Next to the armoire sat a large dark-wooded rocking chair with a receiving blanket draped over the top. On the other side of the room was a large dresser of dark oak with an integral changing station built into the top. Above the dresser was a mirror that had been mounted with a pronounce tilt so that the baby being changed could see himself during the diaper change. Flanking the mirror over the dresser were deep spaces in the wall to either side of the mirror were shelved with Swedish Elna white-epoxied, wire-bottomed open shelving units stacked high with unopened and opened packages of various sizes of disposable diapers, spare plastic tubs of Pampers baby wipes, tubes of Desenex, and several big jars of perfumed nursery vaseline. Next to the dresser stood an white conically-shaped plastic bin that was about twenty-four inches tall, slightly less than a foot in diameter at the base and approximately eight inches across at the top. From the look of the rose-tinted transparent lid and it’s position next to the changing station, Andrew surmised that it was some sort of high-tech diaper pail for disposable diapers. Although it was a sensible way of disposing of diapers, the technology of the pail made Andrew uncomfortable. It seemed to him that babies and their diapers should smell as a rule and Krystyn’s solution had removed some of the inherent humanity from the nursery.
Andrew had the odd feeling that Krystyn had somehow made some sort of evil exchange where the normal stinks of the nursery had been traded for an adult’s sensibilities at the cost of sacrificing a normal environment for an infant. Andrew dismissed the vagrant thought immediately as he caught the slight vanilla scent of baby powder from the changing station reach invitingly out to him across the room.
Andrew looked at the well appointed nursery and decided that his ill foreboding had been nothing but flight of fancy. “So what if the diapers don’t stink?”, he asked himself, “Krystyn has made a perfectly reasonable addition to the nursery that any modern mother might make. Nursery odors are bad enough without having wet and dirty diapers to add to the stench. I must be reading too many Gothic novels lately! Maybe I should lighten up and reread Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’ or Apuleius’s ‘Golden Ass’. They’re good for a chuckle or two!”
The heavy wooden crib in the center of the room next to the wall had no proper head or footboard, instead being surrounded by thick dark bars on all sides. The design of the crib was one Andrew had never seen before; the four-inch posters at the ends were curled outwards at the highest point in a style that was reminiscent of a large black wooden sleigh. To heighten the effect, the posters had a circular scrollwork carved into their sides that matched the plinths on the doorway. Andrew noticed that the mattress in the crib had been set to an extremely low level; the bottom of the crib could not have been more than eighteen inches from the floor. Since the ends of the crib were almost five feet tall, that meant that an infant would have to surmount a barrier of almost three feet to climb over the rails. Even with the side dropped all the way to the floor, the top of the railing would still be two feet above the crib mattress. Krystyn would have to stretch herself to bend over the dropped side in order to pickup a supine infant from the mattress.