How to Protect the Woodprint Pulp Composite Top to Your Diaper Changing Table in Ten Easy Steps

How to Protect the Woodprint Pulp Composite Top to Your Diaper Changing Table in
Ten Easy Steps
by Jeff Lewis

Like most first time parents, our trip home from the hospital with baby Olivia was filled with paranoia. We are both natural worriers and because neither one of us had taken care of a newborn—we only had changed one diaper between us prior to Olivia—our concern likely was greater than the average parent. (For example, during the "Don't Break the Baby" classes, I memorized the list of 7,000 household objects that can strangle a baby and the additional 1,800 items that can both electrify and strangle.)

It is impossible, of course, to completely shield a child from household hazards—at least until protective baby force fields hit the market—but I did my best to analyze the high-risk areas of our house. One major hazard that I addressed was the hand-me-down changing table that, in addition to being a minor strangling threat, had a subtle smell of used diaper. It was not wholly unpleasant—you could find the same aroma in some $20 wines—but, on the off chance that Louis Pasteur and all the subsequent stiff-smocked microbiologists that have built a case for the germ-theory of disease are wrong and stench alone can cause communicable disease, I decided I must eradicate the poopsy odor entirely. A 30% bleach solution did a satisfactory job, but I was left with a problem going forward.

I could not count on Olivia being odor-free throughout her diapered years. Nor could I guarantee that all nose-crinkling substances would stay contained within her diapers. Babies do the darndest things. Consequently, the changing table was a likely candidate for stench levels that could surpass the capabilities of even a 60% bleach solution. (Another fact that I could not ignore: though a devote liberal, I share with Oral Roberts, Donald Rumsfeld and Sen. Rick Santorum a fear of dry urine.)

I targeted the most likely location for stink residue: the fake wood grain top, made out of a flimsy composite material that sits somewhere in between cardboard and plywood in the wood-product rainbow.

I vowed never to allow any "ones" or "twos" to touch this surface, so drawing from my experience writing manuals for software security systems, I created a multi-tiered security architecture, with redundant layers designed to ensure that any breach would remain contained within its safety tier. As long as we follow the security policy that I developed—namely that no diaper can be changed without at least five protective barriers in place—we can safely assume that our dear Olivia will have a happy and healthy childhood, at least during the hours that she spends on her sweetly fragrant changing table. (In fact, currently this is the place in the house where she is most likely to grace us with a gummy grin).

Here is all you need to do to protect your own faux wood from the ravages of the changing environment.

1. Cover changing table with factory-supplied changing table pad.

2. Augment factory-supplied pad with additional thicker changing table pad. Ideally, the extra pad should be convex in order to channel runoff to center of pad, where absorbent materials can have more time do their thing.

3. Cover additional pad with absorb ant changing pad cover.

4. Place wet-defying barrier over absorb ant pad cover.

5. Place second wet-defying barrier over first wet-defying barrier.

6. Cover second wet-defying barrier with semi-absorbent, otherwise useless, tiny receiving blanket/huge spit-up cloth (optional).

7. Clothe child in leakage-retardant outfits. Whenever possible, they should have giraffes stitched on them.

8. Clothe child in onsies to alleviate diaper droopage.

Note that onsies do not need to have a picture of John Muir ironed on them.

9. Clad infant child in substantial diapers. Do not skimp on your first layer of defense. Diapers with Muppets or Pooh & Piglet work better than ones with the Lion King.

10. Though you can't prevent all urine streams from escaping the security boundaries, a happy, diaper-rash-free baby is less likely to squirm its way into an angle that will exceed layers one through nine. Use a protective cream at the first signs of irritation.

There you have it: a stank-free changing table top in ten easy steps, which will either produce a happy baby or a future obsessive-compulsive private detective.

Jeff can be reached at jeff@babblog.com.