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I enjoyed the article. Nappies are very impressive and something I never really thought about before becoming a parent. Reminds me of something I often slightl

I enjoyed the article. Nappies are very impressive and something I never really thought about before becoming a parent. Reminds me of something I often slightly chuckle about as a parent. I’ve often encountered non-parents, particularly teenagers, who remark how the thought of changing nappies horrifying and a really big deal. But as any parent knows, changing nappies is really one of the easier parts of looking after babies and toddlers.

Andrex 5mo ago
A soldier adjusts to the horrors of war in the same way, fwiw. ;)
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- mcphage 5mo ago
  Oh, there’s definitely hard parts of having kids—but changing diapers isn’t really one of them.
  - itsboring 5mo ago
    I agree, I never found changing diapers that difficult or bad. I was also hardened by years of chronic insomnia so the sleep disruption wasn't a big deal, I took most of the night-time duties to let mom sleep. The thing I remember being most annoyed about was cleaning all the bottles. That was really obnoxious.
  - bardak 5mo ago
    Honestly the hardest part of changing diapers is when they get bigger and insists on wiggling everywhere while you are changing them
  - yen223 5mo ago
    The truly hard part is putting them to sleep
    - com2kid 5mo ago
      My mutant power is the ability to put babies to sleep. Before I had my own I'd put other people's kids babies to sleep easy peasy. It's something I've been able to do since I was a teenager.
    - cozzyd 5mo ago
      Or waking them up for school... (A correlated problem)
    - n4r9 5mo ago
      At 8pm, and then 10pm, then 10:30pm, then 12am, then 2am, then 3:30am, then 5am.
      - bluehatbrit 5mo ago
        As an expectant first time parent, this is the bit that I'm bracing for most.
        bregma 5mo ago
        Relax: it only lasts a few months. Rarely more than 60 or 70.
        yen223 5mo ago
        The big tip I have for you is to understand wake windows. Babies can get too tired to sleep(!) so you need to make sure to put them to sleep roughly 1-1.5 hours after they last wake up. Highly recommend getting a sleep tracker app.
        munchbunny 5mo ago
        It’s rough at first but you will learn the baby’s rhythms and preferences. If you track their sleep and wake up times (I did it the old fashioned way in a notebook) you’ll see a pattern emerge pretty quickly, and then it gets easier because you will figure out how to work with it. Every baby is different so most of the advice you find won’t work, but if you try enough things you’ll eventually find something that works consistently. Or you might just luck out and get a good sleeper.
munchbunny 5mo ago
> 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.
- Neikius 5mo ago
  I find smelly things easy to deal with as the solution is clear and the path to it is simple. Other problems may not have a clear path to solution and are not as simple.
ignoramous 5mo ago
> 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.
Aurornis 5mo ago
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.
- arjie 5mo ago
  One similar funny experience I had was that I've never had any trouble with poop or diapers, but a family member said "Just wait till she starts eating solids!" and then she started eating solids and there was no step function in experience. Changing her was still the same.
  - hattmall 5mo ago
    My kids were considerably larger and smellier when they started eating solids, but still nothing crazy. Changing diapers is basically nothing, but having all the stuff that they need related to diapers and just being at the age when they are in diapers is mildly challenging if you travel a lot.
  - green7ea 5mo ago
    I had a similar experience to your family member. I have a 2 year old and when she started eating solids, the smell got to me much more than before. Still not too hard but much harder in my case ;-).
  - lukan 5mo ago
    Well, the smell definitely changes, but otherwise it was obviously the same. But like it was mentioned already, changing diapers remains the easy part .
- acuozzo 5mo ago
  > It's not an easy thing, but some of the histrionic claims about child raising on the internet are really out there. Have you considered that objectively difficult infants/toddlers/children exist? Children with O.D.D., for instance, show symptoms early, but diagnosis usually doesn't come until much later. Perhaps the comments you came across online were from the parents of those kids. -A parent of a very challenging child with Level II Autism
le-mark 5mo ago
> 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.
- jrumbut 5mo ago
  Babies are easier because they leave the faintest stain on the diaper the first week or so. Then it becomes more but not much scent, like a training period. And it's really only 4-6 months that it begins to get foul. Another advantage for the baby side is a hack I can't believe more people don't do. Just notice when they make a very recognizable face or start grunting then hold them over the toilet. False positives are no big deal (just a fun change of scenery for the baby), for false negatives you change the baby as normal.
  - appplication 5mo ago
    Easier the first week? Have you forgotten the meconium days? I mean it’s nothing crazy but that stuff was so sticky. We thankfully didn’t have any total blowouts but talking to parents who do it sounded pretty rough to clean up comparatively.
    - jrumbut 5mo ago
