Reminds me of something I often slightly chuckle about as a parent.
I’ve often encountered non-parents, particularly teenagers, who remark how the thought of changing nappies horrifying and a really big deal. But as any parent knows, changing nappies is really one of the easier parts of looking after babies and toddlers.
It's not an easy thing, but some of the histrionic claims about child raising on the internet are really out there. It's no wonder kids are horrified by the thought.
Have you considered that objectively difficult infants/toddlers/children exist? Children with O.D.D., for instance, show symptoms early, but diagnosis usually doesn't come until much later.
Perhaps the comments you came across online were from the parents of those kids.
-A parent of a very challenging child with Level II Autism
Also, even though I don't know you, I am certain that you are a good parent, and that you are doing your very best, and that your child is lucky to have you as their parent. :) Stay strong.
No one remembers when their friends or family tells “we are doing well everything is nice”.
Everyone passes on or remembers horror stories.
Discussion groups aren’t a balanced slice of how the overall situation looks like. They tend to sway towards the negative side because discussing about everything being fine gets old fast.
Still not too hard but much harder in my case ;-).
But like it was mentioned already, changing diapers remains the easy part .
How strong the family and well situated the family is also likely plays a factor.
Joking aside, it's actually surprisingly way way tougher.
Could 'the horrors of parenting' be something that is promoted to younger people, to discourage then from having children? A sort of governance marketing to help address the perceived issue that there are simply too many people?
So .. if this is a conspiracy, it would have come from a private entiety (like club of rome, who lamented overpopulation a long time ago).
But I don't think so. Lamenting and whining has just become a sport for some.
For sure, probably because stinky diapers are visceral but psychological challenges aren’t, yet I think most parents would agree about having to dig far deeper into our inner resolve to deal with age-appropriate behavioral issues.
Other problems may not have a clear path to solution and are not as simple.
It’s a similar experience to changing parents diapers when you are an adult and they are end of life. Seems horrific, then you just do it.
Then it becomes more but not much scent, like a training period. And it's really only 4-6 months that it begins to get foul.
Another advantage for the baby side is a hack I can't believe more people don't do. Just notice when they make a very recognizable face or start grunting then hold them over the toilet.
False positives are no big deal (just a fun change of scenery for the baby), for false negatives you change the baby as normal.
No amount of it is pleasant but it still felt, even at the time, like training wheels on a diaper.
Then I looked up and my mother came running towards me, all excited to be able to change a diaper for the first time in seven years.
Every baby is different so most of the advice you find won’t work, but if you try enough things you’ll eventually find something that works consistently. Or you might just luck out and get a good sleeper.
Highly recommend getting a sleep tracker app.
The thing I remember being most annoyed about was cleaning all the bottles. That was really obnoxious.
> But as any parent knows, changing nappies is really one of the easier parts of looking after babies and toddlers.
Agreed. I tell friends that, for me, changing diapers is much less frustrating and gross than watching my toddler feed himself.
Personally I'm really bad with smells, though. Even with hundreds (thousands?) of diapers changed I still really have to focus on not losing my lunch on the bad smelling ones.
Toddlers...yeah.
i’m assuming you’re the mom? ;) Yes the pressure starts off strong, can easily fly onto their face lol. happened to me…fun times.
> somehow the back of his clothes keep getting wet while he's fully dressed in and in a diaper which completely boggles my mind.
We just solved this recently with our baby boy. I can try to offer some tips. He likely needs a different diaper size, or (more likely), his penis isn’t correctly facing downward when putting the diaper on. 1st secure one side, and before you secure the other, peek at his penis (looking into the diaper from the side - near his hips). Make sure it’s pointed straight down and adjust if necessary. then quickly strap the other side. Basically you want the diaper to gently and firmly keep that penis pointed down all day. When boys are about to pee, the penis becomes briefly erect. If the diaper is not firmly holding that penis down, the penis can easily drift sideways and shoot urine in a weird direction. When this happens the urine can leak around the hips and up the back - instead of going into the absorbent pad. A quick test - when you change his diaper, is his penis still pointed down? If not then that’s the issue. If it is, try other troubleshooting steps.
Girl diaper changes are “easy” in this regard.
[0] https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0700/5519/8950/files/brief...
Into their face? Try onto the ceiling or a 6-8ft arc in any direction. One of my coworkers warned me so I usually had the situation under control but my wife had only ever changed girls (young cousins and kids she babysat), thought she was prepared but wasn't.
That was life changing advice for me.
Also, if he’s still healing from birth, that problem solves itself over time as swelling reduces and it starts to naturally point in the preferred direction on its own
Babies swell up from being born? Is this common??
