How to Change a Diaper Blow-Out in 30 Easy Steps

Sometimes when a diaper fills with something more significant than the liquid stuff, it’s obvious because it comes out like machine gun rapid fire. Other times it’s more subtle. That kind you only discover when it’s leaking. And when do those blow-outs most often occur?

You guessed it. When you’re in public. And the best place ever? At church. But fear not! Here’s how to change a diaper blow-out in 30 easy steps.

1. Red-faced, grab your over-stuffed diaper bag (much like that diaper!), sling it over your head so the strap digs uncomfortably into your neck, and hastily carry your child to the nearest bathroom.
2. Wrestle the changing table down while holding baby in one arm, praying you’re not squeezing more goo out onto your own clothes.
3. Drop diaper bag onto changing table and struggle to unzip it one-handed in order to remove sanitary portable changing pad.
4. Push diaper bag off changing table and spend next five minutes trying to unfold and lay flat the changing pad, again, one handed.
5. Sigh in relief and lay baby on pad with a big smile so as not to let on how frustrating that was.
   

   Hmmm… to poop or not to poop? Is that really a question?

6. Pull out fresh diaper and wipes from diaper bag.
7. Unfasten snaps on baby’s onesie and lift out of harm’s way.
8. After pulling onesie away from baby’s back, discover poop on your hand.
9. Roll baby to one side to find poop all the way up his back.
10. Grab wet wipe, cleanse hand, and toss wipe number 1 into conveniently located trash bin.
11. Do a cursory wipe of baby’s back to remove the bulk of the damage. Throw away wet wipe number 2.
12. Remove nasty poopy clothes, careful to keep it from smearing in baby’s hair, and attempt to find a safe corner of changing table where baby won’t be able to cling to, grab and rub all over himself, or kick poopy clothes onto the wall and/or floor, thus redecorating church bathroom mustard yellow.
13. Place new diaper under baby.
14. Discover that new diaper somehow also has poop on it.
15. Grab another wipe to cleanse the spots of poop from new diaper rather than replace entirely because those suckers cost money.
16. Throw away wipe number 3.
17. Brace oneself and open old diaper. Marvel at the massiveness of what is before you as you reach for another wipe.
    

    I can poop with my eyes closed!

18. Stifle a cry as you realize the wipe bag is now empty.
19. Tell yourself not to worry, as there are wipe sample packs in the diaper bag. Discover that one sample pack was opened some time in the past, like when your seven-year-old was in diapers, but marvel at your ingenuity of keeping the open package inside a ziplock sandwich bag for freshness.
20. Curse your failed “ingenuity” when you notice the wipe is bone dry as you throw it away.
21. Find two more unopened packs of single wipe samples, praising the heavens that these, surely, will still have juice left in them.
22. Tear first package open, remove wipe, and hang head in despair that this wipe, too, is dry.
23. Knowing that throwing it away is not an option, dash to the sink and wet it. Hope no one enters the bathroom at that precise moment to admonish you for leaving your baby unattended on the changing table because, as everyone knows, a baby that isn’t watched at every second will stumble across the Red Button that launches all our nukes to start WW3.
24. A seventy-something year-old woman enters. Suck in a breath as you realize you’re in for it now since you’re one whole step away from baby, but relax in pleasant surprise as all she says to you is, “Awwwhhhh… It’s been so long since my children were that young.” Look at her and smile. “Treasure every moment,” she tells you. Including this one? You think but instead say, “Thank you,” wondering if that’s even the correct response in this situation.
25. Proceed with caution on your task while noting that the woman left the bathroom without even using it. Did the poonami scare her off?
    

    Yeah, I did that.

26. While wiping baby’s bottom, pray like you’ve never prayed before that no one walks in and mentions the word “fountain.” Toss wipe and old diaper defiled beyond all recognition into handy trashcan, feeling sympathy for whichever poor soul is tasked with emptying said trash can.
27. Remove your last remaining sample wipe from its otherwise unopened package and find that it, too, is dry. Dash over to the sink again and return to completely cleanse baby’s poopbesmothered back.
28. Fish spare outfit out of diaper bag: a blue onesie with a yellow VW bug decked with a surf board on top, aka, the perfectly appropriate outfit for church.
29. Toss nasty yellow-stained first outfit into plastic bag usually reserved for soiled diapers when changing baby in the car, and see a suspicious orange spot on portable changing pad. When baby moves his leg across the spot and it smears, your suspicions are confirmed. With no wipes left, you resort to wetting a paper towel to clean baby’s leg and the changing pad.
30. Pick up adorable, now-clean baby and, one-handed, reassemble all remaining changing accoutrements back into diaper bag. Return to your seat with head held high as though nothing amiss occurred because truly, that was just another day in the life of a mom.

A cleaning lady’s nightmare

My twin boys were nine weeks old when my husband and I took a trip to visit my grandmother. One night, when we were staying in a hotel, I began to change a poopy diaper on the bed. Not thinking, I didn’t lay a clean diaper under the dirty one, and my son

Shiver me timbers! It’s a diaper emergency!

One time, when I had just three, ages 4, 2, and 8 months, I went home to my parents without my husband.  I was a little nervous about the 4 hour drive with the little ones, but I knew I could make it without a stop. Or so I thought.

My youngest got a stinky diaper and proceeded to stick her hand in it (it was summer and she was in a romper).  It smelled, and she was dirty… and she was a thumb sucker!  I pulled quickly off the highway in order to see to this poop-tastrophe. As I was changing the diaper in the car in the parking lot of a gas station, my oldest started pointing out the car door and saying, “It’s a pirate! It’s a pirate!”  I said something like, “Um hmm, that’s nice.” But she got more excited saying, “Mommy, the pirate!” so I turned around.  

Small children can be the best teachers of comic timing in the world.

Witness my daughter, Leah.  One day I was changing my son Eli’s diaper.  My son Eli had a terrible habit.  Every time anybody would open his diaper, his hands would immediately proceed down to his, um, well his boy parts.  This was especially annoying when he had pooped in his diaper.  When it was possible, we would always make sure to have two people to change him.  One to hold Eli’s hands and one on the business end.

But that was not always possible.

Once when I was alone with the children, Eli needed a change.  I got to work on his diaper and he immediately got to work on his boy parts.  In frustration I yelled, “Stop playing with yourself.”

With impeccable timing, my two and a half year old daughter joined in, “It’s not a toy!”

Ari, father of 4, author of Bias Incident: The World’s Most Politically Incorrect Novel.