      Maybe ours was weird then? We just didn't have much volume of that. No amount of it is pleasant but it still felt, even at the time, like training wheels on a diaper.
      - manwe150 5mo ago
        Our first kid’s poops came out with velocity. For the first month or two, every poop change was also a full outfit change. We are very glad that our second kid’s poops come out at a normal speed, so that it is just the normal amount of drool which necessitates the new outfits instead.
  - 5mo ago
gwbas1c 5mo ago
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.
madcaptenor 5mo ago
It also helps that newborn poop doesn't smell particularly bad. It only starts smelling like poop when they start eating real food.
scuff3d 5mo ago
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.
the_af 5mo ago
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".
- pmulv 5mo ago
  I used to clean bathrooms in a Manhattan shopping mall. I now have a tiny human. Cleaning the bathrooms was much, much more disgusting. It has been nearly 15 years and I still think about the horrible things I witnessed at that job. Changing my daughter’s diaper doesn’t even register to me as a gross thing to deal with.
  - skrebbel 5mo ago
    Any particularly uh, pungent anecdotes to share?
    - pmulv 5mo ago
      It was mostly things that you would expect, given the job and location. People doing their business where they shouldn’t, mostly, but also sex, drug use, bleeding, shaving, vomit, flushing syringes and condoms down toilets and clogging them, etc. The most disgusting one I personally had to deal with involved finger painting with feces and menstrual blood. This isn’t really gross but my supervisor discovered an OD death in one of the bathrooms one morning and I’m grateful I never had to see that because I’d probably be afraid to discover another each morning if I had. That job offered me a lot of perspective and I’m happy I worked it but it was also frequently disgusting!
- wolrah 5mo ago
  > 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". I worked "maintenance" at a local outlet mall back in college so I was that guy, and after the first couple of times it was just a matter of "this needs to be done, I'm the guy who does it" turning my brain off and getting the job done. I remember basically nothing from those evenings, I would just put my headphones on and mentally be somewhere else. It was a shit job in a lot of ways, figuratively and literally, but at the same time I had amazing work/life balance. From the moment I clocked out until the next time I clocked in what happened at the outlet mall was not my problem in any way and I didn't have to think about it at all.
Auracle 5mo ago
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.
- wombatpm 5mo ago
  If you have a pee-er, the make a pee-pee tee-pee to place over the wenis to protect from errant spays.
- lurking_swe 5mo ago
  > I didn't realize just how far they could spray. i’m assuming you’re the mom? ;) Yes the pressure starts off strong, can easily fly onto their face lol. happened to me…fun times. > somehow the back of his clothes keep getting wet while he's fully dressed in and in a diaper which completely boggles my mind. We just solved this recently with our baby boy. I can try to offer some tips. He likely needs a different diaper size, or (more likely), his penis isn’t correctly facing downward when putting the diaper on. 1st secure one side, and before you secure the other, peek at his penis (looking into the diaper from the side - near his hips). Make sure it’s pointed straight down and adjust if necessary. then quickly strap the other side. Basically you want the diaper to gently and firmly keep that penis pointed down all day. When boys are about to pee, the penis becomes briefly erect. If the diaper is not firmly holding that penis down, the penis can easily drift sideways and shoot urine in a weird direction. When this happens the urine can leak around the hips and up the back - instead of going into the absorbent pad. A quick test - when you change his diaper, is his penis still pointed down? If not then that’s the issue. If it is, try other troubleshooting steps. Girl diaper changes are “easy” in this regard.
  - dismalaf 5mo ago
    > Yes the pressure starts off strong, can easily fly onto their face lol. Into their face? Try onto the ceiling or a 6-8ft arc in any direction. One of my coworkers warned me so I usually had the situation under control but my wife had only ever changed girls (young cousins and kids she babysat), thought she was prepared but wasn't.
Markoff 5mo ago
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.
dismalaf 5mo ago
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.
- n4r9 5mo ago
  > Feeding is easy. Mileage may definitely vary on that one.
- bregma 5mo ago
  > Baby stage has sleep interruptions but is otherwise super easy. Your assertion does not correlate with my lived experience. But dirty diapers was definitely not the biggest issue.
- Neikius 5mo ago
  Haha I love explaining things. It gets challenging and sometimes you have to stop the train... What kills me is when I have to convince them of sometand they just are incapable of listening to any kind of reasoning. Sometimes you can let it slide but some issues are just too big like road crossing for example.
dlenski 5mo ago
Same. This is the kind of HN content that I'm here for. > But as any parent knows, changing nappies is really one of the easier parts of looking after babies and toddlers. Agreed. I tell friends that, for me, changing diapers is much less frustrating and gross than watching my toddler feed himself.

