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Informative

Yes, diapers will explode at some point

The Diaper in its pre-explosion state
The Diaper in its pre-explosion state

Yes Virginia, diapers do explode. Yesterday we took Maggie out back to play. I was going to just set up a water tablet for her to play with but I saw the swimming pool and it was 90 something degrees so I pulled it out as well and we had a raised-deck water table, mister, and pool extravaganza with Maggie and the neighbor’s daughter.

ITMama was under the impression I was just breaking out a water table so she hadn’t put on swim diapers when Maggie came out. We didn’t think too much of it for a couple of minutes until Maggie’s diaper was about twice the size it normally would reach.

The diaper grows
The diaper grows

It didn’t seem to bother Maggie, and there seemed to be no harm as we watched it get larger and larger to the point you could put a drink on it and it stay. The inflated diaper was riding high, so I wasn’t particularly worried about it chaffing or I would have popped it off of her.

Maggie tripped over a hose, almost caught herself, stepped backwards and tripped over it again landing on the horribly ballooned diaper.

The diaper reaches shelf-like status
The diaper reaches shelf-like status

I saw something go flying. Tiny gel caps erupted from the diaper and sprayed up to four feet from my tiny titan’s toosh. They also slimed up and down her back in a way that was quite distressing to the tiny tot, and I had to hose her off to effect relief.

The diaper, which appeared to be completely clean, probably weighed five pounds when I dumped it. I tried hosing the deck off of the crystals, but they look like water beads when they’re soaked and bloated, and as such I kept finding them afterwards.

The idea at the moment is I’m going to let them dry in the sun and sweep them up.

The resultant diaper explosion
The resultant diaper explosion

So yeah, don’t be like me. Better to dump a load of pool water than deal with cleaning up whatever Costco is using as their diaper vendor. My bet is the gels aren’t unsafe, but I’m going to sweep them up so we don’t end up with some exploded squirrels.

Paul King

Paul King lives in Nashville Tennessee with his wife, two daughters and cats. He writes for Pocketables, theITBaby, and is an IT consultant along with doing tech support for a film production company.