[blparent] To Your Queries About How A Blind Person Performs Diapering and Toyleting

[Kane Brolin]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Daniella Roccasalvo via BlParent <blparent at nfbnet.org>
Date: Sat, 19 May 2018 19:26:58 +0000
Subject: [blparent] Diapering and Toyleting
To: Blind Parents Mailing List <blparent at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Daniella Roccasalvo <daniellaroccasalvo at hotmail.com>

Hello All, I am in college studying to be a developmental service
worker for those who don't know. I was wondering as a parent, how you
do some things. While I'm not a parent, and have no plans to become
one in the near future, I will be having to do personal care on the
people I support. I was wondering how you check a diaper if you can't
touch it. Remember I have to be careful what I do because the people
I'm supporting are not my children so I have to keep it professional.
How do you check if it's dirty or clean, wet or dry. When changing
them, how do you do it? How do you clean everything up, and make sure
you get it all? Again, due to te fact that I'm working with people
that are not my children, I'll be wearing gloves. How do you feel that
stuff through gloves? When the child gets older and is sitting on the
toylet, how do you know if the pull-up is wet or dry if they can't
tell you? If they are non-verbal, how do you know they need to go?
Again, when their on the toylet and your cleaning them up, is it the
same way as if they were younger? I may also ask one of my college
teachers if they have any pointers, but how do you word a question
like that? Any help would be great and I would be very thankful. Thank
you Daniella

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Roanna Bacchus  via BlParent <blparent at nfbnet.org>
Date: Sat, 19 May 2018 17:09:44 -0400
Subject: Re: [blparent] Diapering and Toyleting
To: Blind Parents Mailing List <blparent at nfbnet.org>
Cc: rbacchus228 at gmail.com

Smell the diaper and see if it is clean.
-----------

Daniella, hello.

First of all, I greatly admire what you are striving to do.  I take it
that you are visually impaired or possibly even totally blind.  I have
a deep respect for those who work hands-on with different types of
patients.  I wish you stunning and lasting success as you live the
life you want.

My first name is Kane.  While not a health care professional, I happen
to be a foster and adoptive parent who is blind.  I am carbon copying
both your personal e-mail address and my wife's address  on this reply
to your question about diapering, toilet training, etc.  Her name is
Danika.  She might or might not choose to write you and add her two
cents' worth about how I care for the hygiene of our children, or what
it is like to live and partner with a co-parent who lives with
blindness.  Just a fair warning, I'm going to be graphic here.  So
those who don't really care about this topic, or who get squeamish (as
I nearly always do), no need to read further.

Daniella, you wonder how to know when a diaper needs changing. What
Roanna said in her own, more cryptic message, I have found to be true
for me as well: The sense of smell is key, especially in the case of
faeces.  It really doesn't help with the #1 issue, but with poop, I
know that one of my baby girls'' diapers is full long before I touch
her.  Sometimes I sense this even before I am in the same room with
her.  This is not because I have an inordinately strong sense of smell
in general.  I do not--far weaker than my wife's.  But somehow, that
smell associated with human semi-solid waste is always one that I can
pick up on--even without consciously having paid attention and watched
for it.

Even though I cannot smell urine very well, I have now been around
babies long enough to know that every couple of hours I need to call
one of my girls over and touch lightly between her legs.  I have never
gotten the sense from anyone else that I do this in a manner that
looks hinky.  I don't have to remove clothing or remove the diaper to
tell what is in it.  I can tell just by how snugly the diaper is
fitted to her body, or by how big the bulge is at the bottom of it,
whether I need to change it.  If I am pretty confident the diaper
contains urine only, I have learned that I prefer standing the baby up
on the changing table and holding her tightly with one hand while I
remove the diaper and wipe her down with the other.  This way, I am
not having to manipulate her legs and pick her up from underneath just
to remove the diaper.  If I know that faeces is inside, or if I
suspect that it is, then I do take the precaution of laying the baby
on her back on the changing table and taking the diaper off that way.
This helps me to contain the poop, pulling the diaper out slowly and
doing so with the understanding that a clump of errant poop that falls
out of it will fall on the changing table towel, not on the floor or
on my clothing without my knowing it.