Andrex 5mo ago

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

deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
mcphage 5mo ago
Oh, there’s definitely hard parts of having kids—but changing diapers isn’t really one of them.
- itsboring 5mo ago
  I agree, I never found changing diapers that difficult or bad. I was also hardened by years of chronic insomnia so the sleep disruption wasn't a big deal, I took most of the night-time duties to let mom sleep. The thing I remember being most annoyed about was cleaning all the bottles. That was really obnoxious.
- bardak 5mo ago
  Honestly the hardest part of changing diapers is when they get bigger and insists on wiggling everywhere while you are changing them
- yen223 5mo ago
  The truly hard part is putting them to sleep
  - com2kid 5mo ago
    My mutant power is the ability to put babies to sleep. Before I had my own I'd put other people's kids babies to sleep easy peasy. It's something I've been able to do since I was a teenager.
  - cozzyd 5mo ago
    Or waking them up for school... (A correlated problem)
  - n4r9 5mo ago
    At 8pm, and then 10pm, then 10:30pm, then 12am, then 2am, then 3:30am, then 5am.
    - bluehatbrit 5mo ago
      As an expectant first time parent, this is the bit that I'm bracing for most.
      - bregma 5mo ago
        Relax: it only lasts a few months. Rarely more than 60 or 70.
      - yen223 5mo ago
        The big tip I have for you is to understand wake windows. Babies can get too tired to sleep(!) so you need to make sure to put them to sleep roughly 1-1.5 hours after they last wake up. Highly recommend getting a sleep tracker app.
      - munchbunny 5mo ago
        It’s rough at first but you will learn the baby’s rhythms and preferences. If you track their sleep and wake up times (I did it the old fashioned way in a notebook) you’ll see a pattern emerge pretty quickly, and then it gets easier because you will figure out how to work with it. Every baby is different so most of the advice you find won’t work, but if you try enough things you’ll eventually find something that works consistently. Or you might just luck out and get a good sleeper.

munchbunny 5mo ago

> 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.

Neikius 5mo ago
I find smelly things easy to deal with as the solution is clear and the path to it is simple. Other problems may not have a clear path to solution and are not as simple.

ignoramous 5mo ago

> 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.

Aurornis 5mo ago

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.

arjie 5mo ago
One similar funny experience I had was that I've never had any trouble with poop or diapers, but a family member said "Just wait till she starts eating solids!" and then she started eating solids and there was no step function in experience. Changing her was still the same.
- hattmall 5mo ago
  My kids were considerably larger and smellier when they started eating solids, but still nothing crazy. Changing diapers is basically nothing, but having all the stuff that they need related to diapers and just being at the age when they are in diapers is mildly challenging if you travel a lot.
- green7ea 5mo ago
  I had a similar experience to your family member. I have a 2 year old and when she started eating solids, the smell got to me much more than before. Still not too hard but much harder in my case ;-).
- lukan 5mo ago
  Well, the smell definitely changes, but otherwise it was obviously the same. But like it was mentioned already, changing diapers remains the easy part .
acuozzo 5mo ago
> It's not an easy thing, but some of the histrionic claims about child raising on the internet are really out there. Have you considered that objectively difficult infants/toddlers/children exist? Children with O.D.D., for instance, show symptoms early, but diagnosis usually doesn't come until much later. Perhaps the comments you came across online were from the parents of those kids. -A parent of a very challenging child with Level II Autism

le-mark 5mo ago

> 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.

jrumbut 5mo ago
Babies are easier because they leave the faintest stain on the diaper the first week or so. Then it becomes more but not much scent, like a training period. And it's really only 4-6 months that it begins to get foul. Another advantage for the baby side is a hack I can't believe more people don't do. Just notice when they make a very recognizable face or start grunting then hold them over the toilet. False positives are no big deal (just a fun change of scenery for the baby), for false negatives you change the baby as normal.
- appplication 5mo ago
  Easier the first week? Have you forgotten the meconium days? I mean it’s nothing crazy but that stuff was so sticky. We thankfully didn’t have any total blowouts but talking to parents who do it sounded pretty rough to clean up comparatively.
  - jrumbut 5mo ago
    Maybe ours was weird then? We just didn't have much volume of that. No amount of it is pleasant but it still felt, even at the time, like training wheels on a diaper.
    - manwe150 5mo ago
      Our first kid’s poops came out with velocity. For the first month or two, every poop change was also a full outfit change. We are very glad that our second kid’s poops come out at a normal speed, so that it is just the normal amount of drool which necessitates the new outfits instead.
- 5mo ago

gwbas1c 5mo ago

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.

