How to Entertain Your Baby During a Diaper Change

January 25, 2016

1. Distract, distract, distract. I often give my son something to play with, like a small, (glass-free) framed photo of my husband and me. He loves to say “dada” (his very first word)! If that’s not around, my keys do the trick!

2. Connect with him. I tell my little buddy “El bebé está caca?” He loves this because he now knows to reply “Caca!” Our little exchange relaxes him and makes him less resistant to getting his diaper changed.

3. Tickle him (it always works!). Before I undo the soiled diaper, I tickle my son and get him laughing for about a minute. Usually one tickle will do the trick, but if not, then I’ll tickle him throughout the diaper change. Although he moves, he won’t try to turn over on the changing table.

4. Don’t be in a rush. With my older son, I used to rush the process – which led to a diaper put on wrong, a not-so-clean bum, and a lot of stress on my part (and crying on his). I’ve learned to slow down, smile, and explain every little detail of the diaper change to make it more entertaining for him and less stressful for me.

5. Get silly with your baby. I’ll smell my son’s tushy and say “fo fo fo,” in a dramatic expression of how stinky it is. Or, I’ll open up my mouth and go ahhhhhhhh for 30 seconds. He’ll put his finger in my mouth and I’ll pretend that I’m going to bite him. In both cases, he laughs out loud!

6. Keep changing areas around the house. Sometimes my kid just doesn’t want to leave the area he’s playing in. No need to move him. Instead, I keep a couple of portable changing pads, wipes, diapers, and ointment around the house to avoid a power struggle. He gets to play with a toy and I get to clean him up.

7. Sing his favorite song. If my son starts to fuss, I sing the “Itsy Bitsy Spider” while changing his diaper. He loves to mimic the hand movements back to me. I celebrate his achievement by saying, “Muy bien!”

8. Hand over the electronics. When all else fails, I give my boy my iPhone. What kid doesn’t love looking at pictures or swiping through the icons?

More Baby Fun:

Photo: Getty

Yesenia Almonte is an experienced Editorial Beauty Director in New York City. She is widely recognized for her expertise in developing unique beauty content for a variety of top—selling publications that span a broad range of multi-media platforms. Yesenia has the ability to conceive, construct and transform beauty trends into personalized creative recommendations for diverse markets. She has comprehensive knowledge of the teen and Hispanic markets and has created a number of revenue-generating editorial packages across different mediums. Throughout her career, she has initiated collaborations with some of the foremost innovators in the creative industry, including Pat McGrath, Kenneth Willardt, Ondrea Barbe, Sarah Silver, Serge Normant, Orlando Pita and Gucci Westman.

Yesenia was most recently the Beauty Director of Seventeen. During her tenure at the magazine, she entirely redeveloped the magazine’s beauty editorial and direction by expanding and diversifying its content through creative and innovative features and looks, while also providing increased visibility to a broad range of beauty brands. In addition to overseeing the beauty content across all of Seventeen’s platforms, including seventeen.com and misquincemag.com, she created the massive multi—platform beauty franchise Seventeen’s Beauty Smarties, an initiative whereby real girl YouTube beauty vloggers create exclusive looks for the magazine and online videos. Since it’s inception, the Beauty Smarties franchise became a successful YouTube show, The Seventeen Beauty Smarties Showdown and became the backbone to the launch of Seventeen’s multichannel network on YouTube in partnership with AwesomenessTV. Yesenia edited Seventeen’s Ultimate Guide to Beauty, an in-depth how-to guide, and helped develop Seventeen’s extensive digital tool, the Seventeen Shopping Insider app. In an effort to reach readers everywhere, Yesenia also created customized beauty specials targeting the Latina and African American teen market, which have resulted in record-breaking advertising revenue for the magazine.

Prior to joining Seventeen, Yesenia served as Beauty Director of Latina Magazine, where she curated the beauty content for the Hispanic woman via the magazine and website. At Latina, she also developed Latina Beauty, a Walmart-only special interest publication for the Hispanic woman.