BrooklynGirl

You Be The Parent, Round 3**Updated

After whiling away the late morning at Babies R Us, you pack your nearly 6 month old son into his car seat for the ride home.  Not long after you hit the highway, you hear a familiar grunting and groaning from the backseat, and moments later a foul smell confirms what you already know: The Boy has had a bowel movement.  Available evidence suggests it is a rather massive one. 

You are about 30 minutes from home.  The Boy does not have a problem with diaper rash, but he does tend to have poop creep issues, which is to say that he exceeds his diaper's capacity on a regular basis.  For the last few days, The Boy has been refusing to nap after about noon so you were really hoping he would sack out in the car, and though you are concerned that a full diaper will interfere with that, from what you can see in the backseat mirror, he looks so spent from his efforts that he might drop off.  Do you:

A)  High tail it back to the BRU, which you know has a clean diaper changing area because you just changed a wet diaper there 20 minutes ago.

B)  Pull over and change The Boy in the car, which is awkward and potentially messy, but which you've done before.

C)  Find another place on the way home that might have a changing station (no place springs immediately to mind).

D)  Hope for the best and head home with all possible speed.

E) Other

As always, I eagerly await your response.

*****

I went with Option D.  I was on the Belt Parkway, and if you're from these parts you know that traffic there can be horrific so I couldn't bear to get off to either turn around and head back to BRU or pullover.  Also, I drive a Honda Civic so changing in the car, while possible, is challenging (Chris, I know you can appreciate this).  I do travel with a pretty well stocked diaper bag that includes these disposable plastic diaper bags that were an impulse purchase at some store or another, and I have to say they're great--they're lightly scented which covers a multitude of diaper sins until you can dispose of the whole mess properly.  Whenever I pull out one of these (generally non-descript) bags in mixed company, someone always asks where I got them.

The Boy did fall asleep and stayed asleep in his foulness through the rest of the ride home, the hunt for parking, the transfer from car to Snap N Go, and most of the walk from car to apartment.  Perhaps the key to sleep with this baby is changing his diaper less often.  I'm kidding.  Kind of.

You Be The Parent, Round 2**Updated

You have taken The Boy for his first field trip to a suburban shopping mall.  All is well, but you need to pee.  Badly.  Both of the mall's "family" restrooms are out of order and none of the stalls in the numerous women's rooms you have investigated can accomodate both you and your stroller.   You are at least an hour from home.

What do you do?

a)  Hold it.

b)  Park the stroller just outside your closed stall door and pee as fast as humanly possible.

c)  Wedge the stroller as far as it will go into the stall and pee with the door slightly ajar.

d)  Park the stroller outside the stall and remove baby, balancing him on your lap while you pee.

e)  Other (please explain)

*****

Updated to say:

I went the always popular all of the above route.  I did a) while I scoped out the scene and considered making a break for home until I remembered I'd be driving on the BQE and the only thing worse than needing to pee is needing to pee in traffic on the BQE. 

Then I considered b), but (like Cat), I could actually hear the strains of the music from the Lifetime Movie of the Week this story was destined to become and thought better of it.  I also considered d), but wasn't sure what my responsibilities were vis-a-vis germs and bacteria, and I couldn't work out the logistics of baby balancing and Purell dousing.

So, I finally went with c).  I'm both heartened and surprised to see that so many of you have gone this route as well because the looks I got from the ladies in the restroom, suggested that I was an absolute lunatic.

You Be The Parent

Because you're going slightly stir crazy inside (and it's only really been winter weather for a week), you bundle your fussy, nap-resistant, nearly 15 week old son into a snowsuit and load him into the Bjorn for a spin around the neighborhood.

During the walk, The Boy continues to fuss so much that passersby cast wary glances at you, wondering just what exactly you could be doing to him.  Eventually--and suddenly--he falls asleep, collapsing dramatically against your sternum.

Since The Boy is finally sleeping, you continue to walk around the neighborhood until you lose feeling in your fingertips and gain an unrelenting ache in your lower back.   You go home and delicately maneuver The Boy out of the Bjorn, and he continues to sleep.

Your dilemma:

Do you let The Boy sleep in his snowsuit even though he will most certainly become overheated or do you extricate The Boy from the poorly constructed snowsuit that requires such elaborate contortions to remove him that he will almost certainly awake?

I eagerly await your response.