Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER.
I changed my first nappy at the age of 40.
I managed to dodge and avoid changing nappies by craftily concocting a story that I evolved of a number of years. Despite having navigated the baby and toddler years of 3 nieces, a nephew and countless friends with babies, I managed to never, not once change a nappy. I don’t recall how I came up with my excuse, but at the time I thought it was a bit of genius. It went something along the lines of…
“Scott, can you change Chloe’s nappy?”
“Well, Kathy, you know I’d love to change my baby niece’s nappy, but you also know I’ve never changed a nappy before and as I’ve told you I want to save that unique experience for my own first child. Would you want to take that bonding experience away from me?”
The answer was always “I’ll do it then”.
This worked for many years, as four babies became toddlers and then outgrew nappies. They were teenagers before my wife and I had our first child when I was 40 years old.
In writing this, it perhaps strikes me for the first time that what I’m about to tell you might be a bit of karma.
I can’t say changing this particular nappy was definitely the first, but it was one of the early ones and certainly the most memorable.
Our first child, a little girl, came into the world at 32 weeks, so spent the first 5 weeks of her life in hospital. When we finally got her home she seemed even more special and precious because of the extra wait.
We had a great change table in Amelia’s bedroom which sat in the corner of the room. My Dad had made it for one of his earlier grandkids and it had been passed around the family over the years.
As I assume is the case with most new babies and new parents you tend to do everything together. We bathed her together, we fed her together, if she woke we would both get up (at least for the first few weeks).
So, I was standing at the end of the change table. Amelia was lying on it with her feet resting toward my large round stomach. My wife was watching from the side of the change table. I removed Amelia’s nappy, gratefully realising that it was just wet and not dirty. As I folded up the nappy to put it in the bin – it happened. She farted and shit at the same time. It was projectile, landing all over my considerable stomach, up my chest and on my shoulder. My wife laughed so hard she almost wet herself. I was in absolute shock. Amelia lay there oblivious to what had just happened. My wife was in tears with laughter and pain at the same time due to the recent birth and loss of muscle strength. This all in-turn made her laugh more, which made her almost wet herself again, which made her laugh again. She was laughing too hard to get me a cloth or something to wipe myself down.
At this stage I could feel the poo going cold as the moisture soaked through my shirt onto my skin. To say the least, it wasn’t pleasant. As I started to lift a particularly wet patch off my skin, Amelia farted again. I instinctively threw my hands out like a karate block, towards her little backside. This time it was just a fart. Thankfully.
It is amazing the poo, wee and vomit stories that new parents swap. We’ve spoken about a range of things in those early parenting days we never dream of discussing.
Since then I’ve changed my share of nappies for both our children and was pondering as I started to write this that it may be time to change my earlier story.
It could go something along the lines of… “I haven’t changed a nappy in years and I think the next one should be for my first grandchild. You wouldn’t want to take that experience away from me would you”… Or am I asking for more karma?