A Note On Changing Tables

[metaphortunate]

For those who have not yet reproduced, but may in the future:

There are basically 3 changing table options.

1) No changing table. This is what we thought we'd go with, originally, with the Junebug: we got this type of changing pad, and figured we'd put it on the floor or sofa or bed or what have you for convenience of wherever we happened to be. This might even have worked if it didn't turn out that newborns need to be changed 8 to 15 times a day. Our backs were killing us by the end of day ONE. Mr. E had to go on an emergency shopping trip to get us a thing we could change the baby on without stooping.

But it still probably wouldn't have been a good idea, because the other thing about a permanent changing table is, it gives you a convenient place to store the diapers, wipes, diaper cream, lotion, washcloths, medication, etc. that you need when changing the little wrigglers.

2) A mobile changing table. That is what we ended up with. Please note that storing things on open shelves like this is an invitation to your toddler to go digging for buried treasure and strewing things all over the floor. Also, once the kid hits about 25 lbs or so, you're going to get motivated to toilet train it before it starts bouncing around on the changing table and collapses to the floor in a big pile of owie and kindling.

3) A changing pad on top of a dresser like this. Sturdier, and neater storage. However, the big disadvantage is: especially if you have a boy, when you're not fast enough with the new diaper, and the kid pisses all over the wall and down behind the dresser and onto the floor, it is going to be a giant pain in the ass to clean all that up, as opposed to the wheeled one you can just roll away.

And yes, he will get the wall, especially if he simultaneously shits all the way down the other side of the changing table and barfs all over himself, at 2 in the morning. Sometimes all you can do is stand, awestruck, in the face of Nature.

Comments

[jrtom]

We went with (3) (originally with a wall wire rack for eye-level storage), which has worked out pretty well. But we also didn't have the apparently-Exorcist-inspired-projectile-everything events that some parents have had to cope with. YKMV*.

*Which was originally intended to be "Your Kilometrage May Vary" (you know, metric system represent and all that) but in this case is much funnier to interpret as "Your Kids May Vary", so I'm going to claim that's what I'd originally meant to mean. :)

[resolute]

We went with (1).

Yes, we both had back trouble for a year.

Yes, we did have projectile events.

[amaebi]

Ain't nature grand?

Ahem.

[laurajv]

There are non-wheeled jobbies otherwise similar to #2, and you can also get just a contoured pad that goes on top of an extant dresser. Which, if you are us and are like "buy new furniture for kids? What a silly concept, we will just give them this old thing from IKEA and get a new dresser for US", is a nicely inexpensive way to go.

We have a combo of an unwheeled #2 (which used to be in our downstairs and is now upstairs in the bathroom the kids use, now that Magpie is no longer needing umpteen changes a day) and the pad-on-dresser method (which has the extra advantage of being easy to do in multiple kid rooms, if kids have separate rooms & multiple kids are endiapered).

[thistleingrey]

We went with #1 due to having no space to add things and no furniture large enough to put a rolling three-month-old atop. Worked for us, no back strain.

Oh, gosh, that is indeed a bout of Nature.

[lovepeaceohana]

We started off with something like the third option, although, I think it was less designed for that purpose and more "hey look a changing pad will fit here," although we quickly abandoned it in favor of "change them where they lay" owing to necessity of speed. Projectile events were more common during longer changes and if we didn't change them right away the chances of blowout increased by something like four or five times.

As a result I've changed babies just about everywhere, which is not a marketable skill or anything, but if you ever read a character of mine changing a baby in an unlikely location - well, now you know.

[wordweaverlynn]

The FACE of Nature?

[kate_nepveu]

3) Oh dear. Sympathies.

(We have one like that, but just a pad that screws into the back of the dresser.)