diaper wrestling, my daily struggle

my kid's aversion to diaper changes, how i tried elimination communication, and the worst blowout to date.

my kid hates having his diaper changed. always has. and, at twenty months, probably always will.

i’ve tried distractions, songs, tiktok recommendations. i’ve tried wipe warmers, fancy diaper brands and all of the butt creams. sometimes i do the standup change and try to slide a pull-up over his chubby little thighs while he stands upright. but nothing really seems to work. it’s usually just this annoying thing that i need to subject my kid and myself to multiple times a day.

i sort of thought that male parts would make this whole thing easier, but it absolutely does not.

in the beginning it’s all about are there enough poops and pees to prove that my child is getting proper nutrition and hydration. can i show that my boobs are adequate suppliers? dan talks to his daddy friends and gets the latest and greatest all-in-one breastfeeding and defecation tracker app.

pee diaper, logged. poop diaper, tell us about it. is it brown, yellow, or green? what’s the texture? would that be considered a small, medium or large bowel movement? can we even consider it a bowel movement?

did you know the first poop is pitch black? technically dark green, but it looked black to me. it’s called meconium and it’s sticky as fuck and it’s basically this intense concentrated mass that is the remainder of the nutrition from the placenta. takes about a day or two to clear and only after it’s out of the baby’s system do the multi-color poops begin.

my app is a twenty four hour patchwork of colors to indicate poops, pees, pumps, feeds, breastfeeds, sleep periods, play periods and, after the first week, vitamin d baby drops. the notes say things like “baby had a little poop” with the poop emoji in corresponding color. or, “baby was breastfed for 23m and 5s,” with a timestamp and a note on each breast (L) 10m 32s, (R) 12m 33s. every feeding session is meticulously timed to get a sense of how each boob is producing and how the baby is eating.

who knew that eating and pooping was so technical. dan and i share the same account on the app to try and accurately log as much as we can for the first month, we slow up by the second and eventually drop off altogether during the third. it isn’t really that technical. we just need to get a sense of our baby’s nutrition in those early days and the data is helpful during this period of time with the frequent pediatrician visits. they get so anal about a newborn’s weight.

and then there is all of the STUFF. not just the tracking, but the supplies you need to keep a newborn alive, thriving and cute. god, it’s disgusting.

when building out a baby registry i was supposed to choose from millions of options of things that looked exactly the same to me. minor differences set apart only by higher marketing budgets and a few ingredients, buzz words dictating what was going to be best for me and my kid. i hated this process so much. it felt so predatory to be sold to like this during such a vulnerable state of expectant parenthood. we were weak and susceptible and had the pressure of providing gift guidance to our loved ones so that they could buy us what we actually wanted. how the hell were we supposed to know.

could i find a diaper bag that was attractive and effective? was i really going to need a butt spatula for diaper cream? (one million percent, no, by the way.) were we high-tech parents or low-tech ones? maximalists or minimalists? sad beige or fisher price red? organic and ingredient obsessed or? the list goes on and there are so many grey areas.

but nobody can really tell you those things. what’s essential for one baby might be totally irrelevant for yours. the way you like to do things is guaranteed to be at least a little different from your friends. but when you’re in the consumerist squirrel stage of becoming a parent, it can feel comforting to stock your shelves with top of the line butt wipes and light up wi-fi connected sound machines¹.

A NOTE ON DIAPER BAGS

you don’t need one.

any bag will do. if a diaper bag makes you happy, get after it. if you’re a mom on the go and you need special compartments and cooler areas to keep your breastmilk refrigerated, i can see how having one would make sense. or, if if a diaper bag is one of those items that makes you ‘feel like a mom’ in a good way, by all means. but if you’re a mom who is more energized by ‘does this bag make me feel good when i wear it…’ i’d be hard-pressed to find a diaper bag under four hundred dollars that fills that void.

i never found one that matched my style. and, while i genuinely think the lululemon backpack that i got was closest to “me,” the full time yoga teacher me, i quickly realized that i didn’t need that much storage space. sure, i could carry around a clunky backpack and stock it with every possible emergency item—but generally speaking, i didn’t need one at all.

