If you’ve changed a diaper within the last few years, you may have noticed that most diapers now have a line that runs from back to front and, depending on the state of the diaper, is either yellow or blue. I learned about this line when I was in the hospital with Austin. I was exhausted from three days of labor, weak from the loss of a great deal of blood, and terrified because I was a new parent responsible for a helpless human being. That’s when the lactation consultant asked me if he had a wet diaper; I told her I did not know because I had not checked recently. “Well,” she said “you know how you can tell by the blue line on the diaper?” Nope. Didn’t know. Had not read “Diapering 101.” So that’s how I discovered The Thin Blue Line. She kindly informed us that a yellow line meant that the diaper was still dry and a blue line meant it was wet, and, of course, should be changed. Awesome! A cheat sheet for diaper changing.

As with all things you do for your first child, we changed that diaper every time the yellow started to turn to blue. If that line looked greenish-yellow, it was time to change his diaper! (And we marked it down in our tally as a wet diaper—one of the between 6 and 8 wet diapers that the medical community likes to see a new baby having per day.) As time went on and we discovered that a baby having a wet diaper for a few minutes did not bring the world crashing down, we got more lax in our diaper changing. In fact, I was known to quickly check the diaper and decide (thanks to the thin blue line) whether it was time to change that diaper because not doing so would cause you to need to change more than just the diaper in another hour, or if it just meant his kidneys were functioning properly and that diaper had another good hour or two left in it.

I felt that this thin blue line was a handy tool, but never knew how much I had come to rely on it until a couple of days ago when I pulled out some organic sample diapers a company had sent to me to use. They were lovely little disposable organic diapers with pictures of baby themes on them that I would have happily considered using if it hadn’t required pawning my first born to be able to afford them for my second. They appeared to be appropriately substantial and seemed comfortable for her, but they had no line, yellow or blue. I didn’t think a thing about it as I grabbed an organic diaper and packaged up my eight-week-old treasure. And, by the way, what makes a diaper organic? Does it eat only grass-fed beef or broccoli that has been raised with no pesticides or free range chickens before it’s boxed up to go out and cover small humans? It’s something that crossed my mind as I later prepared to change that lovely little diaper in the early morning hours; the diaper with cute pictures but no line to tell me in my sleep-deprived state if the child truly needed changing. I even checked to see if the pictures changed colors in some way to give a tired parent a clue, but there was nothing.

What did our mothers and grandmothers do without a thin blue line to tell them to change their child’s diaper? I mean, once they’re ambulatory, you can tell it needs changing when they start to waddle around it between their knees (or so I’m told), but for a baby, how was one supposed to tell? And before you tell me about the positive aspects of the cloth diapers they used, let me tell you that for a medical professional that gets paid to work with blood and spit, I do not handle dealing with human waste well. Cloth diapers would be a struggle for me, as I have been known to consider tossing garments that have succumbed to a baby blow-out instead of just rinsing them out and laundering them.

So, I realized, as I repackaged my treasure, that I had become quite dependent on this thin blue line.  But, really, what’s the harm in appreciating a few modern conveniences? Until my kids are potty trained, I’ll appreciate the thin blue line and look forward to any other modern conveniences I have not yet discovered to assist in raising tiny humans.