Bappers & Pop-A-Pants!
 

Was just having a laugh at the strange words my kids used to come up with when they were little and thought of this one!

Bappers and pop-a-pants was - diapers and rubber pants.

Yes, I used old-fashioned cloth diapers, diaper pins, and rubber pants on my children back in the day, and how in the world one of my sons came up with "bappers and pop-a-pants" is beyond me, but that's what he used to call them!

My mom thought that maybe because dear son observed me changing diapers and sticking the pins in, that maybe he associated me popping the rubber pants with the diaper pins.

Speaking of diapers and rubber pants, hands-up if cloth diapers, diaper pins, and rubber pants were the order of the day in your home back in the day.

No hand up for me. I tried cloth diapers for about a month. Too much stress for me and the baby. I used disposable diapers on all my kids. Johnson and Johnson had disposable diapers then and they were the best.

My son is 53, I used cloth diapers. I held on tight to the corner of the poop ones and swished them around in the toilet. Then flushed it and luckily I never accidentally let go. Every diaper went into a bin and luckily we had a diaper service that picked up the used ones and brought fresh ones.

Hand up! My kiddos arrived just on the cusp of disposable diapers. I recall them being called paper diapers. I had a few for emergencies but they were in their "infancy" and not terrific. A long way from what is available now. I thought I had died and gone to heaven when my husband said I could use a diaper service for kiddo #3. Guess he was tired of all of those tubs of diapers soaking to remove the stains before I did a final wash and hung then out on the line to do a final bleach in the sun. Line drying also saved $$. The service dented the family budget, but saved this mom of three so much time. My son called diapers, dab-ers,

I recall also the rubber or plastic pants were so soft and nice until you washed them a few times and they would get stiff and discolor. Ahhhh the good old days......or not. Tee-Hee-Hee!

One hand up and one down. First born had cloth at home and disposable at the sitter's. Second born started in cloth and slowly transitioned to disposable. I also had a wringer washer--no fancy new-fangled top loading washing machines for me!! Boy was I dumb!

DD's kids were in cloth for the most part--those expensive 'good for the planet' ones that were (still are??) all the rage 15 odd years ago.

Hand up! My daughter is 43 and I used cloth because every time she was in a disposable for any length of time, she would get diaper rash. Cloth for me almost always. Disposable only for travel until I went back to work when she was 14 months.

My boys were born before disposable diapers were a thing. So I used cloth diapers and plastic "rubber" pants. I remember my baby brother had what felt like rubber pants over his diapers. We did have diaper liners. I could slide the mess into the toilet. Tried diaper service for a month. Didn't like that. Bad diapers etc. we weren't of means so just did what other mothers around me did. I also hung diapers on clothesline if weather permitted. I was lucky enough to have a Maytag porta-dryer that didn't need venting and did about 20 diapers at a time. Also had washer that connected to kitchen sink. Truly a blessing.

Keeping motherhood simple and stress-free I can totally relate to.

Oh yes, toilet dunking, bobbing and rinsing! I so remember!

I used to leave the really bad ones to soak in the toilet bowl before tackling the rinsing, then as you say, holding on tightly to prevent the flushing of the toilet from tugging the diaper from your grip, up and down the diaper was plunged, a quick hand-wringing followed, then into the plastic diaper pail the diaper would go.

"Dab-ers", so cute!

Gosh, yes, diaper service. I babysat for a mother that had diaper service for a while, that was back in the 70's, my teen years, and I remember she kept the big plastic diaper pail in her back porch.

Yuppers... how those rubber pants would stain around the elastic leg holes (pink), and turn crunchy after so many stays in the diaper pail and being laundered in the washing machine. I found hand-washing the rubber pants and hanging them on the clothesline to dry increased the life of the pants exponentially.

Do remember when rubber pants came in colours and prints, too (popular in the 70's).

OMG... the old wringer washing machines! I so remember!

Helped my mom with the care of baby siblings being the oldest, and remember helping her wash diapers in her wringer washing machine. Occasionally a pair of rubber pants would explode when accidentally fed into the rollers the wrong way. Boy, did they ever make a loud bang when they popped!

Cloth here, too, always.

I was a fulltime stay-at-home mom, so good old diapers were the way.

Do remember a neighbour that used disposables, and her kids always had red, sore bottoms.

Diaper liners, yes, I remember them.

I used diaper liners (flushable ones) for the first handful of weeks after each of my babies were born. Being able to unpin a dirty diaper, rollup the diaper liner and flush it, made for easy cleanup, especially during those early meconium poop days.

