Hospital Diapering Recommendations

[MarinaVanessa]

Okay so the swaddling thread got me to thinking about the things that some hospitals are teaching parents.

The hospital that I had my son in a year ago swaddled infants but didn't actually teach parents how to swaddle. I know this because I asked 6 other friends of mine that have recently (withing a year) had babies there and they were never taught either. I thought this was a little strange because our hospital is a pretty good hospital and is all for educating parents on all sorts of topics however they don't teach safe swaddling. I never even thought of swaddling as dangerous until I read the swaddling thread but it does make sense.

Now the hospital is pro breastfeeding. I had some trouble with my DD when it came to BF and I wasn't really successfull with it and so this time with my son I called to sign up for a BF class before my son was born. It turned out to be an information only class (where I wanted a technique class) and the woman was very strong in her convictions about breast feeding. She pretty much said that people that choose not to BF are harming their babies and that WHEN their un-breastfed babies get older and have health issues due to weak immune systems that they only had themselves to blame. Not kidding, she really said that. She had a lot of really good information however I just thought that her delivery was strong and that she was forcing breast feeding onto everyone. Anyway, has anyone had a BF class where they were like this? She litterally made people feel guilty for not BFing until at least age 1. It shocked many of us in the class.

Also after giving birth to my son I was asked if I wanted to participate in a free informational class on infant health and safety. I was stuck in the hospital and wanted nothing better than to get out of the room and agreed. Oh God, it was the same lady. She did have a lot of great information about aspirators, propper sleep, breast feeding techniques etc but she started talkign about the "correct" way to diaper a child. Instead of wipes she said to get a basin and fill it with clean water and add some baby bath to it then to take a washcloth and soak it in the tub and then squeeze water onto the babies front private area over a sink and then flip the baby over and to the same to it's bottom. Then to take another wet washcloth and wipe the bottom with it especially if it had #2 and then to reapeat the 1st step again with another clean washcloth. Lastly to pad the baby dry and put the diaper on.

WHO has time for that?! I mean even as a stay at home mom do you want to spend that much time just to change a diaper? The woman said that using baby wipes was unhygienic and it spread feces all over the baby's parts. She also said that wipes were a major source of diaper rash.
Anyone heard of this? I only thought about this because I was thinking about when I gave birth to my son.

Any one else heard of any of these and what are your thoughts? Any other strange or interesting things that you have learned that you would never have imagined or thought twice about?

[LittleD]

Umm, WOW!?!
Nope, never heard of it, nor had time. Though I did get a recipe for home made baby wipes!

[Cat Herder]

Was this an outreach volunteer or a hospital employee?

[small_steps]

This sounds very unrealistic to me. If she has the time and patience to do this then good for her. As for most of us here in the real world, we can't spend 10 minutes changing a diaper. Some people have such strange ideas. I wonder if she actually did that for her own children or if she even had children.

[small_steps]

Originally Posted by LittleD

Umm, WOW!?!
Nope, never heard of it, nor had time. Though I did get a recipe for home made baby wipes!

Care to share?

[Heidi]

Ok, sure, I'd buy the unnecessary chemical angle, so make your own wipes, maybe. IF you can find a soap product that is garaunteed to be safer, that is.

I think the sweet lady with the great intentions is living in LA LA land...

[MarinaVanessa]

She was a hospital employee. She was also the lactation expert so she would come in and help all of the moms with breast feeding. I mean she was GREAT when it came to tips about breast feeding. With my DD BFing always hurt and the woman was "Oh honey, if it's hurts you're doing it wrong". Um ... way to build up my confidence lady, I mean I already feel like crap for having a hard time with it the first time around but thanks for clarifying that I'm a total and complete idiot and can't do the one thing that my breasts were created for KWIM?

But I'd like to add that she DID actually give me lifesaving tips and I had no problems BFing my son at all ever (well until he became lactose but that wasn't a technique issue).

And she wasn't pro any kind of wipes, homemade or not, but I was thinking ... um, so what is the washcloth doing? Isn't that just spreading the feces all over anyway too? Her stance wasn't against the chemicals in wipes, it was the fact that wipes spread the doo-doo so that made absolutely no sense to me.

[melissa ann]

We did the washcloth for my dd. In the summer before she turned 1, she had got a really bad diaper rash. The wipes really hurt her tush, no matter what kind we used. So, we just did the washcloth. I had a little tub that I used with cool water and baby wash. It was a bit time consuming, but we did it.

[small_steps]

Originally Posted by melissa ann

We did the washcloth for my dd. In the summer before she turned 1, she had got a really bad diaper rash. The wipes really hurt her tush, no matter what kind we used. So, we just did the washcloth. I had a little tub that I used with cool water and baby wash. It was a bit time consuming, but we did it.

I have done this when my own child or a daycare child had a bad rash, but on a daily basis, every diaper change...there's no way I'd have the time to do it with as many kids in diapers as I have.

[MarinaVanessa]

Originally Posted by melissa ann

We did the washcloth for my dd. In the summer before she turned 1, she had got a really bad diaper rash. The wipes really hurt her tush, no matter what kind we used. So, we just did the washcloth. I had a little tub that I used with cool water and baby wash. It was a bit time consuming, but we did it.

I'm assuming that you did it during the time that she had a diaper rash though and not the whole time that she was a baby. I can see you dong that for a diaper rash because wipes do hurt on diaper rashes. I know because my DH had tummy "issues" once and ended up with a rash so he used a wipe and cried bloody murder lol. BTW apparently Desitin burns too, he also tried that. Poor guy but this was still me --->

[melissa ann]

Actually, we didn't go back to baby wipes with her. When we went away, I had a couple of ziplock bags that I put in the wet washcloths to take on the go.
Note: I wasn't doing childcare then either. I was just a SAHM.

My son didn't have any issues and used baby wipes on him. (He came after dd)

Originally Posted by small_steps

Care to share?

Heres a great site for home made wipes

http://www.easy-homemade-recipes.com/baby-wipes.html

[Nellie]

I had kids that were almost 10 pounds at birth and 30 at a year. I hardly think I would have been able to hold them over the sink by 3 or 4 months like that using one arm. I can't imagine any doing that. She was probable doing more of a disservice teaching it like this, then teaching front to back wiping and after every thing is clean using a new clean wipe or wash cloth and going over every thing again doing the front to back.