Your little one wears nappies for the best part of two to three years and often even longer, so is there a difference between the different brands? Is your darling’s sensitive bottom best kept wrapped in one type more than another? Does it make any difference other than to your pocket?

I took this matter to those in the know, with daily experience of many babies, wobblers and toddlers and frequently their own children and grandchildren– the Ringsend créche.

From my own experience, different brands suit different stages for the baby, but I was curious would this hold true for other babies and children. I asked Mary and Marion in the baby room what nappies they found most suitable.

Pampers Active Fit were highly recommended as the sides are not too bulky and they fasten easily. Very cheap nappies are fine if you are stuck but they are generally not the best, although many babies are fine with supermarket nappies. The worst offender seems to be those nappies with the plastic coated outside as they don’t hold the wet away from babies’ little bottoms therefore the possibility of a sore behind is heightened.

Elaine in the wobbler room had more or less the same recommendations in nappies. Once past the wobblers stage toddlers are going to be trying to become more independent, thus the brilliance of the pull-ups. I was advised by Izzy in this room that the Huggies Pull-Ups Training Pants for boys (with Mickey Mouse) and for girls (with Minnie Mouse) are the easiest to use because they are easy for the children to pull up and down, are not too bulky yet still as absorbent as others and have Velcro at the sides so you don’t need to take clothes off if you need to remove them.

The Pampers Pull-Ups (with elephant picture) are not as good as they are difficult to pull up and down because they are bulky and they have no velcro for ease of removal so everything has to come off, although you can tear them at the sides but this can be both difficult and messy.

A further recommendation for the older child who is using the toilet by day but not quite adept at stopping wetting by night is Huggies Dry Nites which are for up to ten years old.

A point that everyone made was that some children use the recycled brands such as Moltex. Frequently these brands can be delivered, so this is an extra incentive to buy them. These recycled brands are as good as any of the other nappy brands with the added benefit of being environmentally friendly and biodegradable.

It is worth thinking about this possibility as an average child can use around 1,500 nappies in a year and all of these are going to landfill where the non-biodegradable ones can take hundreds of years to break down. Additionally, many children suffer from sensitive skin problems such as eczema which can be aggravated by the bleaches in everyday nappies. Such chemicals and bleaches are generally not used in biodegradable nappies.

With bin charges in existence now, it is a very good time to look at alternatives ways to cut down on waste volume, including a return to cloth nappies– but not as we know them! The old-fashioned difficult to use cloth nappy is gone and in its place are new easily-washed versions with velcro fasteners or snaps just like disposables. It’s worth thinking about the different possibilities, especially if you are just starting out in nappy land.

MY LITTLE SUNSHINE

Christmas is well and truly over but My Little Sunshine’s reaction to the concept of Santa Claus really got me thinking. At six months old I brought her to see the man in red and she semi-warily sat on his knee.

However, things have become progressively worse so that this year she didn’t want to be near him. However, she has told me in a very matter-of-fact fashion that she will sit on his knee to have her photo taken next year when she is three. So for the moment all my encouragements and coaxing were to no avail.

Wait a moment; did I say I encouraged my daughter to go near a stranger dressed in a red suit? There lies the problem. She has more sense than I do and her intuition tells her to be wary of people she doesn’t know, even one bearing gifts and merrily shouting ho ho ho.

Her fear of the unknown extended into Christmas Eve when she was afraid to go to bed in case Santa Claus came down the chimney with the presents but took her away; a kind of exchange I suppose. It obviously made a big impression because she’s still talking in an excited but slightly terrified fashion about the chimneys that Santa goes down.

This fear makes sense really, it’s just that as adults we tend to forget how we make sense of the world. My little sunshine is trying to make sense of the world and vocalise it using whatever tools of understanding and vocabulary she possesses. So what is Santa to my little sunshine other than a big, strange man dressed in red with a beard and everyone appears to be happy to see him.

So much of the world makes so little sense to children, I just wish my little sunshine never had to have her little bubble burst. I wish she never had to hear raised voices and wonder why are those people cross.

I said before that my little sunshine makes me want to be a better person, but I realise that it’s more than this– I want the whole world to be a more perfect place where my beautiful little girl never has to be sad. It pulls at my heartstrings when she puts her hand on her chest to tell me she is sad in there. Even more so when she tells me I am the one who is making her sad.