A few days ago I was walking with my family through a supermarket when I saw a mother taking her son from the ground to bring him close enough, on his back, to sink his nose into his diaper.
This made me think that in my five years as a father I have seen many fathers and mothers using two different methods when it comes to checking the diaper: smell and eye contact.
Then I asked myself what was my preferred method and, really, I cannot opt for one in particular, because I have come to use both, according to the moment or according to the situation.
The power of smell when it comes to detecting dirty diapers
Smell is a wonderful tool that many parents discard, but it helps a lot for what facets. There are parents with a better sense of smell than others, and I say it with knowledge of cause because my wife sometimes tells me “she has screwed up”, and I ask her surprised “how do you know?”, Receiving a “is it that I don't you smell?". And the fact is that no, in the distance I am bad tracker, so neither short nor lazy, more than once I have taken the child at the height of my head, as if I were going to sit on my shoulders, stopping the maneuver in the specific point to lift the nose, press it against his ass, and aspire like a good mountaineer who reaches the top appreciating the effort made and thanking the pure air around him.
The method It is reliable, but it is not definitive, because in many cases false positives are achieved. You are convinced that there is matter there that needs your wise intervention, you go to the closet for a diaper, the changing table, the wipes and a plastic bag and when you ride the paraphernalia the child begins to complain. He contours, tries to escape, cries ... you are convinced that he is shit: “Come on, wait, I don't take anything. What do you want me to leave you there all day with the shit stuck? ” So you insist, you exercise some mental strength and some physical strength, you are looking for something to entertain him for the duration of the operation and when you finally take off his diaper, plas !, click… It was a pedet. Then comes the “oh, son, if you already told me, that you had no… sorry… Hala! Keep up with what you were. ”
A picture is worth more ... than a thousand smells
The other option is the definitive test: visual check. It is a 100% reliable test, although it is more expensive than the previous one because you have to do maneuvers with your hands, separating the pants and opening the frog or the underwear, along with the diaper, enough to observe at a 45º angle the innermost face of it. The maneuver is more complicated when the child is younger and has a body, because or unzip the body (too much manipulation and undressing so that it is nothing later) or put a finger on the side of the hip to open space and be able to observe under The body and the diaper.
The problem with this second maneuver is that more than one we have finished converting what was going to be a visual check into a touch check. Come on, we have ended up putting our finger where we should not (and then there is no room for doubt).
What is your favorite method?
For my part, today that my son the little boy is two years old, I almost always choose to smell, at the risk of suffering from a false positive, although I have often combined them so as not to remove the diaper if the visual test confirms me That the result is negative.
When they were younger, and especially when they are babies, that poops don't usually smell too bad (sometimes they don't even smell), there is no other option than visual checking. I suppose that as they grow and the feces start to get worse smell you change habits and you start to go easy (smell), leaving the visual method for when there are reasonable doubts.
Anyway, What is your favorite method?
