Wisdom and the Art of Motherhood

For some reason, when you are out with a baby, strangers – well okay typically older women – come up to offer unsolicited advice all of the time. With Lily I am lucky. I simply tell them this is my third and they leave me alone. Apparently, something about having a third means I have more mother wisdom in their eyes. However, I have come to realize that having a third child has in no way given me an once more wisdom in a variety of mothering skills …. such as remembering to pack diapers.

Generally, I cloth diaper. However, on longer trips, I use “sposies” for 2 reasons. #1: I hate to cart around dirty diapers all day. #2: I have thrown the dirty diaper away (nothing like diving into a bathroom trash can for a dirty diaper that you then have to cart around.) However, admittedly, sposies are horrific offenders when it comes to leaking.

Anyways, back to the story…. We headed out to a meeting. As per usual, I didn’t even think to check the diaper bag. So, I stopped to nurse her before heading in. She had a blowout and of course, it was leaking. I stopped nursing to change her. I had only one diaper in the bag. So, I changed Lily’s diaper and finished nursing her. Oops, another blow out. I hoped that the diaper held it in. Nope, it was leaking. In fact she needed a change of clothes. I had a change of clothes but no diaper. I proceeded to search the car in the hopes that there was one there, somewhere.

I was in luck, I found one of those trial diapers they send you when you are pregnant. Only problem, it was a size 0 (newborn). At the hospital, the nurses took away our size 0 box and brought us a size 1 box because Lily was so big. Here it is, two months later, and Lily wears a size 2 diaper. Well, this would have to do. So, I stretched the straps to try and get it around her. Well, one of the straps ripped right off. So, now I had a baby wearing a diaper that is the equivalent of a thong with only one side attached. This would not do.

So, here is the difference between my current “mom of three” and my past “mom of one” self… In the past I would have probably gone straight home and cancelled the meeting. However, I calmly went into mom MacGyver mode and rifled through the diaper bag looking for a quick fix. Ah ha, I ripped the tabs off of the two dirty diapers and daisy chained the little diaper to Lily. Problem solved.

So, more wisdom? Not quite. Today as I met some friends for coffee it occurred to me that now, there are no diapers in the diaper bag. That’s okay though. I did note that there are three orphaned socks and a target bag in there. See, I got it covered.