Have you experienced changing diapers? Do you remember your most “challenging” diaper change experience? . . . I do! It happened when my son was exactly 1 month old, and sadly, I didn’t have the energy that day to celebrate it like I’d hoped.

The day started with me super exhausted coz my son didn’t let me sleep the night before, which was going on forever. My husband had already gone to work (it was 2018) so it was just me and my son at home. I was giving my son frozen breastmilk in the morning to use up what was left from his NICU days, but there were no clean bottles so I had to wash. Irritated (again, no sleep), I washed the bottles and prepared his milk while carrying him as he won’t stop crying. After feeding, he slept, so I put him on the low bed in our washitsu, and thought to skip breakfast and just sleep with him. But the minute I lied down, my son pooped. I said to myself, “Ok, clean it up ‘really quickly’ then sleep”, so I cleaned and changed him. But as I was putting on the clean diaper, he made a second installment which came out wildly and flew to my shirt and arms. Eew! I reached for the baby wipes but realized I’ve used them all up, and there were no spare in the diaper change basket! Argh! I had some stock in the walk-through closet which was 2 meters away, but was worried that if I put my son’s legs down, he might move around and touch the poop. But I didn’t have any choice… So I ran to get the stock baby wipes, ran back and checked my son’s legs — no poop — safe!

I needed to open the pack (it’s a 2-pack baby wipes) so I reached for the cutter at the usual place… No cutter! “Darn it! Why wouldn’t my husband put things back!?” frustration to the max! But I remembered we had scissors in the cabinet on the other side of the bed, so while holding my son’s legs with one hand, I fully extended my body to reach the cabinet with the other hand, and took the scissors. It has a cover so I bit the cover to take it off, and cut the pack. Finally, I had my baby wipes! I wiped my son, then myself, and while changing him to a clean diaper, he suddenly peed… like a fountain! (I’m not making this up, this really happened and I messaged this story to my husband that day.) The pee wet my clothes, and the sides and straps of the clean diaper but fortunately, I was using a big size dog potty pad (as a poop changing mat — totally recommended) so the bed where I was changing my son was safe from it all. Phew!

So I cleaned my son again, and changed his diaper, for the third time. Of course he woke up with all the fuss so I had to rock him to sleep again. But my clothes were dirty and I wanted to wash myself before changing to clean ones, so I just took them off, and in my underwear, put my son to sleep. After he slept, I cleaned up the mess, took a shower, put my clothes in the washer, and thought, “Now, I could really ‘finally’ sleep”.

I went back to the room and saw Roomba (iRobot vacuum cleaner) cleaning. I forgot it was scheduled to clean from 10am. I got worried about the noise but was relieved that my son didn’t wake up. I sat on the bed and was about to lie down when I saw some brown spots on the tatami floor near Roomba… OMG! Tatami is a soft rush straw-woven mat used as flooring material in Japan. It’s woven! So the poop surely had sunk in the weaves… Crap! And, since Roomba went pass the poop, it had most likely scattered the poop all over. Saiaku! I quickly stopped Roomba, checked the mobile app to see how far it has cleaned from where the brown spots were, and wiped the entire area with antibacterial floor wipes. It was double effort coz I had to make sure to wipe in between the weaves too. Then I also cleaned Roomba and washed every part that was washable.

After all was done, I went back to the room again, and my son has woken up for his next feeding. He was crying… and I cried with him. LOL!

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*washitsu (和室, Japanese), Japanese-style room (usually with tatami mat flooring and sliding doors)
*saiaku (最悪, Japanese), the worst (situation)