Self fastening tabs and toilet training.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that on the large scale of things such as famine and disease in third world countries, environmental, poverty and human rights issues, this really isn’t a huge issue. But I dare you to find any mother of a child who uses nappies and ask her if she is calm when the self-fastening nappy tabs break. And at what point she will break and start to think wild thoughts of self destruction.

Nappy producers have paid marketing companies immense sums of money to make a big song and dance about the self-fastening tabs that encase a baby in said nappy. The ease of use and the ability to open and close a nappy several times in the never ending battle of keeping a baby’s bum clean, dry and inoffensive to the adult nose are high scoring issues. One company even calls its self-fastening tabs ‘koala grip tabs’. Ostensibly because they grip the fuzzy stuff at the front of the nappy with the determination only a koala who is being uprooted from its ancestral homeland to be moved 14kms west to better feeding grounds can grip. I bet the marketing whizzes never took into account that koalas snarl a lot, sleep most of the day and are, in fact, not that cuddly when they sat around that big meeting room table, brainstorming ways of selling more nappies to the choir that sings nappy praises in the first place. There is a marketing war being waged out there right now folks, over the size and width of the tabs used to keep a nappy attached to a child. But the war is being waged on the wrong battle front. I would pay $1 a nappy (which if you worked out how many nappies you use in a week would equal an awful lot of money) if I knew for sure that the tabs wouldn’t rip apart on me, rendering the nappy useless. Even gaffer tape, supposedly the most useful tape in the whole world cant keep a nappy on a baby with wandering hands and a fixation on her belly button like a self fastening tab can. Except when the tab rips off.

Let me paint a picture for you. Your child, whom you love and adore more than life itself starts to emit a noxious odour. You desperately pray its because they have simply broken into the bathroom cupboard and sprayed that hideous perfume that your great aunt Esmeralda gave you for Christmas but after a few moments you know that you are failing at hoodwinking yourself. One quick snatch of the child, lying then across your lap and check for excrement confirms that it is indeed nappy change time. Your child, however, has other plans. Lord knows what, but they are intent on doing anything but cooperating with you as you change the offending nappy. Heaving the child up and over your shoulder, you stagger (due to the proboscis being so close to the primary source of the lethal smell) to the room where the equipment required to change the nappy is stored. Opening the nappy and seeing the offending slush up close is enough to make strong men weep, but being a mother, you find a super human ability to wipe up the offending mess and wrap the used nappy up in a ball. You place the nice, clean nappy under the bottom of your child and grab one of those self gripping tabs and wrap it around your child, to attached the nappy to the body. And then you hear it. Riiiiiiiiiiiip. Actually, its doesn’t even take that long. Its more a Riiip and you are left with a tab in your hand and a child finally succeeding in their attempt to escape and do a nudie run through the house; which we all know will result in a puddle of pee-pee on the floor, somewhere in the house, to be found later. Hopefully only resulting in a foot needing to be washed, and not a full on slide and whump on the bum.

Today - today it happened to me again. I had almost managed to wrangle Sweetpea into her nappy when the tab ripped off. Amid much internal dialogue which alternated between cursing the nappy producers and praying that there was no yellow puddle being left somewhere in the house I made a decision. No more would I spend my day chasing a bare tushied baby around the house because of a broken tab. I was going to embark on one of parenting’s greatest joys: toilet training.

I even went as far as going to the store to buy a potty. When I was a young child, my potty was a pink thing (see, the pink fascination started even then) that served me well. Not that I recall my potty training all that vividly. But I still manage to sit on the toilet and pee and poop in the appropriate manner without embarrassing family or friends, so something must have worked. I honestly thought it would be a quick trip of walk in, grab potty, pay check out chick and go home. HA! Boy was I wrong. Did you know there are potties out there now that not only have flashing lights, but play different tunes to reward the child when they pee or poop? Think about it, as if its not traumatic enough for the child to see the most trusted people in the world (that would be the parents) throw their pee and poop into the toilet and flush it away, now they have lights and music giving away the exact moment they choose to pee and poop.

I ended up buying the bargain basement potty. After careful analysis of the whole topic, I realised that as Sweetpea's mother, it was my job to give her plenty of issues to talk about with the psychologist when she gets older. It might as well start with the fact that I didn’t buy her a $50 potty with lights and music. But in the cool calm of the evening, when I contemplate the actual teaching of peeing and pooping in the potty deal, I realise that I have set myself up for more of what I already have. Chasing of a nekkid bummed baby around the house and attempting to talk logic to a not quite two year old about the virtues of using a potty rather than just dumping and running from the scene of the crime. What the hell was I thinking? Do I really hate my life so much that I'm willing to engage in such insane activities?

Suddenly a broken self-fastening nappy tab doesn’t seem like such a big issue. Until the next time it rips off in my hand.