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I had read so many casual internet comments about infants being horrible and how unbelievably difficult it was that by the time I actually had kids, it seemed almost mild by comparison.

It's not an easy thing, but some of the histrionic claims about child raising on the internet are really out there. It's no wonder kids are horrified by the thought.

> But as any parent knows, changing nappies is really one of the easier parts of looking after babies and toddlers.

For sure, probably because stinky diapers are visceral but psychological challenges aren’t, yet I think most parents would agree about having to dig far deeper into our inner resolve to deal with age-appropriate behavioral issues.

When I had my first, she pooped in her diaper as I was holding her at the dinner table.

Then I looked up and my mother came running towards me, all excited to be able to change a diaper for the first time in seven years.

> who remark how the thought of changing nappies horrifying and a really big deal

It’s a similar experience to changing parents diapers when you are an adult and they are end of life. Seems horrific, then you just do it.

A soldier adjusts to the horrors of war in the same way, fwiw. ;)

Eh. Apart from sleep/scheduling it's probably the worst part about babies. We just had our first boy and we're adjusting to the whole penis spraying piss everywhere...thing. I didn't realize just how far they could spray. Also, somehow the back of his clothes keep getting wet while he's fully dressed in and in a diaper which completely boggles my mind.

Personally I'm really bad with smells, though. Even with hundreds (thousands?) of diapers changed I still really have to focus on not losing my lunch on the bad smelling ones.

Toddlers...yeah.

Nappies are no big deal but I honestly think it's simply some switch in the parents' brains that goes "let's not worry too much about this, it needs doing". You filter out the gross and you simply do it on autopilot.

I sometimes wonder about the people who must clean messy public restrooms. All of the gross, none of the "but it's for the sake of a cute human that I love".

Agreed. Baby stage has sleep interruptions but is otherwise super easy. Changing diapers is easy. Feeding is easy. Trying to figure out why they're crying is easy (almost always hungry, tired or poopy). The problems start for real when babies start crawling, walking, having opinions and talking.

Our son is 3.5 years old and it's super fun and rewarding but I'm not going to lie, it's hard to get lectured by a toddler about the difference between a Majungosaurus and Carnotaurus or a T-Rex and Giganotosaurus. Or have him ask me why the Velociraptors in Jurassic Park don't look like the paleontologists' current consensus on what they looked like... Or the million other super specific questions I need to come up with answers to (and I don't really want to discourage him as my parents did me). So even though he can currently use the washroom 100% independently, infant stage was still 1000x easier.

Was just talking to my wife about this yesterday. Our son is 10 months old so we're still in the diaper stage, and it's really not a big deal. Since disposable diapers and baby wipes became a thing, not really sure why anyone complains about it.

Compared to trying for hours to get him to sleep, or dealing with the sheer panic we felt when we had to have him rushed to the hospital, a poopy diaper is nothing.

It also helps that newborn poop doesn't smell particularly bad. It only starts smelling like poop when they start eating real food.

Before I had children I've never even think changing nappies is a big deal, I've noticed the movie/TV show mentioning the sleep and didn't realize how bad is it, you have practically no proper sleep for a year, that would be the main reason why I didn't want third child.

> But as any parent knows, changing nappies is really one of the easier parts of looking after babies and toddlers.

When you have twins, or triplets, or more... Nothing at all is easy. Unless you're privileged (or have help), their early years become your living life's only work.

> ... encountered non-parents ...

One reason why I hold anxiety for infants at orphanages or under care.

We did the same thing, more to avoid throwing away the plastic waste and keeping things reusable than out of any paranoia about chemicals.

But they worked well. We just did laundry every day for the first year and a half. Whether that's a net positive for ecological impact, or a negative is an open question.

Is there a pre-cleaning step at all? Or do you toss them right in to the washer? Do they get their own load?

We did as well. We were fortunate to have a good diaper service in the neighborhood. I think it was less expensive than disposables.

You were definitely worth an environmental catastrophe, but your mom wasn’t so sure your brother was worth it. I hope you hold that over him.

Yeah the environmentalists are always happy to make other’s life harder (for the nature) but not their own.

Checking to see if you're able to fit two fingers underneath a dressing to make sure it's not too tight and won't cut off circulation is standard practice in health care; not just diapers.

Favorite memory of diaper genie was after the pail is full, and you slice off the captured diapers, was slinging the long sausage link like string of diapers into the apartment dumpster. Ah the memories

Thanks for the link! I've never seen this documented in a wiki format on the internet before, truly cool.

