I was changing a messy diaper this morning, and I realized a misconception I've had for a long while. Everyone knows
how you get pink eye.... and that's a very important reason to wash your hands! I realized that I always thought how sad it was mothers were not washing their hands after diaper changes when I read about, heard about, or saw infants and toddlers with pink eye. This morning, however, I suddenly realized how foolish of me that logic was.
Today my son left a nice, messy poop in a flat diaper that I had snappied on. This being my second time EVER with folding flats (as opposed to just doing a pad/tri-fold and laying them in a cover), I didn't do the greatest job. Great enough to look like he was diapered? Yes. Great enough to do their job for urine and stay within the Bummis cover? Yes. Great enough to hold really loose poop? Uh.... *cough* well.... you see.... um.... No. Not at all.
As I struggled to hand my son something to distract him from the diaper change, I kept having to catch his quickly moving hand and re-direct it. His hands would be near his face, and then, in the blink of an eye, he's trying to grab his bum, his toes, the wipe I'm using to get the poop off him.... anything and everything. Certainly there must be something exciting and fun down there since mom is doing something and doesn't want him to see! So as I combat his fast little hands and try to get him diapered quickly before he grabs poop, it suddenly dawned on me that I was wrong. I was dead wrong. Sure, maybe some instances of pink eye are from someone not washing after a diaper change (or worse, after they used the bathroom themselves!).... but it is far more likely that the baby was able to get their hand where they shouldn't in lightning-fast fashion.... and then find their face just as quickly.
