My Thoughts on Changing Tables

I made up my mind early on that aside from the crib, the most critical piece of baby furniture to be purchased was the changing table. Imagine my shock and dismay when in mid-pregnancy I was told by an employee of Baby's 1st Furniture that "Um, people don't really buy changing tables anymore".

I felt pretty stupid. "Are babies still crapping?" I thought to myself.

It turns out what she meant, in her own way, was that the singular purpose traditional changing table was being challenged by some interesting alternatives, such as nightstands designed to be flipped upside down and fitted with a changing pad and using regular dressers with a contoured changing pad affixed to the back. I consider myself a pretty creative person and never envisioned that the traditional changing table (which costs far less than the mentioned alternatives) would ever go to waste after the diapering stage. After all, I could make a pretty fantastic plant stand or towel rack with it if needed.

A few of considerations:

* The most important element to me was that the diaper changing area be secure, i.e. the baby is not in jeopardy of falling off the table. This inevitably leads to jokes later on in life... "That explains a lot, so-and-so was dropped on his head." Most traditional changing tables have this problem licked with high wooden sides that the changing pad fits down into. Changing pads, however, have evolved to be "contoured", so the baby sits down in the pad surrounded by hard contoured sides that are part of the pad itself. A contoured pad can be secured to the back of any flat surface on a regular nightstand or dresser and still be very safe. All pads should have a nylon safety strap to keep wriggly babies in place.

* Most traditional changing tables have open shelves rather than drawers. This means you will have to buy additional baskets or trays to organize baby supplies. This open design also makes for a decidedly flimsier piece of furniture. Traditional changing tables that do have drawers are usually self-assembled and are not extremely well made. We test drove several of these in Babies 'R Us and observed varying degrees of quality.

* Where are you planning to put baby's clothes? Hats and socks? Diapers? Ointment? Wipes?Thermometer? Breastfeeding supplies? Nail files? Bottle Warmer? There are so many baby things I didn't think about having space for! I quickly came to the conclusion that I needed a nearly full size dresser with actual drawers to accommodate all this stuff.

* Some of the dressers have matching hutches, as ours did. Some of these hutches really seem to crowd the diapering area, and who wants loose knick knacks poised above baby anyway? I don't like the hutch combo option, and we decided not to do this.

The choices we made were to purchase the Baby's Dream Infinity Dresser in Chestnut outfitted with a Rumble Tuff Contoured Changing Pad. I found the Rumble Tuff superior to the Simmons Contour Changing Pad because the Rumble Tuff had all four sides contoured compared with Simmons' only having two or three sides contoured. Also, the Simmons changing pad can only be affixed one way to the dresser surface, so even if you have a table like ours that has one high side, the Simmons pad still left one side exposed because of its installation limitations. I purchased the Rumble Tuff contoured pad with 2 terry cloth covers from Babycenter.com for $40.46. The Simmons version runs around $20, which each cover costing around $13 a piece, so the Rumble Tuff combo was actually a better deal.



The cost difference between a traditional changing table ($100-$150) and the one we bought ($499.99) is very significant. The quality of the usable space our choice affords us, along with the easy transition into a regular stand alone dresser more than justifies the additional cost in my opinion.