I could smell the alcohol on mother’s breath when she at last stepped into the bedroom. She laid out a changing pad on the bed, and I dutifully shifted over onto it, too tired and uncomfortable to make the always unsuccessful argument that I should be allowed to change myself. The reasons for why I wasn’t allowed to change my own diapers had varied as I had gotten older.
As a younger child, it was because I wasn’t big enough to do that. As I got older and was given chances to diaper myself, mother complained that leaks would happen because I couldn’t diaper myself right, or said that she needed to clean me up because I wasn’t doing a good enough job of it myself.