Changing Time Basics

I was ten days overdue with Baba G, and in the weeks leading up to his arrival I pretty much went crazy doing two things: 1) cleaning, and 2) shopping for random stuff online. These are two things I don't usually do, believe it or not (ashamed about the first and happy about the second).

During my nesting-fueled shopping spree, I started reading comments on Amazon.com about a ton of baby products. I think maybe I was looking into what the best kind of wipes would be (I was extremely paranoid that everything would give Baba G a rash... yet nothing has so far (knock on wood)) when I came across a page for these things: Medline Disposable Washcloths, also known as "dry wipes." Disposable Washcloths? Dry wipes? I had never heard of such things. So I read what parents before me had to say, and it turns out that dry wipes are what's used in hospitals for newborns. Instead of Pampers or Huggies-branded pre-moistened wipes (by the way, spell-check just wanted that word to be "pee-moistened," I kid you not) on fresh-to-the-world babies, nurses will just put a little water on these generic disposable washcloth thingies to help you clean up your bundle of joy during those extra-gross first few diaper changes.

So I went ahead and bought a case of these dry wipes before Baba G arrived so that I'd be ready with something that shouldn't have caused him any sort of rash. They didn't, and we continued to wet them with water for the first month or so (then we'd stack a bunch of them in our wipes warmer, which I'll write about another day) and they worked splendidly. But eventually it became too much of a production to go to the bathroom, wet the wipes in the sink, come back and lay them out on the Pack 'n Play changer and THEN get to Baba G's business. So we now use Pampers Sensitive wipes and they've been just fine. However, the Medline Disposable Washcloths are still in high demand—they're what we use to cover BG's nether regions during changing time instead of the Peepee Teepee. They're also great to quickly wipe up anything that's spilled on the floor (spit-up, mainly) or dry off BG if the wipes seemed overly wet, or if he's got drool all over his face, or whatever. Most of the time (like in this pose) he swipes them from my strategically placed position and tries to chew on them.

Got it! Hmm, not so tasty.

What's that crazy blue thing UNDER Baba G, you ask? It's the next thing I was going to write about: Champion's Blue Disposable Underpads. Yes, people, they're for incontinence. But who is more incontinent than a baby? No one.

So in my Amazon Fever I bought a case of these things, too, because everyone on the site was going on and on about how they use them instead of more expensive changing-pad covers that need to be, you know, washed and stuff. I have not regretted my purchase, and in fact have ordered a second case in the past month. Here's little teeny BG on one, pre-change:

Yep, I'm the same baby as that chunk in the pic above.

One of these pads lasts for multiple changings—it all depends on how, um, intense any given changing is. The white part of the pad is actually a sort of cotton filling that's under a very thin barrier that's hard to see in this picture. Eventually, because of the wiggliness of BG, that white filling will get all separated and chunky and then even if the pad is still clean overall, I'll toss it.

Here's the BEFORE set-up of our Pack 'n Play's changing station:

Bring it on.

I won't horrify you with the AFTER.

The bottom line: I'm really glad that I found the dry wipes and changing pads because we use them on a multiple-times-daily basis and they're energy and time savers. The dry wipes are $20.50 for 500 and the underpads are about $28 for 100. Right now Amazon has a "buy them together" discount, because there are obviously a lot of other new parents out there who've realized how much these two products rock!