When you’re the oldest kid in the family and you’re eight years old when younger siblings are still in diapers, you will be drafted into diaper-changing detail. At least you will when your youngest siblings are twins.
And that was in the cloth diaper and safety pin days. It served me well she I was a teenager. I was the only boy I knew with the skills to babysit for infants and their older brothers. I could feed and change the babies, give the older kids judo lessons, and prepare their dinners. No home microwaves in those day, either.
Cooking, martial arts, changing diapers. All survival skills right up there with swimming, ironing, and sewing on a button. Everyone should be able to do them.
First time I changed Jake’s diapers I made the fatal mistake of standing down-range, so to speak. I was fired upon and struck by projectile poop. An unpleasant but instantly educational experience.
Faced with a shitty baby I’ll jump out the window.
“When you’re the oldest kid in the family…”
My wife, oldest of four, mom and dad both working, one days, one nights. Why she never wanted children: She says she already had three…
I had a similar experience with my older daughter as Michael Reynolds, though I was standing in a better position and had it land on the carpet. We still refer to the “rocket poop” incident.
As for the post itself, when my older daughter was about to turn 2, we had a driving trip to upstate New York to visit my wife’s family. At a rest stop on I-81, my wife said she needed to hit the bathroom ASAP (she was pregnant with our second) and I took my daughter to change her in the men’s room, following which we traded off. She was astonished how many strangers came up to her and said what a great husband she had to have changed the diaper himself.
I’ve never understood why baby diaper changing is a big deal to some people, although maybe it’s because many of my jobs from the time I was a young teen involved animal care- like cleaning out 100 or so dog runs and cages twice a day.
In contrast, babysitting was a cinch….well, there was that one evening when all six girls I was watching came down with a nasty stomach bug. I think I was probably green around the gills and curled up in fetal position when the parents got home.