there is, however, this awesome little bag that comes inside of the backpack that i got. it’s about 8” x 10”, it’s stretchy and it fits everything i’ve needed since day one. at first that was five diapers, a travel pack of wipes, a binky, teether, extra onesie, burp cloth, diaper bags and my chapstick, protein bar, mini hand lotion and a hand sanitizer keychain. what i need shifts often based on my kid’s developmental stages, teething, fussiness, frequency of bowel movements, etc.

at twenty months it looks like five diapers, a travel pack of wipes, goldfish, animal crackers, three of his favorite snack bars, one teething straw, two protein bars for mom, chapstick, mini hand lotion and a hand sanitizer keychain. most of the time i’m only carrying this tiny little crossbody and oftentimes i throw it in my tote bag next to my personal itemd.

but that’s it, that’s all you need.

beyond this little bag, the second most essential item i carry with me is Ball. i cannot go anywhere without Ball. it can be any ball, i just need a ball. my kid is obsessed with playing with balls and, while he seems interested in every sport ever created, basketball is what he is most obsessed with. he talks about “babbeque” all day long. i don’t know how he got to that word, but within the context of his growing accurate vocabulary i love that he has some silly made up words that he insists on, like how he calls water “lah-tee.” i’ll be so sad when he says their real names on day.

anyway, i’ve tried other toys to varying degrees of interest and effectiveness and sadly he can’t throw a ball at a restaurant. so keeping my toddler chill while out to eat is a moving target for his on the go little body. sometimes he’s into his modern day etch-a-sketch, other times he can zoom zoom a car, but mostly he just wants what he wants when he wants it. the best thing i can do is run him around before a meal and make sure he’s not starving by the time we get there. but again, sometimes none of this has any effect whatsoever and either the meal is cut short or dan and i will take turns walking him outside.

diaper changes are kind of like this.

DIAPER WRESTLING

i have no answers. there is nothing foolproof for my kid. he doesn’t want his diaper removed and he doesn’t want it put on. he would sit in his own feces all day if i let him.

and that’s part of the problem.

all day i’m picking up shit. whether it’s my dog’s monster poops or my kid’s smushed up ones, i am around poop all day long. and everybody farts. i’d be lying if i said i wasn’t used to the smell by now.

so i don’t always notice when i’ve got a dirty diaper on my hands. which is embarrassing when i’m out in public or have friends over. i ask them to please let me know if they smell something because i’m kind of anosmic to this particular stench.

by the time i get to a dirty diaper and open it up, it. is. everywhere. sometimes caked onto his inner thighs creases, or smushed above his butt crack, and it’s embedded into every tiny wrinkle of his scrotum. trying to wipe him down is the worst. we both hate this part. i don’t want to hurt him, but i also don’t want him to be covered in doo-doo all day. so it’s a wrestling match, a test of patience and a trial and error of ‘am i wiping too hard.’

sometimes giving him a book to “read” can help me out. these days he’s really into books. to my absolute delight, his favorite book is one of my childhood favorites, Madeleine. i can’t even phonetically write how he says it, “mah-EYN,” maybe.

i place him on his changing pad and gently hand him the book to distract him. once he’s engaged and talking to it, i know i can begin. i swiftly peel away one tab of the diaper at a time. i go in for the first poop removal swipe by trying to cover as much surface area as possible. i use the diaper itself as my first, largest wipe, just like the folks at the hospital taught us. i grab as much mess as i can with my diaper-lined open palm before reaching for the first of six wipes i’ve prepped on the side of the table.

god forbid he gets bored of the book or is in a throwing mood! then i’m fucked.

i try to distract him with my voice, asking in a sing-songy tone for him to indicate objects of specific colors for me, tell me the names of his family members, make animal sounds. he’s getting bored and so am i and now he’s pissed and i’m stressed and why is it so sticky to get poop out of a scrotum fuckity fuck fuck.

for some diaper changes the changing table isn’t even an option. he will twist and turn and kick and fight and it’s honestly too dangerous to have him up that high. at ground level i find some way to remove his pants while he’s trying to run away. i grab him and lower him to the floor, while trying to protect his head from thrashing against it. i throw my left leg over his midsection and try to speak to him in a soothing manner. it’s fucking chaos. it is not fun. i really try to avoid this method because it sucks, but sometimes its the only option. and by sometimes i mean one to two times a day, minimum.

