The 2Ps of Mommyhood

The 2Ps of mommyhood? Well, I'm referring to the pees and the poos.

I used to think that changing diaper is an easy task – remove the soiled one and put on a new piece, what’s the big deal? But since becoming a mommy, I’ve learnt that changing the diaper is an art that requires agility, good sense of timing, understanding of body language and high threshold for messiness.

By the way, before Kenan was born, my husband suggested we could use both disposable diapers as well as the traditional cloth diapers to save some money. I told a mommy friend about it. She laughed and predicted that we will probably end up using only disposables.

True to her words, when our little boy arrived, it has been disposables all the way! We realised just how ambitious we had been to think that we could use cloth diapers. With never-ending demands from baby, we just wanted to be done with a task and move on. So my heartfelt kudos to parents who use recyclable diapers, you’re amazing! (I promise to do our part in saving the planet through other means!)

Anyway, back to the art of changing diapers.

For parents with boys, I’m sure you would have experienced your baby spraying pee onto you while changing diapers (do parents of baby girls face the same thing?). In our case, it was my husband who had the privilege of getting the first taste of Kenan’s jet spraying power when he was just a few days old. That had been our first few attempts in changing diapers. For being a hands-on dad who had just dragged himself out of bed, our son thought that papa deserved a reward and presented him with a self-prepared biochemical concoction that landed on papa’s tee and shorts. My hubby was shocked of course, but soon composed himself enough to quickly finish up the job. I had to clean up the pee that spilled onto our quilt and the floor. After the incident, whenever we needed to change Kenan’s diapers in the wee hours during the first month, we would wake the confinement lady up to do it.

However, getting pee on our clothes and bed (that’s the diaper changing station in our home) was not the worst. It was the poo that made me finally screamed at baby Kenan.

Kenan defecated an average of five times a day when he was smaller and at irregular timing, so I could never quite tell when he would do it. Also, when he was about six weeks old, his poo started to turn watery, making poo leakage something I had to contend with ever so often. (We were quite worried about the watery poo at first but the pediatrician assured us that is normal for babies who are breastfed.)

As I didn’t know when Kenan would defecate, I had to deal with poo on his towel, our clothes and the bed. Twice, I was breastfeeding him and he started poo-ing and the watery excrement leaked. Other times, I had just finished bathing Kenan and was drying him with the towel when he decided to poo. Once, I was going to put him into the bath tub when I felt something warm on my clothes and realised he had done it again. The most common was when I had just removed his diaper and he would poo before I could put in a new one. But what had been truly memorable were the two occasions when Kenan squished the mustard yellow mash onto us, first on his daddy, then mommy (he probably favours daddy as daddy has been getting a first taste of everything; but hey, I’m not complaining!). Both times, his poo gushed out so powerfully that it hit our clothes, spluttered onto the quilt and landed on the floor as well.

With all these misadventures, there was enough pee and poo on our quilt to make us go out and get a new one.

After a while, I learnt not to change his diapers immediately after he had defecated (or urinated) as more poo might be on the way out. I also learnt to read his body language to know if he is going to move bowels (but I can’t tell when he is going to pee though). The few soiled bath towels also taught me the best time to bathe him is right after he is done with his big business.

By the way, if you’re wondering what we did with the cloth diapers we bought, I use them initially to bundle Kenan. As he gets older and with all the poo mishaps, I use them to wrap round his bum (something like a sarong) just in case his poo leaks. It became such a habit that even though it looks strange and so unsophisticated, I still do that often when I bring him out!

Oh, did I mention that Kenan always smiles cheerfully after he has emptied his bowels? His smiles never fail to melt away any anger I felt for the mess he created. But even then, I still don’t enjoy changing diapers and would gladly let daddy do it whenever he’s home!