> plagues anyone who has many battery-powered appliances

costco sells these AA+AAA coast lithium ion batteries that are 1.5v and seem to have high capacity and long charge time.

Seems better than either duracell disposables or the nimh rechargables that I use.

FWIw I’ve had no problems with smells from our Ubbi Steel diaper pail which uses regular garbage bags. (Do use thicker bags though.)

There was no feeling like the night my son started crawling on his own and we suddenly realized everything needed to be baby proofed even more.

Suddenly you couldn't put him down and he'd roughly stay wherever you left him.

With the hope of receiving a reply with proof....

There is absolutely no way a 3 month old is potty trained. As in, the 3 month old infant can communicate and use a toilet. They likely can't even hold their head up at that age.

https://www.babycenter.com/baby/diapering/infant-potty-train... indicates that a potty can be introduced from 4- to 6-months old. Potty trained by 18 months is much more reasonable.

That's what we did. Our baby was doing the well known spraying right after removing the diaper the first few days. So we decided to put him on the potty on his second week following advices of parents who did that too: timing, sound cues... In his second month, he already understood the patterns. Since then, he will sometimes pee in the diaper as we are not doing the zero diaper method and he understood it's not that uncomfortable to pee in the diaper. He will poop in the diaper once a week when we are too distracted or when he is having digestive issues with a newly introduced food. No smelly trash, never waking up with a diaper full of poop, no red skin, happier baby. Highly recommended if you have the right environment to implement this method.

Have you had success with this? I was aware of this when I became a parent but it was impossible to find the space or energy amongst everything else.

Also, where in Africa?

I read several books on this topic but had no luck until about six months in. I also never tried the bottomless for a day or week approach so

This has interesting side effects below freezing temps. Icicle babies don't smell at all until they thaw.

I used cloth diapers to great effect with my two kids. We'd use disposable ones when going out, but for around the house (and at daycare, bless them!) we were able to use cloth. I think we saved a pile of money, and yes, they were both trained pretty early.

Nobody wants them, even free... I guess I'll just throw them all out eventually, I've offered to new parents and they're all horrified by the concept

Our baby was capable of sending these signals when she was a few weeks. So most pees she does hanging above the sink. This saves so many diapers, crazy. And much more comfortable for her to never have a wet butt, not even a minute. Would recommend!

I think within the next few months we can actually get her to go to the potty by herself. She’s 15 months now.

This industry wasn’t just good. It did destroy babies sensitivity to soiling.

Agreed - like the sibling comment, we also used cloth diapers with our two kids. They were actually great. The ones we had were basically two-part construction: there was an outer shell with adjustable snaps for appropriate sizing, and an inner liner that absorbed the moisture. Both were easily washable. Like other parents we knew who did this, we added a small hand-held sprayer / bidet wand to one of our toilets and used it to hose off the diaper and liners. We would then toss them in the washing machine. I think these also provided more cushion for the kids’ bottoms and they both ended up sitting and scooting on them pretty fast. Also like the others here, we used disposables on the go / on vacation. Just my two cents, but we loved our cloth diapers.

We had cloth diaper service for our two children, where they'd deliver a huge stack of nice soft thick cotton squares, and take away the dirty ones, once a week. They barely smelled, especially in the beginning before solid foods start. They were excellent as burpy cloths on the shoulder too. Disposable diapers were more excellent for outside, and at later times for sleeping through the night when we realized that the absorbency was better for sleep. We definitely felt better about the environment with the reusable cloth ones.

I thought "Elimination Communication" was the technical term for Trump tweeting from the toilet.

I use cloth diapers, but modern disposable diapers can hold a lot, a lot of pee. Significantly more than any cloth diapers can. This means a lot less blowouts with disposables.

> I can see only good reason for cloth being health reasons since there were cases when materials inside irritated babies skin sometimes, even famous brands had this issue and you have to figure out which brand works best for your kid.

The large amount of plastic in disposable ones seems like another mark against them health-wise.

That site is worth visiting just for the wavy scrolling marquee text that's actually selectable. Very satisfying!

it is recommended (search, you'll see) that at home you don't wash your underwear with your other clothes because there is a nonnegligible amount of fecal matter and associated bacteria remaining after washing.

extending that notion to nappies being community washed in large vats (separated by mesh bags and kept separable?) is horrifying. I suppose they put in some chlorine bleach to sterilize? Still, chlorine bleach might whiten the masticated corn kernels but...

Asking the hard hitting questions.

It was always implied in the expression "cut the crap"

Hmm, I thought the other poop knife apocryphal story was older, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X1... but the oldest reference I could find there was 1953, while the Spock book is older.