You have a secret you despise to confess. You have never changed a diaper successfully. Relax. You are in good company; lots of new parents get their first tries at diapering on their own first child. The learning curve to changing your baby’s diaper is a fast process, but don’t expect perfection right away. You are bound to have some leaky ones, some crooked ones and to experience initiation—a nice spray of urine during a diapering if you have a boy. As revealed by babycorner.com, here are the tricks
Gather your supplies and prepare your diapering space: The first step is buy a premium diaper. Get a clean diaper or two ready, have wipes or wet cloth nearby, a changing pad or table, and diaper rash cream if needed.
Lay baby on changing area: If you’re doing the diaper change on a bed, crib or floor, then put down a changing pad or a blanket that can be laundered so you don’t mess up the place.
Remove baby’s clothes from at least the bottom: You may need to remove the entire outfit, depending on the type of clothing and the extent of the wetness or soiling.
Wiping: Using a wipe or clean wet cloth, wipe the baby’s diaper area, making sure especially with baby girls to wipe front to back to avoid causing infection. Be sure to get into the nooks and crannies around those chubby thighs.
Change the diaper: remove the dirty or wet diaper from beneath baby and slide an opened clean one underneath while holding up baby’s rear end in your hand.
Apply any diaper rash cream to baby’s bottom now: Doctors advise against using powder as it can get into baby’s tender lungs. Use a wipe to remove the excess cream from baby and your fingers.
Line it up! Line up the clean diaper so it’s on even and not too high or low on baby’s bottom. This will take practice too, but you will master it in no time.
Fasten the diaper. If using a cloth diaper, you will need to attach it with a diaper pin. If pinning, don’t panic, just keep a hand between the pin and the baby’s skin at all times so if anyone gets stuck, it’s you.
Disposal: Throw out diaper, or toss cloth diaper in pail. If using cloth, you may want to rinse in the toilet first, depending on the extent of the mess.
Dress your child. If you’re lucky, it will be the same outfit as when you started the diaper change. If you habitually let the diaper be too loose, you will have leaking.
Wash your hands.
This is a crucial step. You can get yourself and others quite sick if you skip this step.