okay so there i am, leg over belly, enough weight to keep him steady without feeling like i’m crushing him. the wipes are prepped, a clean diaper is stretched out underneath his butt and i am going in.

first, peeling back each diaper tab, check, check. then, the grab and swoop of the first wipe. i fold over the dirty diaper and tuck it under his hips as a protective layer for the clean diaper i have ready underneath. next, i go in with the wipes.

at this point he is screaming bloody murder and turning his hips wildly. he pushes into one foot to lift his pelvis and tries to flip onto his stomach, ass in the air. to be honest, i sometimes find this to be a helpful angle to try and tackle the fecal smoosh across his rump, but most of the time it’s just a hazard. he kicks his other foot into the tucked full diaper that i have folded under his hips just enough to dislodge the thing. suddenly my protective layer becomes a bomb just waiting to explode. i am cursing myself for not remembering to put it somewhere else.

then, of course, i need more wipes. because six just isn’t enough. i hold him down with a little more strength and he is so pissed. he’s screaming and thrashing and i begin to question if there’s something seriously wrong or if our neighbors will hear and call child protective services. and then we’re done! almost.

the poop is cleaned up and i peel one side of his fresh diaper tab loose, secure it in the middle, then the other, and then the diaper is on. he’s still flailing, but i have to do the final protective measure. i slide my finger underneath each side of the diaper to make sure the little flanges are out to catch a potential blowout. then i release my child from underneath my thigh and—he’s totally fine. like nothing ever happened. gets up and walks to find Ball.

tell me i’m not alone. what are your worst diaper changing stories?

ELIMINATION COMMUNICATION

sometimes my overachiever Honor Student side really takes over my whole personality and i think to myself, “okay, well, since i am a full time mom i need to be doing the most. if i can’t do it, who the hell can.” i need to prove my worth to myself and my husband and my friends and the world at large! this was especially true of how i thought of elimination communication.

if you haven’t heard of it, i genuinely recommend you look it up because i think it’s a fascinating practice and feels way more humane to me than three days of hellish potty training over a long weekend. i would have loved to do it with my kid, but it just wasn’t in the cards. in short, you’re potty training your kid from a very young age. sometimes EC babies will never even wear diapers, their parents are teaching them to pee and poop in the potty from birth (at first it’s the sink or a small bucket).

i only learn about elimination communication around six months postpartum and i can’t understand how anyone has the energy to manage trying to catch all of the zillions of infant poops and pees throughout the day.

i was never going to read a book on elimination communication, but i’m incredibly lucky to have a mom from my mom yoga group who is so passionate about EC that she spends forty five minutes on zoom teaching me the process. although we’ve never had much one-on-one interaction i trust this woman as a peer who i’ve shared many a classroom with and i find her to be quite smart and knowledgeable. she teaches me about the science behind the practice and how it went for her family. we both agree that this is something you need to fully dedicate to if you’re going to have any sort of success. she loves it so much and feels a deeper connection to her baby, being able to catch his pees and poops and keep him dry throughout the day. she tells me that at first her nanny was skeptical, but with only two remaining weeks of mat leave, her nanny is trained up and fully committed as well.

what a dream.

TRYING TO CATCH A PEE

the idea with elimination communication is that a parent and baby can communicate so clearly that the child never actually soils their diaper. a parent sees the signs, takes them to the sink or the toilet and they do their business, diaper remains dry. they call this “catching a pee.”

they say your best chance is first thing in the morning. apparently there are hormones that tell your brain to pee when you wake up (don’t quote me on this, it’s what another mom told me), so it’s easiest to try and “catch a pee” before they’re fully awake. then, throughout the day your best bet is to either try every TWENTY MINUTES or after each meal and nap time.

twenty minutes feels so insane to me. even though i technically “have the time” as a full time mom, the commitment to removing and redoing a diaper every twenty minutes feels asinine. so i start with the morning pees.

i wake him slowly by scooping his body into my hands and lifting him into my arms. i gently unzip him from his sleep sack and let it drop noiselessly into his now empty crib. i feel his weight heavier because he’s still in half asleep, muscles aren’t yet engaged. his cheeks are flushed and his eyes are squinched half shut. i hold him in my left arm while i tuck my right thumb into his pajama waistband and remove his pajama bottoms as i walk towards the door, chucking his pants into the laundry basket as i go.

i take him into the bathroom and face him outwards, back pressed against my chest, body positioned over the sink. my left arm wraps around his chest, hooking under his armpits, while my right hand unlatches the left tab and then the right of his diaper. i chuck the full pee diaper on the floor, pee side up—i’ll get to that later—with my newly freed hand, i support his butt.