I assume this is a penis with the foreskin removed. With the foreskin, it should not be an issue.
I sometimes wonder about the people who must clean messy public restrooms. All of the gross, none of the "but it's for the sake of a cute human that I love".
I worked "maintenance" at a local outlet mall back in college so I was that guy, and after the first couple of times it was just a matter of "this needs to be done, I'm the guy who does it" turning my brain off and getting the job done. I remember basically nothing from those evenings, I would just put my headphones on and mentally be somewhere else.
It was a shit job in a lot of ways, figuratively and literally, but at the same time I had amazing work/life balance. From the moment I clocked out until the next time I clocked in what happened at the outlet mall was not my problem in any way and I didn't have to think about it at all.
Compared to trying for hours to get him to sleep, or dealing with the sheer panic we felt when we had to have him rushed to the hospital, a poopy diaper is nothing.
Our son is 3.5 years old and it's super fun and rewarding but I'm not going to lie, it's hard to get lectured by a toddler about the difference between a Majungosaurus and Carnotaurus or a T-Rex and Giganotosaurus. Or have him ask me why the Velociraptors in Jurassic Park don't look like the paleontologists' current consensus on what they looked like... Or the million other super specific questions I need to come up with answers to (and I don't really want to discourage him as my parents did me). So even though he can currently use the washroom 100% independently, infant stage was still 1000x easier.
What kills me is when I have to convince them of sometand they just are incapable of listening to any kind of reasoning. Sometimes you can let it slide but some issues are just too big like road crossing for example.
Your assertion does not correlate with my lived experience. But dirty diapers was definitely not the biggest issue.
When you have twins, or triplets, or more... Nothing at all is easy. Unless you're privileged (or have help), their early years become your living life's only work.
> ... encountered non-parents ...
One reason why I hold anxiety for infants at orphanages or under care.
But they worked well. We just did laundry every day for the first year and a half. Whether that's a net positive for ecological impact, or a negative is an open question.
> You want a covered pail partially filled with water to put used diapers in as soon as removed. If it contains soap or detergent, this helps in removing stains. Be sure the soap is well dissolved, to prevent lumps of soap from remaining in the diapers later. When you remove a soiled diaper, scrape the movement off into the toilet with a knife, or rinse it by holding it in the toilet while you flush it (hold tight).
> You wash the diapers with mild soap or mild detergent in [the] washing machine or washtub (dissolve the soap well first), and rinse 2 or 3 or 4 times. The number of rinsings depends on how soon the water gets clear and on how delicate the baby’s skin is. If your baby’s skin isn’t sensitive, 2 rinsings may be enough.
The technique hasn't changed much.
We used nappy liners, a piece of paper to catch the worst of the poo. And 'wraps' on the outside. The nappies had poppers; you could popper them differently as they grew.
On wash day, empty the water from the bucket into the toilet, lift the nappies individually into the [front-loading] washing machine.
We bought our cloth nappies on eBay, already second-hand. We passed them on still usable years afterwards.
I did start potty training as soon as they went on solids, well before they could sit unaided! We used baby-sign, and I tried a couple of elimination communication techniques. Baby-sign was great, they could tell us they needed potty before they could talk; first child even made a new toilet sign to differentiate between wee/poo.
We had compostable nappies for times when we needed them - too rainy to dry clothes, too sleepy, backup for when they wee/poo on the nappy as you're putting it on them when you're out and about.
Only thing we'd wash with the nappies was soiled clothing (baby grows) or towels we'd lie on the bed to change their nappy on. A month or so in we got a changing table (Ikea).
> We bought our cloth nappies on eBay, already second-hand. We passed them on still usable years afterwards.
However, have kids changes you - the green poo newborns have is pretty vile, but it's less vile than preparing raw chicken, say, for me. You don't have a choice, you just have to do it.
We bought a pack of thin disposable diaper liners. These go inside the diaper and catch most of the business. They then get thrown away (but it’s much less waste/garbage than an entire diaper)
They do get their own load. The ones we have tell you to run them in the wash twice.
The liners I’m describing are very thin and very small. Probably smaller than a marble if scrunched into a ball.
It’s not perfect but it’s much less than an entire diaper. It’s the compromise we found that works for us.
Another thing that's interesting here to me is the two fingers below the diaper to avoid sticking the infant with the pin. Two fingers under the diaper is still standard enough guidance that we and others we know received it at the hospital when diapering our child, though the reason expressed was one of tightness. I wonder if perhaps the former is the origin and the latter is a backformation.
