The other day I found myself shedding a tear or two (honestly, a few more than two) after changing my 11-month-old daughter’s nappy. No it wasn’t because I realised that I had swept poo in my washed-that-day hair (haven’t had that happen just yet, thank God). You see, it’s because she made the big step to nappy-pants.

I always thought nappy-pants were for kids who were about to be potty trained. I mean, they are practically undies, right? The night before, an ad popped up on Facebook about nappy-pants. It asked something along the lines of: is your baby wriggling so much during nappy change time that you can’t even get the nappy on? YES. HOW DID YOU READ MY MIND? I’VE BEEN STRUGGLING FOR TWO MONTHS. (But seriously, how does Facebook read your mind?)

So, I bought some Huggies Nappy-Pants and gave them ago. I was first a little worried that maybe they weren’t the same as nappies but they are. They have the same 12 hour leakage protection that their regular nappies have (which is great for the odd night she sleeps for 12 glorious hours), and they have MotionFlex technology, which is specially designed for active little babies who wriggle, wriggle, wriggle. Plus, they go on just like pants, which makes life so much easier.

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle. Image: Giphy.com

Once I high-fived myself for becoming the awesome nappy-changer that I once was, it dawned on me: My little girl is in nappy-pants. Wasn’t it just yesterday when we were panicking about the hospital allowing us to take her home, unsupervised? Wasn’t it yesterday when we pulled into our garage only to find that our precious little angel had christened her first car ride (and used-to-be very clean car seat) with the biggest poo humanly possible for someone so small?

Now she’s wearing nappy-pants. Tomorrow, she’s probably going to tell me that she is going to take a year off and go live somewhere like Italy for a year, and then meet someone and decide to live there forever, and only see me every second Christmas. Insert tears.

I also might have cried a little at the prospect that potty training is going to happen a lot sooner than I’m prepared for.

I needed some cheering up. Luckily the mums at the office shared all of their worst/funny/eww nappy changing stories with me (in some kind of effort to be glad I’m heading in the potty training direction):

(All the stories are anon, so we don’t embarrass the kids. Their parents would like to do that at their 21st birthday parties.)

Public shaming.

“My husband takes my daughter to the pool every Saturday to give me a couple of hours break (and for them to have quality time together). She was wearing bikini bottoms and a swim-nappy thing on underneath. All highly secure, when she starts doing the poo face. My daughter has a tendency of making poos that are too big to always fit in her nappy, so before there were any floaties, my husband grabbed her and rushed to the male toilets (no parent toilets).

He went straight to the showers and peeled off her swimmers and nappy, only to have there be a poo explosion. Literally. It went all over the shower. So, while holding her, there he is trying to get the water dribbling from the shower head to wash the poo into the smallest drain possible and squish the poo through the drain with his toes. By the way, the showers are those open ones, so every guy that walked past gave my poor husband the worst look. He was horrified.”

It's all fun and games until the 'poop face' shows up. Image: iStock.

The toilet on the plane.

“On my daughter’s first plane ride she decided to make a poo as the plane was taking off. There she was, doing her little grunts. As soon as we levelled out, I had to do my very first plane-ride nappy change in the plane’s toilet – the smallest space you could ever imagine – with a poo. I laid her on the nappy changing table that pulled down and started. As she was naked, we hit some turbulence and everything starting shaking. While I was worried she was soon going to burst into tears (I was about to), she burst into a fit of giggles. I mean, it would have been very funny watching me trying to wipe poo while being bounced around the toilet.”

Babysitting shame.

“I was babysitting my cousin’s little baby one day. When we left the beach, we kept his pineapple onesie on for the car trip home, which probably wasn’t the best idea. Anyway, we got home and I was like, oh, he’s due for a nappy change. I went to unzip his onesie and literally, there was poop near his neck. I still don’t know how there could be that much poop in a baby. We made him promise not to tell his mummy, which worked out well given he couldn't talk yet.”

"We made him promise not to tell his mummy, which worked out well given he couldn't talk yet.” Image: iStock.

The family Christmas.

“My daughter was having a little issue with constipation and hadn’t done a number two for a number of days (checked with the doctor, all good). We were all sitting in a circle opening presents for Christmas with my daughter on my sister’s lap (only in a nappy because of the heat) when she started grunting. Next thing I hear, my sister is screaming for a bucket. My mum rushes to the kitchen, grabs this large white plastic bowl and dives into the lounge room and my sister sits my daughter in it. We still have the picture of my daughter sitting in a bowl of her own poo, which we will definitely have printed out poster size for her 21st birthday.”

The things no one warns you about.

“Not a disaster tale, but the thing no one told me about when I was in hospital was when you have a boy you have to point the penis down in the nappy. Otherwise, the wee comes straight out the top. And all over you. You can pretty much imagine how I found that one out.”

Where have you changed a nappy?