Eva Tennessee is nearly 6 weeks old and I still don’t have a diaper bag. Ok, fine. I have several diaper bags, but none of them are exactly what I need. Especially at this fourth child stage of the game. I need something that will wipe clean when a 3 year old smells a dirty diaper and decides the best place to vomit would be IN the diaper bag. I need a bag that has plenty of difficult to get into pockets so our 2 year old will not have the whole thing emptied in the thirty seconds she is alone with the bag. I need one with a secret hidden pocket for all of my sanity-preserving-chocola…, I mean, personal, mom-type things, so my 7 year old doesn’t whine and pull faces about how unfair grownups are.

I need something that can be worn while I wear the baby, without straps falling off my shoulder all day long because, really, I have enough weirdness going on with my person. Like making sure my giant nursing bra straps are not showing and my shirt and nursing pads are situated properly after attempting to discreetly feed a baby in public (which ain’t easy, cuz as much as people say they don’t want to see it, sometimes it feels like they can’t stop trying to). I am also having to concentrate a considerable amount of physical and mental energy sucking in my residual baby belly so Connor doesn’t ask me when I am going to have this other baby. Further, now that I am not wearing stretchy-waistbanded maternity pants, I am also constantly checking to make sure that my button and fly are in the upright locked position. This is all the energy I have for personal care and grooming in a day so I really really do not need a high maintenance diaper bag adding to my personal circus.

So, I have found one that I THINK may be awesome!

…

It’s $200.

What the what? For a diaper bag? And I’m considering this??

My internal dialog would like to point out that Burberry makes a $1,300.00 diaper bag and I am not interested in it.

…

Blurg. I can’t justify spending that, especially when I don’t have a guarantee that it will be as amazing as I think it will. A guarantee like: “If this doesn’t do everything you think it should, we’ll give you your money back and hire a person to follow you around, carrying all your crap, and handing you things as you need them.”

So, because Eva Tennessee enjoys spending time with me during the night, I have lots and lots of time to sleepily think about things. First, I do my bible study and pray over people, then I design my ideal diaper bag and check to see if google has anything to offer that matches my brain’s brilliance.

Last night I came up with an amazing bag that would be perfect for babywearers. First, it sits at your hips, below where baby is worn. It has adjustable straps, so men and women can wear it. It also buckles, so it can easily be removed for diaper changes and quickly, securely replaced after. It can be worn on the hip or in front, so you don’t have to worry about theft because, of course, a diaper bag carries our cell phones and wallets too. It has multiple pockets, including a big zipper one on the front that is easily accessible, even while being worn. As my ideas flowed, I became really excited and wondered if perhaps this is what the market needs. A seasoned mommy to finally come up with THE diaper bag. The one that would change all of our lives. The one that would have Ellen inviting me to her show so I could extol the virtues of my brilliant design. Then I would look out at the audience of pregnant women, and tell them they were each receiving one. I imagined the tears filling their eyes as they recognized that finally someone had created a classy bag that fulfilled all of their needs. Someone understood their desire to look stylish while embracing the practical. As I tried to come up with search parameters so I could google whether anyone else could have possibly had such a stroke of brilliance and was already marketing what I had envisioned, I had a rather rude awakening.

This was not a new concept.

I invented the fanny pack.