Found that once my kids were up and mobile (crawling and toddling), the diaper liners never stayed put. I'd lay a liner inside the diaper, pin-fasten the diaper, put on the rubber pants, and the kid was off, and when I'd check them for wetness an hour later, the diaper liner would be sitting in a rolled up, bunched-up ball inside the bottom of their diapers, but do remember adding a liner for nighttime occasionally if one of my kids had the start of a diaper rash or irritated bottom.

With my baby siblings they had plain old white vinyl pull-on pants, which we always called - "rubber pants".

As for drying, I used a clothesline, too. I remember the long row of diapers and rubber pants that stretched from back porch, all the way out to the far corner clothesline post in our backyard. Back then all of the neighbourhood moms had diapers drying on their clotheslines.

Remember double diapering? Did everyone double diaper?

I did, daytime and nighttime, even remember triple diapering occasionally.

What about babysitting? Did everyone babysit growing up? Do you remember your babysitting rate?

I made a whopping .25¢ an hour when I first started babysitting, and by my senior high-school years I was making .50¢ an hour. And yes, everyone used cloth diapers and rubber pants back then.

Must say how much I appreciated having that stack of diapers and rubber pants at my disposal 24/7, when my kids were little.

Being able to reach for a freshly laundered diaper at change-time no matter what time of night or day was a blessing. No emergency runs to the store for Pampers, no ongoing expense, and nothing beat seeing my kids do the bulky double diaper waddle!

I can still hear the plastic rustling sound of those old rubber pants at change-time, and when my kids would crawl and toddle around the house. Swish, swish, swish...

I also used cloth diapers ( 1961 -1969) and had a wringer washing machine and no dryer. We survived. DH actually was a better pinner than I was.

sure glad that i had access to disposables for periods. My mom mentioned having to wash out her "rags" when she was young.
probably not that much grosser than rinsing poop diapers.

Wonder what people did before cloth and disposables?

Oh yes... disposable for pads.

As for diapers in the past (way back), I, too, have often wondered about that.

I am so grateful that rubber pants were around when I was diapering, otherwise the thought of using straight plain old cloth diapers like in the olden days would have pushed me to use Pampers.

from what I keep reading, not many children are using diapers nor taught to use the toilet. Teachers are not happy with this new way of raising children. I was so happy for diaper service. Now, with all the trash problems all over the world, we need more biodegradable things.

Toilet training definitely isn't what it used to be.

I do not, and will never understand a child entering the school system who is not fully trained. Society and the world we live in has lost so much ground.

At tthe other end ot the road, adult incontinence is a big bother and inconvenience. Any way of overcoming it?

The connection to disposable diapers is disposable urine and feces catchers for adults. Do you think we should figureout a way to get/make/use cloth for adults instead of disposables?

Go get em girl!!! yep, older people are having more problems. I think Nature is changing the rules and that will probably be very interesting but not sure I want to live through that. Time will tell.

I like to try and think positive and hold out hope for new technologies, treatments, and medical breakthroughs re:, but all in all, when it comes to the medical field and clinical applications, seems disposable products will always remain a staple.

The sad part of all this is, our foremothers (for generations) rinsed out and washed the diapers of their children, and so many of us did the same when raising our children, yet for whatever reason, today's younger generation can't wrap their head around the idea of reusability.

Mankind has clogged, bogged, and smogged up the entire planet with his waste and cruel ways of harvesting what he needs, and at any expense to the ecosystem and balance of nature, yet even through what we know today as to the damaging effects mankind's throw-away mentality continues to create, everything seems to remain the same. Very little change.

Just remembered how I would run the business end of the diaper pin through my hair before pin-fastening diapers, and how a dash of baby powder inside baby's rubber pants helped those pants slide over baby's little piggies, and up and down sticky, sweaty little legs at change-time!

Little piggies always seemed to get caught in the elastic leg holes!

Also remember the red elastic rings my kids wore around the tops of their legs from the rubber pants!

Most left the disposable diaper on too long and the first ones were not that absorbent to keep wetness away from the skin. I changed the disposable ones as soon as it was wet. Now there is a blue line showing when it's time to change the disposable diaper. It's sad an adult has to have a sign it's time to change the baby's diaper. I guess good at day care though.

I agree about the wetness indicators added to disposables today, it is sad.

