Diaper-Changing Derby Claims World Record—No Face Masks Required

They came, they changed and “there will definitely be a world record,” said La Mesa’s Linda Byerline after moms (and a few dads) rediapered 52 babies Saturday morning at Baby Frenzy, her storefront headquarters in El Cajon.

“I was a little concerned about so many little ones being changed in the same room at one time, and I forgot the face masks I had planned to hand out,” Byerline said. “But thankfully we did not need them.”

The goal of Byerline, founder of Happy Heinys, was to help set a debut mark for the Guinness Book of World Records in simultaneous cloth-diaper changings worldwide.

Byerline said she was “super happy with the turnout.” Two other San Diego locales held diaper-changing events, including one at the University of San Diego, where 35 babies were changed, she said.

Ten years ago, she said, when she founded Happy Heinys, “I didn't know a single person in San Diego who used reusable diapers—and to have as many people as we did show up at Baby Frenzy and throughout the world shows that as an industry we are succeeding in teaching parents that there is an easy alternative to disposable diapers.

“Parents today are deciding they do not want their baby exposed to chemicals and now they have a safe alternative.”

She saluted the handful of fathers who showed up:  “Oftentimes, the dads are a little bit out of the ‘know’ when it comes to diapering and more especially the cloth diapering of the babies.”

Byerline said the world has an estimated 312 million children under age 2.

“If only half use disposable diapers, then 867,000 diapers entered the landfill during one minute of the Great Cloth Diaper Change,” she said. “In just a 5-minute time period today here in San Diego alone, 3,000 disposable diapers were sent to the landfills.”