The Blowout That Humbled Me

By Dave · Dad Life · showingupdad.com

I am a diaper bag over-packer.

I own this. Every time we go somewhere, I treat the bag like I’m preparing for a three-day backcountry trip. Two backup outfits. Wipes times two. Extra changing pad. Snacks for my wife. Sunscreen we’ll never use. By the time I zip it up it weighs more than he does.

My wife thinks it’s excessive. She’s probably right. But I’ve been burned enough times that I can’t help it. The one time you don’t bring something is the one time you need it. That’s just how it works.
I knew this, I had lived this. And then I forgot it anyway.

The setup.

He was six months old. We were meeting my mother-in-law for lunch at Cafe Patachou. A weekday, nothing complicated, just a lunch out.

Right before we walked out the door, he went. Full diaper. I changed him, put him in a clean outfit, and felt genuinely good about the situation. We were ahead of the game. Fresh diaper, fresh clothes, leaving the house on time. For a second I felt like we had figured something out.

I did not pack a backup outfit. He’d just gone. What were the odds.

I’ll tell you the odds. The odds are 100%.

The drive over was fine.

He was happy in his car seat. My wife and I were actually talking, a real back and forth, while taking turns making faces at him in his little mirror. He was smiling at us the whole way. January, gray outside, but a pretty good fifteen minutes.

The bag in the back seat felt light. I noticed that. I should have been suspicious.

There was technically a backup outfit in the car. A 3-month size. He was six months old. I don’t know why I thought that was still useful, but there it sat, completely useless, a reminder that I had once been prepared and then just stopped updating my system.

We pulled into the parking lot. I got out, opened the back door, reached in to get him out of the car seat. Standard move. I do it ten times a week.

I put my hand under his butt to lift him. Then the smell hit me.

I knew before I saw it. There’s a texture and a warmth that you learn to recognize as a dad, and it communicates a lot of information very quickly. I looked down. It had gone up his back, out the side of the diaper, through his outfit, and onto the car seat. He looked completely unbothered. He was smiling, actually.

The damage assessment.

My mother-in-law was already inside. There was no quiet retreat, no circling back home, no pretending this wasn’t happening.

We did what any reasonable parents do in a situation like this. We improvised.

My wife cleaned him up as best she could with what we had. I wiped down the car seat. We had a blanket in the bag, so we wrapped him in that. We also had our portable high chair, which ended up being the only thing that saved us from putting a six-month-old directly on a restaurant chair. We walked in, my mother-in-law looked at us, looked at the baby wrapped in a blanket in January, and we just smiled and said hi.

We sat down. We ordered food. We had lunch. He was perfectly happy the entire time.

The damage assessment.

Nothing, apparently, because I still overpack. But the one time I didn’t, here’s what I wish I had: a backup outfit. Just one. Takes up almost no room. Weighs nothing. Would have completely changed the outcome of that parking lot.

Also update the backup outfit in your car when your kid grows out of it. That one’s free advice.

The diaper bag is not the place to start traveling light. There’s pre-blowout Dave and post-blowout Dave, and the difference between them is one zip-lock bag with a onesie and a pair of pants.

Pack the backup outfit. Pack two. Trust nothing. Especially right after a fresh diaper. That’s when they’re most dangerous.

If you’re in the thick of the diaper stage right now, subscribe below. There’s more of this coming.