Nappy Madness

Yesterday I was changing Cubby's fifth (?!) stinky nappy of the day when I noticed Tadpole staring at me contemplatively. I gave him a quizzical look and he observed, "Mommy, you change nappies really super duper crazy fast."

(Yes, that is one English word that has held over from my London mommying days - nappy. Try as I may, I cannot seem to say "diaper" without sounding disgustingly deliberate and feeling silly. They are, and always will be, nappies to me.)

"I've changed a lot of them, honey, and practicing something a whole lot usually means you get better and faster at doing it."

This got me to thinking about how many consecutive days of nappy changing I've had: about 1,500. Let's just say I averaged 10 nappies per day, which is probably conservative given the nonstop newborn nappies and the fact that I've had multiple kids in nappies for all but about 400 or so of those days. Anyway, if it was only 10, that means I've changed about 15,000 nappies so far. Wait, can that be right?? FIFTEEN THOUSAND.

And I am not done. Figure in about 26 more months of nappies, or 780 days, which equals another 7,800. Which totals 22,800.

Now. If each nappy takes about 2 minutes to change (conservative, once again, because I am not factoring in chasing down the stinky child, cooing at the cute but wet baby, rounding up and changing into a new outfit after the last one suffered from a poo blowout, refilling the nappies in the changing table, searching for a new packet of wet wipes with a wiggly naked baby in tow, etc etc, etc...) that's 45,600 minutes. Or 760 hours.

Which means that I will have spent the equivalent of one continuous, non-stop month of my 30s doing absolutely nothing but changing nappies.

This doesn't include pull-ups. Or sick days. Or friends/playdates/babysitting nappies.

Twenty two thousand? Really? Did I do my math correctly? That just seems absurd.

And then I wonder where all my time goes.

Now to think about how much landfill space I've used, and how much money I've spent........