madcaptenor 5mo ago

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

scuff3d 5mo ago

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.

the_af 5mo ago

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".

pmulv 5mo ago
I used to clean bathrooms in a Manhattan shopping mall. I now have a tiny human. Cleaning the bathrooms was much, much more disgusting. It has been nearly 15 years and I still think about the horrible things I witnessed at that job. Changing my daughter’s diaper doesn’t even register to me as a gross thing to deal with.
- skrebbel 5mo ago
  Any particularly uh, pungent anecdotes to share?
  - pmulv 5mo ago
    It was mostly things that you would expect, given the job and location. People doing their business where they shouldn’t, mostly, but also sex, drug use, bleeding, shaving, vomit, flushing syringes and condoms down toilets and clogging them, etc. The most disgusting one I personally had to deal with involved finger painting with feces and menstrual blood. This isn’t really gross but my supervisor discovered an OD death in one of the bathrooms one morning and I’m grateful I never had to see that because I’d probably be afraid to discover another each morning if I had. That job offered me a lot of perspective and I’m happy I worked it but it was also frequently disgusting!
wolrah 5mo ago
> 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". I worked "maintenance" at a local outlet mall back in college so I was that guy, and after the first couple of times it was just a matter of "this needs to be done, I'm the guy who does it" turning my brain off and getting the job done. I remember basically nothing from those evenings, I would just put my headphones on and mentally be somewhere else. It was a shit job in a lot of ways, figuratively and literally, but at the same time I had amazing work/life balance. From the moment I clocked out until the next time I clocked in what happened at the outlet mall was not my problem in any way and I didn't have to think about it at all.

Auracle 5mo ago

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.

wombatpm 5mo ago
If you have a pee-er, the make a pee-pee tee-pee to place over the wenis to protect from errant spays.
lurking_swe 5mo ago
> I didn't realize just how far they could spray. i’m assuming you’re the mom? ;) Yes the pressure starts off strong, can easily fly onto their face lol. happened to me…fun times. > somehow the back of his clothes keep getting wet while he's fully dressed in and in a diaper which completely boggles my mind. We just solved this recently with our baby boy. I can try to offer some tips. He likely needs a different diaper size, or (more likely), his penis isn’t correctly facing downward when putting the diaper on. 1st secure one side, and before you secure the other, peek at his penis (looking into the diaper from the side - near his hips). Make sure it’s pointed straight down and adjust if necessary. then quickly strap the other side. Basically you want the diaper to gently and firmly keep that penis pointed down all day. When boys are about to pee, the penis becomes briefly erect. If the diaper is not firmly holding that penis down, the penis can easily drift sideways and shoot urine in a weird direction. When this happens the urine can leak around the hips and up the back - instead of going into the absorbent pad. A quick test - when you change his diaper, is his penis still pointed down? If not then that’s the issue. If it is, try other troubleshooting steps. Girl diaper changes are “easy” in this regard.
- dismalaf 5mo ago
  > Yes the pressure starts off strong, can easily fly onto their face lol. Into their face? Try onto the ceiling or a 6-8ft arc in any direction. One of my coworkers warned me so I usually had the situation under control but my wife had only ever changed girls (young cousins and kids she babysat), thought she was prepared but wasn't.

Markoff 5mo ago

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.

dismalaf 5mo ago

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.

n4r9 5mo ago
> Feeding is easy. Mileage may definitely vary on that one.
bregma 5mo ago
> Baby stage has sleep interruptions but is otherwise super easy. Your assertion does not correlate with my lived experience. But dirty diapers was definitely not the biggest issue.
Neikius 5mo ago
Haha I love explaining things. It gets challenging and sometimes you have to stop the train... What kills me is when I have to convince them of sometand they just are incapable of listening to any kind of reasoning. Sometimes you can let it slide but some issues are just too big like road crossing for example.

dlenski 5mo ago

Same. This is the kind of HN content that I'm here for. > But as any parent knows, changing nappies is really one of the easier parts of looking after babies and toddlers. Agreed. I tell friends that, for me, changing diapers is much less frustrating and gross than watching my toddler feed himself.