Epic diaper fail

Jolyon slept for a long time this evening, in a bumgenius stuffed with the thicker insert, our daytime and frequent changing strategy. When he finally woke up, Stephanie fed him, and I took him and his surprisingly still functional diaper upstairs. In doing so, I remarked to him that it was really great that the diapers had suceeded in containing his pee even though he had ended up going much longer without a change than we had planned for, due to his having an early nap that turned into a deep sleep.

I remove the old diaper, which indeed, is containing pee in the way that diapers are meant to! Oh, happy day! Perhaps the fact that we just stripped the diapers has solved the ongoing leaking woes we have been having!

Thusly filled with good feelings and optimism, thinking kind thoughts about mother earth, I place on the new, double-stuffed for nighttime bumgenius diaper, get it all secured and make sure that there's no gaps anywhere. I readjust it a little bit just in case: it's so tight that the velcro tabs are overlapping, there's no fabric bunched anywhere.

I congratulate myself on a perfectly applied diaper. I pick Jolyon up with his ginormous-for-nighttime bottom, completely remove his sleeper and onesie because we need a bigger size to go over the nighttime diaper. I am radiant, feeling like a cloth diapering superhero.

Jolyon lies on the table while I rummage about in the drawer for a moment to find a new onesie that's big enough to fit over the nighttime diaper. I am putting it on Jolyon when I realize that my hand is wet. Very wet. There is an enormous puddle behind his back. The diaper failed completely, within about 30 seconds of me having put it on him. I check the insert - there's some damp, but it's not fully saturated. Really, most of the pee ended up being funnelled out of the freshly stripped, double-stuffed, perfectly applied diaper.

What can I do? I laugh. I peel off the changing pad cover, collect it with the collection of clothing that the pee has spilled onto, take Jolyon into the bathroom, sponge his back off with a washcloth, move him back onto the changing pad and install another diaper.

I am an optimist. It is another perfectly applied, double-stuffed, freshly stripped bumgenius diaper. This time, in yellow. How cheerful!

I start to get him dressed again, when he makes a loud farting sound. Jolyon smiles and coos, I smile and giggle back at him, and, adventurously, I check his diaper.

I am overwhelmed by a sense of deja vu from mere moments earlier. Yes, indeed, the diaper has failed immensely, a complete repeat of the previous pee that literally cannot have been longer than three minutes ago. There is another puddle on the changing pad (sans cover this time). Our son has in the span of less than five minutes peed through two full-capacity, ultra-stuffed high-tech diapers that other people tout as being the bulletproof option that they use for long car trips.

I laugh, harder this time, and think about going back to the sink for another wash off, but decide instead to strip off my own pee-splashed clothing and just take myself and Jolyon into the shower. Note that I give him full permission to pee in the shower in case he's not completely done.

Well, that handily answers the question about whether stripping solved the problem with the diaper failure. This does not seem to be a problem related to him being in the diaper too long, since really, FIVE MINUTES is a reasonable expectation for a nighttime fully-stuffed diaper to function, much less two.

Needless to say, Jolly is now wearing a disposable.

My mother-in-law responded to our last post with an email saying, "Well, on the bright side, you know Jolyon's bladder is working really well!" Yes, indeed.

Earlier today Stephanie had left a very polite voicemail message for the store we bought these diapers from, describing her early morning diaper failures... I am thinking it might be time for me to give them a call tomorrow, as well, since we hadn't heard back yet. This is beyond unacceptable. We have done everything that could possibly be expected of us to troubleshoot this, and these diapers are just totally not functioning to contain his pee.