“pee in the potty, pss pss pss. pee in the potty, pss pss pss.” i say sweetly as i hold him over the bathroom sink and smile at him in the mirror. “pee in the potty, pss pss pss. pee in the potty, pss pss pss.” i turn on the faucet a trickle to see if that helps to get things going, sometimes he pees when getting into the shower and hears the water turn on.

nada.

i try again as he starts to squirm and giggle, he thinks we’re just playing. “okay, let’s try the toilet.” i position him over the toilet and repeat the same process a few times. when nothing happens i say “good try peeing in the potty, we’ll try again later.” and i bring him back to his room to put on a fresh diaper and his outfit for the day. i scoop up the dirty diaper i left on the bathroom floor, press it firmly into the diaper pail until it’s swallowed into the bag and then close the lid. we head upstairs for breakfast. after breakfast i try it all over again.

we do this throughout the day for a week without luck. i don’t “catch” any pees.

over the next couple of weeks i find myself increasingly discouraged. i’d love to feel so deeply connected to my kid that i can tell when he’s going to pee just by recognizing the signs. i’d love to relieve both of us of the stress and fighting that comes with most diaper changes.

i try to catch pees, but my kid seems increasingly less chill with our many trials and more frustrated that i’m lifting him over a sink. i had really hoped to nail this down before eighteen months, that’s when they say the window of effectiveness runs out, but i end up giving up before month seventeen.

anyone had success potty training before two? tell me your secrets!

MY WORST POOP STORY // MIAMI BLOWOUT

my kid hasn’t had many blowouts. i feel like this has gotta be thanks to the fact that i’m with him full time and there is only kid right now. like, that’s probably what it is, if i had more distractions there would be more accidents.

the only time he’s truly had a blowout was preparing to board his first flight.

when dan and i dreamed of taking our kid on his first flight we always imagined it would be to italy to see dan’s family. we thought we’d get it in early before our baby was past the potato stage. but there was too much happening with dan’s business and we couldn’t comfortably leave the country because he was getting pulled into last minute work trips all the time. so we settled for one of our favorite cities, a quick flight, and the last place we lived before my sister in law passed away.

it’s hard to grasp how much of an affect ashley’s passing has had on our lives. our life is split into two. there’s life with ashley and then there is life without her. everything changed. at first in the worst ways and then in the most devastatingly beautiful ones.

i’m missing her a lot lately. it’s really hard not to imagine how much she would have loved being in my baby’s life. she would be over here all the time and driving me crazy buying too many things for him. she’d have some absurd nickname for him and take him on auntie nephew dates. she was such an amazing auntie to my nephew and i hate that she never got to meet our son.

miami is where we lived when she died. dan’s mom texted me as i was going into a hot yoga class and asked where dan was. i said he had a networking thing and i’d call her after class. she texted me a heart emoji and a broken heart emoji and i thought it was a typo.

it was the worst yoga class of my life. it was hot and unforgiving and poorly taught and when i got out dan told me i needed to come straight home and i knew someone had died. when i came home he was chain smoking on the porch and he told me it was ashley.

we packed up our things and left for massachusetts the next morning.

two days earlier i had turned thirty two and my friends had all just happened to shower me with flower deliveries that year—to the point of minor embarrassment, but the best kind. dan and i cleaned out the apartment and emptied the trash, but left the seven fresh bouquets with a note for the cleaners to take home whatever they wanted.

we hadn’t been back to miami since.

and i don’t think i realized—we definitely didn’t realize—how huge it was to go back to miami with our new baby. we were bringing new life back to where we lost life.

