Diapering Disaster

I worked with the five babies again today. When I got there, Baby L; the one who loves the squishy seat was awake and happy. I played with him for a while. He was in the exerciser when I got there, but wanted to be taken out. He played with the rattles and sat in the squishy seat for a while, but I noticed he wasn’t feeling like himself. He’s had a cold and sounded really stuffed up today. He seemed out of it so he sat in my lap for a while. He started to get fussy so I took him to the rocking chair. The other teacher explained that it was hard to get him to sleep, but I could try rocking him. Usually, they just sit with him on the couch until he falls asleep, but in my experience rocking has worked so why not try it? He squirmed a lot at first until he started looking at this picture on the wall of a boy and girl. Each time we rocked, he’d scratch at the picture. Eventually, he put his head back and fell asleep. It took about ten minutes. The other teacher was a little surprised. He usually sleeps for 20 minutes, but took an hour long morning nap. After he woke up, it was time for a diaper change. I was a little nervous about this because I’ve never changed a baby’s diaper. The only diapers I’ve changed were for older toddlers who were in the middle of potty training. Baby L was fussing, moving around, kicking and generally giving me a hard time about changing his diaper. The other teacher was standing right there making sure I was doing things right. She was nice about it, but someone standing over me makes me really self conscious and then I’m rushing to get it done as soon as possible. Then the rubber gloves make it hard to feel anything especially when you are taping the diaper. You can see it, but it’s still kind of hard to do that with gloves on although I’m sure you get used to it. Luckily, there wasn’t a mess in the diaper for now. Then when it came to putting his pants on, he kept kicking his legs around to make it difficult to put them on. Finally, I tried standing him up to pull up his pants and he hit his head on the cabinet above the changing table. He wasn’t hurt and only cried for a minute. I felt really bad though because he could’ve hurt himself and I obviously wasn’t paying close enough attention. I was embarrassed too because the other teacher was right there watching my every move. She was nice about it, but I don’t want her to think that every time I change a diaper, there will be a disaster. I don’t mean to over react, but I’ve had experiences with people going overboard after I’ve made simple mistakes that didn’t have anything to do with children getting hurt. I hope other people have these horror stories too. I can’t be the only one.

After his diaper change, the foster grandmother at the center fed him, but later we played again. We sat on the couch for a while. I just talked to him and he played with my hands as usual. He did a lot of babbling today which was cute because it wasn’t all the same sound. From outside of the exerciser, he was able to pull down the toy that he couldn’t pull last week, but I could tell he wondered why it didn’t stay down where he had pulled it.

Then I spent some more time with baby J who is the three-month-old. He spends a lot of time sleeping in the swing because we have to strap him down to his crib and after we get him to sleep; he always wakes up when we buckle him in. It’s easier to strap him in the swing while he sleeps because he doesn’t wake up that way. We usually rock him to sleep in the chair first. After his morning nap, I fed him and he actually burped for me today which he didn’t last week. After his bottle, I sat with him on the couch for a while. He was happy just to hang out. He wasn’t playing with anything. He was just sitting there in my lap cooing and kicking his feet up in the air.

This afternoon, I spent time with crawling Baby who you can usually find standing up holding on to something. He likes to climb all over me. He kept playing with the phone on wheels and some other toys until he decided he wanted to practice standing up. I’d move backwards and he’d grab my hands, pull himself up and then try to walk towards me. It worked a couple of times, but then he couldn’t pull himself up anymore unless I was right in front of him so he used my hands for balance as he stood up and then climbed on my lap. He did this a few times until his family came to get him. He usually doesn’t leave that early. I didn’t get to spend any time with him this morning because he went for a walk around the neighborhood with the toddlers.

Before I left, I spent some time with Baby C. She’s the happy smiling baby girl. Today she had floor time. She’s learning how to role over and push herself around. She was getting frustrated a few times and at first, she didn’t want to move. I decided to put a few toys out of her reach so she’d have something to move towards. She liked moving towards the keys, but then got frustrated when she rolled over the wrong way. She started to cry, but kept kicking her feet. I reached out to grab one of her feet and she started to laugh so it became a little game. She continued to role around and was having a good time playing with the toys until she got hungry for her sweet potatoes. She’s a little younger than the babies who sit at the table, but with a blanket behind her, she’s able to sit in the big girl seat. She likes it and she was happy to be eating of course. That was it for my day with the babies this week.