The Diapers

As his mama, I was afraid of those first few diaper changes. I was afraid of what I would find...meconium...its this black tarry stuff that newborns poop, not only that... I was nervous about messing with his belly button...or rather my umbilical cord...I didn't want to disturb him, didn't want him to get a diaper rash and I didn't want to get peed on...I kept thinking is the diaper on to loose...too tight. My saving grace were the diapers with that fabulous line in the front that change color when it's time to change diapers. I did my best those first days in the hospital, in my fatigue and with swollen fingers. Luckily Samuel has the best daddy in the world, as soon as we were all home, he took over diaper duty...a fair exchange of responsibility (I take care of what goes in and he takes care of what goes out:). David and I kept excellent records of his poop and pee, to make sure he was gaining weight and wasn't dehydrated. Never had we been so excited about bowel movements and I was amazed each time David would come back to report yet another exciting color of poop. I still can't get how there can be such an array of colors from milk or how it could be seedy!?!

Since we were pregnant... almost everyone with kids told us about the infamous "blowouts", we weren't quite sure what that would be like....until an outing to Target...we heard the now normal gurgles and rumbles from our adorable little boy and when it came time to change him, David delightfully picked up our son, only to find "mustard" all over his car seat!! so we thought oh sorry baby that was our fault we must have put the diaper on to loose...I proceeded to checkout and David headed for the Family restroom...not long after I caught up with them only to find wipes thrown about, my son half naked, and David yelling !paper towels, paper towels! the "condiments" kept coming...and we were now running low on wipes. Sure enough just as David had pratically bathed him and was getting on a new diaper Sam tinkled all over himself and poor David...it must have been cold for Sam...needless to say after plenty of laughs and two outfits later we managed to get out of Target. A pristine little boy and his disheveled parents.

Now like I have mentioned, since we've come home from the hospital David as been on diaper duty. Along with diaper changes, David was taking great care of Sam's cord. This early on, it was seemingly rewarding because day to day there were changes, the rainbow of colors and texture changes and really they don't stink...so at the end of two weeks all the excitment was beginning to taper off. Besides doing this noble task out of pure love, David's only motivation was the inevitable day that Samuel's umbilical cord would fall of. For about 20 days David was the only one to have changed Sam's diaper until July 24th, Sam's grandma (my mom) thought it would be nice to change Sam and whisked him away without out a word to anyone (she's discreet like that) and you guessed it...sure enough when the diaper came off...at the very tippy top came the umbilical cord stump. She squealed with excitment and we all ran to see what the fuss was about (me and David, my dad, my brother eric and his family). David and I were proud parents, we took a picture and I felt kinda bad we had "missed the moment"...but those feelings quickly passed...as David soon informed me...after the cord falls off...there is still some cleaning and caring to be had with that cute belly button...even after a few days David said he was cleaning out what he thought was dried up blood and stuff... then he reassured me that in fact our son had a inny. Yippee!

I'm sure, as much as we care for our son, these days won't be the only ones where we'll fuss over his pee and poop, we hope he is never ill, and we look forward to potty training when he's ready :)