This is really happening

So, you have had a baby or you will soon. Things that never used to matter may now make the difference between whether or not your entire family has a good day. Because it takes one and a half to three years for babies to become potty trained, how to handle baby pee is about to become of the utmost significance in your personal life or just has.

Nappies & Diapers

In Britain they call them nappies and the Americans call them diapers. Either way, their purpose is to keep your baby relatively comfortable and able to move around even though something is attached to them to catch their urine when it happens. The alternatives to this are to raise your baby in a pond/toilet type of place or to keep the child in a 'hutch' like pet rabbits and then wipe them or hose them down three times per day. The other main option is to follow them around with a cleaning cloth and a notebook detailing exactly how long after a feeding you can predict urine to come out of the baby. This is unfortunately the real truth about babies.

Diapers are directly for the sake of the parents rather than the babies but done properly they really do have some benefits for the babies as well - the greatest benefit really is the mental condition of the parents.

Fortunately, generations of people have found that using an absorbing loin cloth can reduce parental insanity by up to 98% and still allow babies to learn to crawl and even walk and still move around with some degree of comfort. You may have heard the phrase "Insanity is hereditary; you get it from your children.."

Reusable versus disposable

There are two major types of nappies. Because I became a mother in England despite being American I will use the term nappies as if more accurately represents my actual life experience. There are reusable ones, and disposable ones. You may be biased in favor of or against whichever was used in your childhood family or else you forgot all about that.

The issues are mainly the same as it always is between reusable and disposable. Disposable ones do not need to be kept around nor cleaned, but the other kind do. One may need to invest into 'nappy covers' and in clips or other devices to keep them together while worn.

Disposable nappies are actually more expensive and much harder on the global environment. I personally suspect that they are more liable to cause diaper rash on some babies but not on others due to differences in skin type, moisture and preferences in methods of motion in babies. Due to that, I suggest that if there is a diaper rash problem, check the method - you may just need to change the child more often or you may need to switch from either disposable or resusable to the other to best serve your child's needs.

One can really get the hang of either, but whichever you go with, handling these and packing one or two with you when you go out, will be necessary for a year or two.

Older Bed Wetters

Toddlers from about age 2 up to age 6 may still have issues about staying dry overnight but be potty trained for the daytime. One simple method for handling this is to have the young one use just the one overnight nappy. Taking care to serve the last beverage early enough to let the child use the toilet before going to bed is one tactic that can be useful. In some cases that won't suit the child. Getting up during the night to help a child use the potty is also an effective method which may or may not be practical. In my own experience as a young child, this became a problem for me because my parents split up and I no longer lived with the parent who cared for me during the night. Due to that, I had occasional bed wetting for 3 years until I was 5 or 6 years old. One hears nightmare tales of embarrassed children who wet the bed once in a while even at age 12. Don't fret too much, and don't ignore it, if it takes extra time and care to help your child learn to handle their overnight part of potty training. Most children are entirely potty trained for overnight and all day by age 3 to 4. Ask your nurse or doctor for more details if you are concerned about your baby's developmental milestones.