I have learned the hard way how diapers operate.
Yes, there is a right way and a wrong way to put them on. I admit it; I have put Nathan’s diaper on wrong.
On more than one occasion.
I don’t feel bad about it; I blame it on lack of sleep. When you’ve only had 20 minutes of sleep for the past two days and are up at 2:00 a.m. changing the diaper of a baby who won’t stop screaming with colic, the last thing you are doing is thinking coherently.
Sometimes diaper changes brought about a war of wills.
Nathan didn’t want to feel the cold air, but yet he detested having a dirty diaper. He hated it with a sincere, angry passion. And he was not shy in letting us know. He also despised the process of being changed, so we would go through the motions robotically, the subconscious taking over, our brains still shut down from sleep deprivation.
On two occasions, my subconscious thought it would be neat to play a trick on me. One night, eyes heavy with exhaustion, I put a clean diaper on with only the help of two nightlights to guide me, only to discover it had no tabs. I dared not turn on the light, or even a lamp, because even the dimmest of lamps was like turning on the sun; Nathan would instantly become alert and ready to stay up for another few hours.
That can’t be right, I thought as my fingers groped blindly for the tabs. Why the hell would Pamper’s make diapers with no tabs? I thought groggily. Especially the Pamper’s Swaddlers. They are too expensive to be defective.
Exasperated, I was about to take the diaper off and throw it away when I noticed the tabs were on the front. What the… I thought, then my brain finally woke up enough to start firing a few synapses here and there and I realized that Pamper’s had done nothing wrong; I had put Nathan’s diaper on backwards! Well, everyone makes mistakes at least once, right?
The second instance of how not to put a diaper on also occurred while sleep deprived. Again, I was changing Nathan in dim light, eyes blurry with sleepiness, long before the morning sun thought about ascending into the sky. I picked him up and cuddled him after his diaper change and noticed something on my belly.
It was warm. AND WET.
It took a good ten seconds for my brain to register what the wetness was; he was peeing on me.
Once I realized he was peeing on me, I held him away in shock, wondering how he could pee through a diaper. Well, he wasn’t done. When I held him away from my body, pee shot everywhere. All over me, all over the wall, the changing table, the floor.
The entire room was glistening with golden wetness, like the morning dew under a starlit sky.
Upon closer inspection, I noticed I had somehow twisted his diaper ever so slightly when I put it on, leaving certain boy-parts hanging out. At first, I didn’t realize what it was; I once again thought it was a defective diaper. But it wasn’t Pamper’s fault. It was mine, all mine. It takes some serious exhaustion to not notice that your son isn’t fully covered by his diaper.
But it happens. Yes indeed.
I am that mom… the mom who can’t seem to get a diaper on correctly. But don’t worry, it could happen to you, too. Even if your kids are grown, it can happen with your grand-kids. All it takes is sleep deprivation, dim lighting, and a little boy with a full bladder.
Soon, you could be a part of my world; the world of NathanRising.
