B – ‘Can I wear underwear to bed?’
Me – ‘No. Sometimes you poop in your sleep. You need to wear a pullup.’
B – ‘No! I only poop in my sleep on Mondays, Fridays and Tuesdays!’
Me – ‘What about Saturdays and Sundays?’
B – ‘Yeah!’
Me – ‘And Wednesdays and Thursdays?’
B – ‘Yeah!’
Me – ‘So everyday?’
B – ‘No, I only poop on Mondays, birthday party days and Wednesdays!’
I had that exchange a couple of weeks ago with B. It was kind of cute. But every other time……poop ain’t cute, for real.
Alright, this is kind of cute
It’s a part of life, a normal function of the body, blah, blah blah. It’s still disgusting, yo.
Back in the day, pre-children, whenever I’d hang with people who had babies, they were always considerate enough to change their kids’ diapers away from me. To be honest, if they hadn’t, I probably would have gotten all diva on them. All yelling and shaking my neck and taking off my fake nails if I was wearing fake nails for some weird reason, until they went into another room. Get that filthiness outta here!
And yup, I was one of those people who never changed a diaper in his life. Why would I? They weren’t my kids, and I’m not touching their excrement. I vaguely recall dry heaving at the sight of one diaper bomb years ago. Pretty sure I closed my eyes during pre-natal class when they showed pictures of the meconium bowel movement. We got a Diaper Genie at a baby shower. I had no clue what it was. I do know that if you rub it, a genie doesn’t come out. Stupid misleading product name.
Didn’t take any of the jokes seriously that people kept telling me about changing diapers all the time. Just assumed it wasn’t so bad, and everyone was exaggerating. Since when is everyone in agreement about anything? Basically, before B was born, I was clueless and prissy.
And then B was born.
No joke, I remember the first time that I tried to change B. It was when he was a couple of days old. Still in pure prissymode, a buddy of mine had come to the hospital to visit, so I got him to help me/do all the work. We undressed B, and from his back……..he started to pee. It shot straight through the air like a fountain and landed all over us. And from that golden shower, a realization rained down on me that everyone wasn’t kidding. Diaper changing ain’t no joke with your kids; it’s a fact of life.
Over time, my prissyness waned. Don’t get it twisted. I’m still not going to look back on all the feces years from now in wonder.
Not now, Wonder Years, I’ll indulge in a few of your dramedic episodes later.
I’m not one of those people who brags about their diaper changing skills (I still put them on backwards sometimes. Shut up.) , or tells everyone how much they enjoy changing their kid for whatever reason (I heard bonding time once, as a reason. Can’t I bond in a less smelly way?). It isn’t an enjoyable experience. There’s no way around it. But until the kids are fully potty trained, I’ve been sentenced to diaper duty (duty in diapers?), so what am I going to do? Appeal the sentence? Appeal to who? All I can do is roll up my sleeves and grin and bear it. The alternative is not doing it, and that’s not fair to the kids. Rashes and diseases etc.
And that’s the other thing. Not only are bowel movements important to the kids, they become important to us, the parents too. When they were babies, and on breast milk, their poops were like clockwork, and you’re touching feces 100 times a day. Or it felt like 100 times a day. I don’t know, I wasn’t keeping track. Eventually, the kids got off the boob and got onto actual food. So then it’s not so much about the frequency, but everything else about the poop. The size, the shape, the colour, the texture (rough and nutty? Rich and creamy? Soft and spreadable like Nutella?). I remember changing B one time, and then taking him to K. K asked me what his poop was like. Man, I didn’t know, it was like poop. Yeah, not knowing didn’t go over so well. Remember, it’s important! So the next time I changed him, you best believe that I was in Grissom on CSI-mode, the way I analyzed it. Microscopes, powders, infrared lights, chalk outlines, a fully detailed report. OK, I didn’t go that far, but you get the idea. I had to step my game up after that. I went from not caring about poo, to hardcore caring about it. Because if something was off, it was panic mode time.
The other messed up part is that not only do we spend an inordinate amount of time talking bowel movements, but when we’re with other parents, it’s a topic that typically comes up in conversation, too. Our kids’ bowel movements. What the? Back in the day, I didn’t go out to dinner with my buddies and compare dumps that we took. As a parent, though, anything goes, no topic is too messy. It’s like we’re swapping notes. Notes on toilet paper.
So between constantly talking about, and constantly being elbows deep in it, poop is always on my mind. The S in A.D.I.D.A.S now stands for something else, for real. My prissyness is gone and I’m now basically numb. I’ve had to wipe off and touch poop too many times not to be. So many gross diaper leaks. So many gross diaper leaks.
J’s like a year and half years old and she can sorta say a few words. Guess what words she knows how to say? Poo and pee. She even goes on the potty sometimes. Not all of the time. The other day, she told me that she had to go pee. I took her to the potty, and took her diaper off. I left to get a new diaper, came back, she was gone. Found her in the playroom. There was a massive turd on the floor. Old Mike would have worsened the situation by throwing up all over it. New Mike just picked it up, flushed it down the toilet and wondered if they made pooper scoopers for humans.
Ah shhh….oot. That reminds me. J dropped another turd in a different room today. B did worsen the situation by trying to pick it up, to get rid off it, but he pressed too hard down and smeared it in the carpet. Bless his helpful heart. Need to clean that, so I gotta go. Poop ain’t cute.
