Diapers

My sweet baby is almost a year old...

Benjamin James Freeman's First Picture

I remember looking at that positive pregnancy test so clearly it's like it happened five minutes ago.  I had SOOO many feelings and emotions in that moment that I didn't even understand yet flow through me.  I was going to be a Mama.  Funny how you can be so excited about that fact and yet have NO idea what exactly that means.  LOL!


That being said, I would like to share something that I have not mastered in this last year.

DIAPERS

Sure, it's easy after a few times.  It's not easy. OK, maybe I am just THAT uncoordinated, but it's just not easy to me.  I mean, I'm not riding the struggle bus so often that the poor kid is wearing his diaper on his head, but I'm definitely not winning any awards for my skills in this area anytime soon.

This problem might go back a bit.  I didn't have much experience in the area of babies before having Ben.  I was the baby in my family, and I didn't babysit much growing up.  Kids were cute and all, but I was just never that interested in them.  I could probably count on one hand how many diapers I had changed.  I remember when my best friend, Ramie, had her little man.  She used to laugh at my clumsy ass attempts at a diaper change.  I'd change his diaper, then look at her and go, "Is that good?".  She'd look at Parker's diaper half hanging off his ass or cutting off the circulation to his junk and say, "Sure??".

When it came time for me to change Ben's diaper for the first time, I was terrified.  First of all, it wasn't under normal circumstances.  Ben was in the NICU and had about 47 wires coming out from his feet, arms, and poor little head.  He was so tiny, and looked so fragile.  I was crying from absolute fear that I was going to hurt him, as well as the insane amount of post-labor hormones surging through me.  After navigating the net of wires around his legs, I got that teeny little diaper open and he immediately began pissing right in my face.  Little bugger.  I know he smiled when he did it, I don't care what anyone says!  I immediately shouted out in an NICU full of sleeping preemies, which went over like a fart in church, and then threw a blanket over his little fountain.  The nurse laughed at us (Mark was unsuccessfully helping me in this endeavor as well), and then took the dirty blanket.  I then put the new diaper under him.  She handed me the diaper cream and I put it on him.  I put enough on him to keep every baby in the NICU diaper rash free for a flipping month.  Poor kid.  The nurse kindly explained that I needed about a hundredth of what I had used on his little bum, and I FINALLY got the new diaper done back up.  The nurse then re-fastened the diaper tabs because I didn't do it tight enough and I began crying.  I was literally thinking, at that moment, "Oh my God they aren't going to let him go home with me!  I am a horrible mother!!!  I don't even know how to change a diaper!".

Well, as you may have figured out, they let us take Ben home anyway.  They let us take him home exactly 7 days after I had him.  Diaper changes have gotten easier, despite the many "accidents" I've had attempting to change them.  I can't count how many times I've been peed on, and I also seem to have gotten crapped on, literally, more times than any other Mama I know.  Ben has an uncanny ability to shit the moment my hand is in key position to receive this gift while wiping his ass from the previous poosplosion.  It only happens to me...

There is something I rock at though...

Diaper Changing Games (May lead to the previous states "accidents")

Why would anyone just change a diaper and not have some fun with it?  With MOST diaper changes, I like to throw in a lot of belly raspberries, peek a boo, tickle time, and the like.  Sometimes we sing some songs, and sometimes we just laugh about the insane amount of poop one little baby can create.  Whatever the case, we have fun.  I'm good at the fun.  I LIKE the fun.  The logistical details of how well that diaper stays on after the raspberries is irrelevant.

So, little Benjamin, I have to tell you.  After a years worth of diaper changes, both good and bad, I gotta say that I wouldn't have it any other way!  If anyone would have told me that somehow getting peed and pooped on just wouldn't matter to me one day, I would have smacked them thinking they'd lost their dang mind.  Today, it's just not that big of a deal.  Shit on me all you want Buddy, as long as I get to make you smile when it's all cleaned up!!  < Add that sentence to the list of things I never thought I say!