Can you tell the difference between when your baby has gas and when he has a bowel movement?
I work in my church’s nursery with babies every sunday for 2 hours.
I try and judge the faces, but everytime I think a baby just pooped I go to change the diaper and its nothing, it was just gas.
Do you learn to recognize the difference eventually?
Or do you end up with a lot of false-alarms like me? Lol.
March 6th, 2011 at 7:35 am
smell the diaper after a minute!
March 6th, 2011 at 7:43 am
my daughter was fairly obvious after about 6 months.. but before that there were some false alarms.. I learned quickly to peek in the side of diaper carefully or even the top of the back end to check for ‘proof’ before setting up for a change.
March 6th, 2011 at 8:19 am
Before you rush off to change a diaper, pull down the pants a little and peek into the side of the onesie/diaper. If its a poop, change it. If not, it may become a poop in the next few minutes, but if not, you wont have gone through everything for nothing.
March 6th, 2011 at 9:17 am
for gas, the facial expressions are for a very little time.
for poop, they have to have that expression on face for a little longer time
if you don’t want to depend on facial expressions, smell the babies. you will know.
March 6th, 2011 at 9:34 am
When it’s of the brown variety – the stink lingers!
If it’s just gas – the smell goes away within 30 seconds.
(I realized the other day that I was a full fledged mother when I lifted up my son and took a sniff of his butt just to be sure!)
Both smell horribly but when it won’t go away – then it’s time to push up your sleeves and put a clothespin on your nose!
And if I’m really unsure – like others have said – I check the outside of the diaper and you’ll see a brown section – or you can just open up the tabs, take a quick look and see for sure!
Also – try not to change it RIGHT away when they’ve gone poo – give it a minute or two so they’re DONE! I’ve gone to change it quickly and ended up having two dirty diapers – or having him push out more just as I’m done cleaning him up. It’s not a fun thing to watch! (And if no one has told you – put a wipe over the wee-wee’s of boys so they don’t make even more of a mess of the situation.)
My son used to trick my husband and I – we’d be playing a game of russian roulette so to speak – and each time we thought we had handed off a nasty diaper to the other one – it turned out to be gas and then WHAM we’d get ourselves with the nasty diaper. We’ve learned to give him a whiff and there is NO denying when it’s a full one! Takes some of the fun out of the game but at least we can give ourselves some prep time and get some deep breaths in before attempting the clean up. 😛
March 6th, 2011 at 10:07 am
It’s a lot warmer and… I guess the best way to put it is “squidgy” sounding when the poop-flow starts.