Labour MEP advises daughter (on Facebook) on dealing with wet nappies

While Judge Antonio Mizzi presides over a murder trial, his wife and daughter deal with some very serious issues in the most feminist island ever.

What happened to ringing your friend/mother/midwife/doctor for advice? Now we go on Facebook and tell everybody that our infant son urinates too much while our helpful mother, aged 61, pops in to be cool by suggesting we put a knot in it.

Here’s my advice, Alexandra, from somebody who had three infant sons all in nappies at the same time.

1. Put down a machine-washable rubber sheet under the cotton sheet.

2. Have a spare rubber sheet to hand for the really bad events.

3. If your baby’s disposable nappy is leaking onto the sheet at night, slip a pair of old-fashioned rubber pants over it. Your mother will know what those are.

4. Don’t let the top of his vest come into contact with the inside top of the nappy because the urine will transfer from the saturated nappy to the cotton of the vest and ride right up his chest. This is another disposable-nappy shortcoming which is solved by rubber pants.

5. If there is no disposable nappy which can cope with the nocturnal flow, switch to old-fashioned towelling nappies for the night. They can cope with pretty much anything. Your mother will show you how to fold one and fix it in place with a safety pin, then slip those rubber pants over. If she’s forgotten, give me a ring and I’ll show you myself. I did it so many times that I will probably still be able to fold one in my sleep aged 90.

6. If the wetness doesn’t bother him, he’ll sleep right through it and you needn’t bother yourself. Just give him a good bath in the morning. If it bothers him, he’ll cry and you’ll have to wake up and change that nappy. Just deal with it. There’s much worse ahead for the next 18 years at least.

7. Remember always that you are not the first woman to have a baby so there is no need to turn it into a public performance. When you need advice ask for it privately. Random public requests on Facebook about how to deal with a baby are for the seriously uneducated who can’t help themselves and who have nobody to turn to because the social worker hasn’t turned up.