meanwhile, i’m at JFK trying to get on the flight with a four month old. we had it all planned out thanks to dan’s tiktok research. he would get on first, taking advantage of family boarding with the carseat, travel stroller and one carry on. i would get on last and i’d carry our baby in the carrier plus our diaper bag, that’s it. (this flight is one of a handful of times i’ve found that thing genuinely useful.) the idea was that we wanted our baby to be onboard for as little time as possible and we wanted dan to be able to check all of our extraneous luggage at the gate with as little friction as possible.

this is how we fly now, and it works wonders. but dan and i have different last names. and our son has dan’s last name. i was carrying our baby with a different last name and we hadn’t realized that he was an in-seat passenger on dan’s ticket. we had never considered this being an issue, he’s my child.

i’m waiting at the gate after dan boards and i notice a warmth emanating from my baby’s diaper. “amazing,” i think, “good boy, let’s get the poopy diapers out of your system before we board the flight.”

i walk into the bathroom, pull down the changing table mounted on the wall and as soon as i put him down i see that he’s blown through his diaper. good thing i packed three extra pairs of clothes! i wipe him down, change him, switch out his outfit and head back to the gate.

i’m sitting there feeling self satisfied, like a real life competent mother who can anticipate problems, our travel plans are working! we’re back at the gate, my baby is gurgling in my lap and i think i hear my husband’s name over the loudspeaker, but it’s a pretty common last name and i don’t think much of it. if it’s really his name i’ll hear it again. a minute later i hear my name being called. god dammit. i scoop up my child and our things and trundle over to the front desk, a little annoyed and already sweating.

“hi, you called my name?”

“yes, who do you have with you there?”

i say my son’s name.

“okay, and where is [ my husband’s name ] ?”

“he boarded with family boarding to drop our stroller and carseat. is there an issue?”

ohhh, you bet there was. my son, who shares a last name with my husband but not me, was designated as an in-seat passenger of his father, not me.

“i’m so sorry ma’am, but your son is currently flagged as missing. i understand the situation, but you are going to need to stand right by this desk until you board.”

i feel another steamy pile of poo begin to leak through my child’s diaper and onto his clean pants.

“umm, okay. even though i’m his mom?”

“ma’am we have no way of verifying that. are you able to get ahold of your husband?”

“no, he’s on the plane and people are boarding, i can’t get him out here. my baby just pooped. am i able to take him to the bathroom and then come back here?”

“no ma’am, i’m sorry, but you’re going to need to stay right where we can see you. you can change his diaper right here.”

let me just take a moment to say that i do not regret keeping my maiden name. i love my name, it means a lot to me, and i am prepared to deal with any confusion that may come from having a different last name from my kids, my mom did it, so can i. and, like me and my siblings, they’ll all have my maiden name in theirs somewhere. my middle name is my mother’s maiden name and that is typical for firstborn filipina daughters.

but i was not prepared for being flagged for kidnapping my own child.

all of the attendants are very kind to me and nobody actually thinks that i’m kidnapping my baby, but this is clearly thanks to the privilege of how i look and my husband’s flight status. it;s annoying, but my child is not in any real danger. i’m grateful for that protection, but especially disgusted by how unsafe families and individuals are flying today. this becomes an important lesson for us moving forward and something to consider when we eventually take our kid on an international flight.

i walk over to the boarding gate and lay my child down on the airport floor, at four months i’ve already abandoned changing mats for increased germ exposure and immunity building, but mostly just to schlep less shit. i lay him down and take out the second clean outfit i have packed in my handy dandy knapsack. yup, poop everywhere. smells rank. blessedly he stays pretty chill for this diaper change and i wipe the crap from his butt to his lower back and put him in new clothes. i add the old ones to the gallon ziplock bag i have for just the occasion.

i lift the dirty diaper and raise my eyebrows at the person working boarding as a way to ask for permission to go to the trashcan to throw this out, not walk off with my baby, is that cool?

we board and everyone smiles at us and tells me how cute my infant is. i’m relieved to see dan. i roll my eyes and laugh and settle down next to him to tell him the whole story.

before the flight even takes off, i get another blowout in my arms.

1. many people swear by these, so it was high on our list. and we were accidentally gifted two! a registry fail. but when i learned that i had to hook up a sound machine to my wifi, download an app and use my phone data i immediately got the ick and never plugged it in. the second is still in a box for someone who will love it in the future. sound can be helpful, but an old school one will do ya just fine. but we’re low-tech parents.