A distant acquaintance of mine was recently waxing rhapsodic about a baby item she felt she could not do without. She was talking about her baby wipe warmer.

Say what?

I cannot think of a piece of baby gear that is more superfluous, and yes, wasteful, than the electric baby wipe warmer. I think it is a common misconception for new mothers to want “the best” for their babies, and by god, no nasty room temperature wipe is going to touch their precious kids’ bottoms! Not if they have anything to say about it!  And boy, has the Baby Industrial Complex stepped up to deliver anything and everything a mom might want, regardless of whether she actually needs it.

I often wonder how the pioneers crossing the continent would have felt about this particular motherly concern. Oh yeah, right, they didn’t even HAVE anything like baby wipes for their children, and I think they would have probably smacked us modern mothers upside the head at some of the things we worry about. I can see it now, “Tobias, we absolutely cannot cross over those mountains unless you can guarantee me I’ve got a way to warm up little Mildred’s burlap squares*!”  Not to say there aren’t some very nifty things, but a wipe warmer isn’t one of them. 

People say, but oh, my baby screams like a banshee when I wipe her bottom with a cold wipe! Newsflash! Many newborns scream like a banshee at many, many things, and being naked and exposed will do that to a person, especially one who just spent the last nine months all cozy-like curled up in the womb. Chances are it has little to do with the wipe.  The time frame for this type of response is actually very short, and not worth spending the money on a wipe warmer.  And if you have an older child that still does that, just tell them they need to suck it up.

HOWEVER, because I am nothing if not compassionate,  if you are worried that your little snookum’s poopy bum will be unable to cope with a wipe that doesn’t feel like an electric blanket, I have an eco-conscious and energy saving tip.

Use your hands to hold the wipe and/or wipes as you undress your child.  By the time you are ready to get down to business, voila!  You have gotten the wipes to a nice non booty-offending temperature.  And best of all, it cost you absolutely nothing!

*Not that I have any knowledge of what they used for wipes in the pioneer days.  It could have been old pieces of clothing, or leaves for all I know.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 20th, 2010 at 2:31 am by Glinda and is filed under Accessories, Baby Gear, Big Bad Business, Environment, Oh MOM!, Parental Musings, Things I Hate, What to do. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.