Children with gastric or  acid reflux disease need to be kept as upright as possible as much of the time as they can be. In dealing with this issue in our home, we decided that even when changing the diaper of the baby, that we should try and keep him at an angle so that the acids would not go up his throat. In order to accomplish this, I designed and built a changing table that accommodates these needs. It takes about 30-40 minutes to build start to finish (after the trip to the hardware store). The plan with pictures is shared here.

PARTS LIST
One 10 foot section of PVC irrigation pipe.
PVC Glue
6 90 degree PVC elbows
A package of adhesive vinyl bumbers (see Figure 4)
1 terry cloth towel or other material at least 24 x 30 inches.
Good strong thread (optionally matching the towel)

NEEDED TOOLS
Sewing Machine
Something to cut the PVC pipe (a hacksaw, miter saw or PVC cutter)

Figure 1 is the finished changing table. It should be fairly obvious where the baby goes :-)

The exact lengths of the pipe are not critical, except that the two side pieces and the two vertical pieces should be the same length. For my table, A = 11 inches, B= 22 inches and C = 9.5 inches. (I actually made the A nearest the top an inch longer, but that might complicate the sewing.)

The angle of the table is fairly important, because if it is too low, it doesn't protect the baby's esophogus, and if it is too high, then the baby can easily wiggle off.

The first step is to cut all the pieces of PVC to length. This can be done with a hacksaw, a PVC cutter or even a compound miter saw. Assemble the entire unit before applying any glue to make sure you know how to adjust it so that there isn't any wiggle. PVC glues dry exceptionally fast, so there is not much time to get it all right once glue has been applied.

Glue all the joints as shown in Figure 2. Do NOT glue the parts that are not shown glued. It is necessary to be able to remove them, so that the cloth part of the changing table can be taken off and washed. Structurally these parts only serve to keep the top of the changing table apart when the baby is put in, and my first prototype didn't even have these pieces.

Sewing The Towel

Ok, I admit it, the Mohawk did this part, but I COULD have!!!

While the table shown does not use a towel for the material, we often wrap a towel around it. The towel increases the coefficient of friction, keeping the baby from sliding down during changing (a hassle, when the little wiggly guy is stinky, to say the least). Better to have just sewn it in the first place using the towel material.

Sewing the towel is best done AFTER the PVC is assembled. First sew a tube that fits around the whole table reasonably tightly as shown in Figure 1. Then turn the tube inside out with the seam on the middle of the inside of the bottom. Then sew two lines up the sides to form the cloth tubes that will go around the PVC. Note that these have to be big enough to go over the elbow joint between B and C in figure 2. (The Mormon HATES unpicking the Mohawk's sewing :-) The easiest way is to just sew the tubes quite large.  If they are too large, there might be a tendency for the material to slip down, but I'd err on the big side as the weight of the baby should largely prevent the slipping. Figure 3 shows the cloth tube.
 

Figure 4 shows the kind of tabs that I applied to the bottom of the "feet" so that the table doesn't slide around. This might be viewed as optional, but it really increases the ease of use with a larger more wiggly baby, and makes the whole apparatus a lot safer.

Note that the top comes together cradling the baby and adding additional safety.
Note from the Mohawk: the baby should NEVER be left on the change table unattended.

That's it! Enjoy your baby without the crying!

Kelly - The Mormon