Back in my babysitting days and with my own children I'd pull back the elastic waistband of rubber pants to check diapers, and with cloth you could feel the heaviness on a baby's bottom when they had a wet diaper. Checking was done regularly to help stave off diaper rash and irritation, and with the old-fashioned cloth diapers they got wet so fast, so checking and changing was constant.

Even remember sometimes pulling the rubber pants down far enough to unlatch one of the diaper pins on the diapers to do a proper check if baby or child was in their crib.

Oh i kept some of those thin cloth diapers, they made great dust cloths!!

OMG, yes!

I still have roughly a dozen and a half old leftover diapers I use for washing windows, wiping up spills in the kitchen, and for light dusting! The best!!!

And, I still have my kids old diaper pins stowed away in my notions basket and every now and then I'll fetch one to do a temporary repair or fasten something that needs fastening!

I remember the old disposable diapers from the 70's, where the absorbent padding bunched, sagged and drooped, there were no elasticized leg gathers, and if you tried lifting one of the sticky tabs to open the diaper up to check it for wetness, the sticky tab tore the plastic on the diaper. Oh, and yes... those early disposable diapers leaked bad!

you were fortunate you had the means to change the diapers so frequently. I thought they were supposed to wick the fluids away from the skin. I used cloth because there were no disposables.

Call me old-fashioned, but a wet diaper is a wet diaper.

I remember when Pampers came out with a commercial that bragged that their diapers were good for 12 hours, and I sat there dumbfounded, couldn't believe what I was seeing and hearing.

I chose to use cloth diapers strictly because of my old-fashionedness, that, and the fact I grew up the oldest and changed my baby siblings cloth diapers all the time, not to mention all the kids I babysat in my teens around the neighbourhood that wore cloth diapers, helped make the process of choosing to use cloth diapers with my own kids automatic.

I didn't say I didn't change wet diapers. I said it was fortunate the expense for disposables wasn't an issue. I didn't have the choice. No disposables were available to me back in the way back days.

So sorry you misconstrued my entry, I wasn't at all implying anything negative towards you, Stitchnripper.

In me mentioning that a wet diaper is a wet diaper, I was just casting my thoughts on it, not directing it at you.

got it. Thanks

Speaking of pop-a-pants, does everyone remember when rubber pants came in colours and cute little nursery designs, outside that of plain old-fashioned white?

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Oh, and I remember Gerber rubber pants stayed soft forever, wash after wash, and the elastics never lost their stretch! In fact, the Gerber's stood up to being laundered with the diapers in the washing machine without tearing.

The old supermarket where I used to shop carried Gerber rubber pants, and so I could do a true one-stop shop, picking up all things grocery related, along with rubber pants for the baby when I needed them, and nothing beat the fit of Gerber rubber pants when it came to waterproofs being ample enough to cover bulky double diapers.

I even remember Gerber rubber pants from my old babysitting days! Gerber was a household name back then.

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My older daughter was 5 before she was fully trained. Finally, after ignoring her need to 'evacuate' while playing, she came in to be changed and cleaned up by me. I said, "No. You could have come in and used the toilet, so you clean yourself."

She was outraged! I closed the bathroom door and left her to clean up. I don't remember the state of the bathroom when she was done...but never had the problem again. She turned 50 this year.

Good on you!

I made one of my sons pack his own dirty diapers to the bathroom and put them in the toilet one morning, then I made him stand beside me while I dunked his soiled diapers up and down in the toilet, before handing them back to him to put in the plastic diaper pail.

The following morning dear son came into the kitchen pulling at his diapers and saying - "poo-poo mommy", meaning he had to go potty, suggesting to me that he had learned his leasson.

My youngest was the worst when it came to being toilet trained, he was still toddling around in diapers and rubber pants into his late 3's!

Speaking of Pampers, I remember one household where I babysat at where Pampers were in use, all the rest of the homes where I babysat at, cloth diapers, diaper pins, and rubber pants were in vogue.

Speaking of rubber pants, boy, they sure could bring on a good diaper rash.

Summertime when the weather was hot my kids used to get rubber pants rash.

my kids are grown but the blue line diapers were a thing when they were little and our pediatrician said to "ignore that line, they found they sold more diapers with the line because parents change more often than without the line, change the diaper when it's thick"

My youngest brother, Bill, who I share MY b-day with..lol Was the first of us 5 siblings to wear Pampers. Mom was overjoyed! She took all the old clean cloth diapers and used them as "batting" on her Crazy Quilt she made 53 years ago. The quilt has long since been sent off to quilt heaven by an over abundance of love and washings.