I do not use gloves.  I understand that you as a professional will
have to.  I find that if I just have a wet wipe serving as a barrier
between the skin of my hand and the substance I'm looking for, I can
feel quite easily whether I'm dealing with simple wetness, whether I'm
dealing with poop (and what consistency), and whether the poop is off.
Mostly, I still prevent faeces from getting onto my hands and body.
Not always.  In the predicament of a "blow-out," all bets are off.
Take heart.  This is true for the population of sighted caregivers, as
well.  I use several wet wipes to handle even what seems like a simple
case, because I want to make extra sure that I have gotten everything
off of her skin surface.  I wipe more than what my sense of touch says
is necessary.  I'm sure that my wife would attest to the point that I
am better at getting all the poop off my baby than I am at getting all
the poop off of other surfaces, like the changing table, that I or the
baby or the poop might have touched.  I'm sure she will attest to the
point that in no way am I perfect at either task.

As for applying the new diaper, I find this to be the easiest.  I
always have preferred to stand my baby up, not keeping her on her
back.  This way, I am not forced to reach underneath the baby and lift
her up while at the same time trying to gain purchase with the back
side of the diaper on her bum.  In the way I prefer, she is standing
up on the changing table, legs spread as far apart as I can get them,
facing away from me.  From this position, I can apply a diaper to her
in the same way that I can imagine applying a diaper to myself.  I can
make sure that the back is pulled up tightly, that the front is
unwrinkled, and can hold her with the same motion that I use to fasten
the Velcro edges to the front.

Potty training is more Danika's forte.  I have done far less of this
than she has.  But in the small part I have played in this, and from
observing what she has gone through, I can tell you that being sighted
does not necessarily give you any more information than I've got about
when during the day a toddler has to go potty.  All too often, I
believe this is a guessing game.  My son Max, when he was 3-½ years
old, used to frustrate both me and Danika to no end,  We'd set him on
the toilet, coax him to poop for 10 minutes or more, maybe get a
little pee out of him, then hear him say "I'm done."  Then, without
fail, less than five minutes following that attempt, Max would poop in
his underpants.  This happened to both my wife and me during multiple,
separate potty training episodes.  Even after he got into the habit of
pooping on the toilet, one never could pre-determine how long it would
take during any given session for his poop to come out--and how long
it would take to make sure he was done.  Remember, once is not always
enough.  Again, smell is the key--from my vantage point, anyway.
Wiping one of my babies after a toileting session is fairly easy,
since she already is in a seated position.  I can just reach out, lift
her up--sometimes into a standing position, facing  me--and from there
I can bend over, reach around, wipe her bum, and wipe the toilet seat
and surrounding area at about the same time.

I am a dad who has had the experience of being blind all of my life,
but who has had the experience of caring for an infant only since age
45.  Since 2010, I have fostered 14 children along with Danika, who is
sighted.  Together we have adopted three of those children and are
anticipating adopting a fourth sometime around the end of this
calendar year.

Even though Danika has full use of her eyes, and even though she had
some 25 years of experience off-and-on caring for infants and young
children before we started fostering--e.g., babysitting, caring for
young nieces and nephews, and the like--I still have played from the
beginning of our fostering days a very active role in the hygienic
management  of my children.  I also usually take on the sole task of
executing bath time.  This said, all of the children were infants or
very young toddlers when they first came to live in our home.  So
consistency in the size of those little humans I am managing, has
helped to make things feel more standardized for me.

Having said this:  I get that the position you're in as a would-be
professional caregiver, is different from the position I'm in.  The
act of manipulating a young child on the changing table and the act of
actually changing the diaper are probably less nerve-racking for me
than they will be for you.  For one thing, my children at that stage
of their lives have always been small, because none of my foster or
adoptive kids has lived with a significant disability.  Even though
technically he or she has been a ward of the state at first, I always
have acted as though that infant or toddler that someone delivered to
my home was my own little boy or girl.  After all, the child is in our
home 24×7, interacting with our other kids just as if he or she were a
natural sibling.  What would I do differently if the children I got
communicated very differently, as with the more severe end of the
autism spectrum?  Or if my children were adolescent and in need of
diapering as the result of a significant learning disability?  I'm
really not sure how I would handle this.  I hear stories of folks who
work in a high school setting or a group home and who find themselves
having to diaper a violently angry, 250-pound adult male with some
kind of attachment disorder or major emotional condition, and I walk
away open-mouthed with amazement just like some of those who act so
weirdly the first time they meet a blind person.   I guess what I'm
trying to say here is that I'm probably just as ignorant about the
particulars of what you're going to experience, as most sighted people
are of blindness before they really get to know a blind person.  I
will not insult you by saying what you're trying to do is "amazing."
Your daily work represents an act of basic human decency that we as
blind people have every right to perform in service to  others if we
choose to.  I appreciate your reaching out to this list and, again, I
wish you all the success in the world as you advance on your journey.
Write or phone if you wish.

Kind regards,

Kane Brolin
(574)386-8868 (mobile)
(574)255-9897 (home)