Infant Hygeine Tips

When my son takes a dump, or, "makes a poopie," there is a somewhat involved process to cure the situation.

First, I get his next diaper opened up. Second, his current diaper is opened up. I assess the situation. There are several levels of soiledness - from skid mark to bursting and everything in between. Let's say this is a 6 or a 7 out of 10 - filled the diaper, but no need to change the outfit or even worse, deposit directly into the tub. So the diaper is opened, but still under him. I grab his ankles with my left hand, lifting them over his head to get maximum exposure.

Then the wiping begins. The first wipe, maybe two wipes, remove the bulky stuff. Used wipes are dropped into the mess in the diaper for collective, condensed disposal. The next wipe cleans up his scrotum. The final wiping stage is making sure there is nothing remaining - the wipe comes up white, not yellow, green, etc. Remove the diaper from under his backside, roll it up, tape it, throw it in your diaper disposal receptacle. Put the next diaper under his butt.

Next is the drying stage. I still have a few soft paper cloths from the hospital, but I've heard that Viva paper towel is a good brand. We'll see in a month. Anyhow, blot, don't smear. It gets pretty raw down there and there's no need to give your kid's butt an Indian burn.

Finally, apply diaper-rash repellant. We use A & D. Get a nice gob of it and smear it all into his crack, anus, and just up to his cheeks. Finally, wrap the diaper. Good to go.

I don't do anything approaching this for myself. How did we go from this five-star, spa-quality treatment to toilet paper and done? I'm not saying that I've begun this multi-step process when I encounter my own not-so-fresh feeling, but why did it all stop? Don't you think you'd feel better having that all done?

Okay, I know that much of this is done because we don't know how long they're going to sit in their filth while we wait for the next commercial break or for halftime. But face it, after killing your co-workers with your gas all morning, you may want to consider that some of that stink left something behind. Yeah, you may get it with regular TP. But boy, wouldn't it be great just to pamper yourself once in a while?