferred)
of the two outcomes.
If my son wet himself (with no poo),
I’d take his nappy off, wipe him and
then apply nappy cream to his bottom
and change the nappy. Voilà!
The alternative was much more
complicated. My male friends often
ask how I know it’s time to change my
s o n’s n ap py.
Trust me, you know! There’s no
ignoring that pungent smell.
On paper, changing a nappy is a
relatively uncomplicated process.
First, you open the nappy and use the
front, unsoiled part of the otherwise
soiled nappy to wipe your baby’s
bottom. Fold the soiled part of thenappy, and tuck the clean side under
your baby’s bottom, then use your
wipes to wipe their bottom.
Apply some cream, slide a new
nappy under the bottom and –
congratulations! – you’ve successfully
changed your first nappy.
However, this only works if your
baby honours their part of the deal
by staying perfectly still until you’re
done changing them.
Any parent will tell you, you are
more likely to fly to Mars and back
before any child sits still for a nappy
change. They kick, they scream, they
roll around– they make a mess!
The easiest way around this is to
distract them. Whenever I change my
son’s nappy, I make sure he has his
favourite toy (a toy phone) in hand,
and we simulate a phone conversation.
This doesn’t always work, though, and
at times, you just have to be flexible.
Sometimes, after wiping my son’s
bottom, I’ll let him stand up, and I’ll
change his nappy while he’s standing.
He seems to prefer this more than
a traditional lying-down nappy
change, and it minimises the potential
of making a mess.
But, the truth is, sometimes your
child will kick, scream and squirm,
and there’s nothing you can do about
it. It’s just one of the things we sign
up for when we begin parenthood.
Although it’s little consolation,
it’s good to remember that it’s just
a phase, and one day you won’t
be responsible for wiping your
kid’s bottom every time they have
a n “a c c i d e n t ”.
Until then, it’s dirty nappies and
negotiating the next nappy change.
Such are the joys of parenting. YBOur backpage columnist,
Rofhiwa Maneta, ponders
the good and sometimes
hard realities that come
with being a new dad