And finally, the environmental question. Since my wife and I are quite old[0], and I want us to have more than one child I have pushed our household to the extreme end of consumerism[1]. We live in a 2 story flat in San Francisco, and until recently we had a changing station downstairs and two upstairs, with a diaper pail by each.
Here I encountered the problem that plagues anyone who has many battery-powered appliances - what convenience you gain in use, you lose when it comes to replace batteries. The Diaper Genie tall can we have is a very effective device at keeping smells in, but multiple cans means the time between replacement is doubled - something which you are rapidly made aware of by your senses[2], when it's time to replace the bag. The convenience is still worth it.
I do have a friend with more children than us, who will probably continue to have more children than us, whose family uses cloth diapers. So it is not an impossible task, and for someone adequately concerned about the environment and appropriately disciplined, perhaps quite straightforward to do.
0: if you want to see what happens when you have a baby near 40, https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Pregnancy
1: my rationale was that by easing the difficulties of pregnancy, I might reduce any resistance my wife might have to having the next child.
2: "Pain, even agony, is no more than information before the senses, data fed to the computer of the mind. The lesson is simple: you have received the information, now act on it. Take control of the input and you shall become master of the output" - Chairman Shen-ji Yang.
costco sells these AA+AAA coast lithium ion batteries that are 1.5v and seem to have high capacity and long charge time.
Seems better than either duracell disposables or the nimh rechargables that I use.
In comparison, the duracell batteries have a pretty good lifetime, but just go dead. They also don't work in the cold.
the nimh batteries are rechargable and somewhat convenient, but have a short lifetime. This seems to be because they are 1.2v and the devices think they're low on power more easily, plus their self-discharge is lots faster than other batteries.
I miss this side of HN nowadays.
Suddenly you couldn't put him down and he'd roughly stay wherever you left him.
Nobody wants them, even free... I guess I'll just throw them all out eventually, I've offered to new parents and they're all horrified by the concept
I think within the next few months we can actually get her to go to the potty by herself. She’s 15 months now.
This industry wasn’t just good. It did destroy babies sensitivity to soiling.
There is absolutely no way a 3 month old is potty trained. As in, the 3 month old infant can communicate and use a toilet. They likely can't even hold their head up at that age.
https://www.babycenter.com/baby/diapering/infant-potty-train... indicates that a potty can be introduced from 4- to 6-months old. Potty trained by 18 months is much more reasonable.
Also, where in Africa?
The books it mentions of business/corporate histories look worth a read too.
Good read!
(pottty training strategy changes were apparently somewhat pushed by researchers close to disposable diaper industry)
Leads a peace March around the block
Around him, everywhere you look
You see kids he messed up with his book.
-- Rhyme from Mad Magazine, circa 1970s
And disposables dropping at 10cents a pair. Holy crap! I thought they were expensive now.
Finally we had a crazy trustee in our condo assoc that wanted us to scrape the poop off before we threw diapers away in our community barrels (in sealed bags of course). We just smiled and nodded.
Same goes for financial aspect, washing (water/electricity)+washing gel vs picking them up in the store where I'm going anyway. Daily expenses on disposable ones are negligible to outweigh the convenience.
I can see only good reason for cloth being health reasons since there were cases when materials inside irritated babies skin sometimes, even famous brands had this issue and you have to figure out which brand works best for your kid.
I would make same argument about murdered Christmas trees vs artificial ones, I'm using my artificial Christmas trees for 9th year, meanwhile neighbors have their murdered trees transported by trucks to shop, then they transport them by car to their homes, then they throw them away after 2-3 weeks at home making mess on street expecting waste collection service collecting them (from everyone's money) with trucks and dispose them.
The large amount of plastic in disposable ones seems like another mark against them health-wise.
We pay for a diaper service. The price is comparable to disposables. The population density where I live helps with the price I'm sure.
extending that notion to nappies being community washed in large vats (separated by mesh bags and kept separable?) is horrifying. I suppose they put in some chlorine bleach to sterilize? Still, chlorine bleach might whiten the masticated corn kernels but...
A nappy service is very likely to do a much better job than you'd do at home.
you are imagining that my imagination is worse, i am very realistic. I'm not worried about these things at all, not a germaphobe, I always assume humans have been exchanging fecal traces on the daily for a million years and there's no escaping it.
but imagination is necessary to develop hypotheses for testing, and what I said about home laundry separation is true. in the home laundry arena underwear < clothes, and obviously diapers < underwear < clothes. so in the institutional setting you mention, diapers < underwear < bed linens < clothes. don't confuse me with your confusion.
