TIFU by not checking how many wet wipes were in the pack

My husband and I are flying home to Australia from Italy with our almost five month old. We’ve been traipsing about the UK and Italy for the past 3.5 weeks, with a fair number of planes and trains, so we’ve mostly got this travelling with a baby thing down pat.

An hour into our 14 hour flight (first leg), we realise Bub, who usually poops once a day like clockwork around 6am, has an unmistakably smelly nappy. Hubby takes the hit and takes Bub to the bathroom for a nappy change.

When he comes back, he has a shellshocked look on his face. He tells me the story of the giant shit he just dealt with. We have a laugh, Bub is clean and smiley again, ready for his bottle and a nap. We give him a feed and settle him down in the plane bassinet. He sleeps a good three hours.

He awakes in a particularly bad mood. After trying to settle him with another bottle, I pick him up and give him a cuddle. That’s when I smell it. To my surprise even after hotboxing his dad, he’s clearly pooped again.

My turn, I grab our supplies; change pad, fresh outfit (his clothes feel worryingly damp), fresh nappy, wet wipes, nappy cream, hand sanitizer. Off I go to the loo to see what gift our wee one has churned out for me today.

I lay him out on the change table in the lavatory, take his legs out of the jumpsuit, wash my hands, open the wet wipes pack, and undo the nappy to find a full blown poonami. His legs, his back, and all up around his sack.

The smell assaults me. Through watering eyes I wipe off what I can with the few remaining clean parts of the nappy as my little guy grins and gurgles up at me. Then I reach into the wet wipes pack to begin the real job… only to find a single, solitary, wipe.

I pause, looking at the wipe in consternation. Hubby isn’t on the wifi so I can’t message for backup. I can’t feasibly walk down the plane aisle with a baby covered in shit to obtain a new pack. Only one thing to it; this has to be a precision job. Every swipe of ground zero has to be calculated for best use of the available resources.

I’m actually pretty proud of my work. I cleaned him up, stripped him down and used a bit of water and a ‘clean’ part of his jumpsuit to do a polish. Put on a new nappy, dressed him up in his stylish checkered pantsuit and “hello world” bib (we’re teething so allll the drool), washed my hands again, packed up our stuff and got us back to the seat without more than a gurgle and a chirp.

Hubby was getting ready to send a search party by the time I got back. But I overcame the challenge; hard mode defeated. And I will never again forget to check the weight of the wet wipes pack before taking our son for a nappy change. 😂😂

TLDR: baby unexpectedly pooped multiple times on a flight. I didn’t check the wet wipes pack before taking him to the bathroom for a nappy change and found myself facing a poonami with a single wet wipe at my disposal.