Oh, You Thought I Was All Done Talking About Poop?

There’s a moment in parenthood when I feel totally incompetent, helpless, and debilitated. I kind of just stand there breathing deeply, saying to myself Whoooaa… ok. Ok. Ok. Whooooaaa. 

I get the shivers, zone out, and have an out of body experience — the kind where my soul flies out and floats above my body and watches me standing idly in pseudo shock.

The only way I know how to snap out of the whole freakout is to give myself a pep talk. Like a literal, out loud, You can do this GorgeousBaby You! peptalk.

What triggers these “episodes”?

It’s the diaper blow out.

I know. How ridiculous, right? How many have I survived by now? Thousands Hundreds I’ve always been bad at estimating.

The diaper blow out is a totally common, normal occurrence that happens with having a baby. Or so I’ve convinced myself. I may just be totally diaper-disabled and not know how to 1) put diapers on actual human beings 2) know the appropriate weight to diaper proportion for my child.

Yet, when these blowouts happen, and it’s been quite frequent as of late, I am becoming more and more of a basket case. Today, NB2.0 had a total up-the-back-out-her-ears-through-her-armpits kinda explosion. Granted, it wasn’t quite like Shitzkrieg, but it left me… shaken. To the core. Again.

Here’s kinda how it went down after the initial impact:

1. I was like … Whoaaaa… Back up, throw yo hands up in the air, and wave em like you just don’t care!
2. Out of body experience.
3. Regain consciousness. Realize my baby is covered in shit. Curse. Say shit a lot. Realize the use of the word shit is incredibly apropos and congratulate myself (a lot) Shout, “No pun intended!!!!” and look around the room for applause. Crickets.
4. Pep Talk. Man up. Just. Man. The Ef. Up. Crack knuckles. Cue the best pep song ever – Eye of the Tiger. 
5. Evaluate the damage based on blast radius.
6. Parents, rate your blowout experience using this handy scale:

1 – There are leaks out the sides, with some seepage on the legs. Poop mostly contained.

2 – “Chunking” out the sides. Legs are definitely involved, maybe even the toes. No one knows how it gets there. It just does. Clothing is pretty stained but damage can be concealed with a little bit of trickery and Febreze.

3 – UP THE BACK MAN. Like straight shot up and has formed a poop pashmina. It’s like a dijon-mustard-peanut-butter-poop-happiness spread between a baby’s back and a onesie. (My English professors would be so impressed right now. Tell can you English major was I.) You’re going to have to cut your way out of this mess. Imagine you’re in the ER. Grab a scalpel and cut that onesie off like nobody’s business cuz you ain’t pullin that mofo over your baby’s head. (NOTE: One way to FUBAR this situation  more is to track the poop onto your baby’s soft soft head.)

4 – YOU CAN’T SALVAGE THIS IF YOUR LIFE DEPENDED ON IT. ABORT! ABORT! Abandon mission. Yes, the baby too!!! Just throw the baby out with the bath water. Every battle has a sacrifice, right? We call them heroes. Your baby is going to be a hero.

Today, as bad as I’ve built this up to be, was “only” a Level 3 (although, I’m pretty confident NB2.0 is working her way up to full martyrdom. I can tell she has some sort of a hero complex). But what really blew my mind (and brace yourself, cuz the shit’s really gonna hit the fan here in a minute), was the moment when I thought I had it all under control. I regained consciousness and was working like a surgeon in the ER. Methodical. Confident. Getting into my groove.

Baby wipe. Gag. Shudder. Baby Wipe. Gag. Shudder. (Real methodical like)

53 baby wipes later, I decide to just stuff her back full of wipes and roll her up like a Popple. I’d basically reached my baby-wipe-gag-shudder threshold.

And that’s when she did it.

NB2.0 reached down with her oh-so-chubby baby hands and did what all 6-month-olds do. She put the first thing she grabbed into her mouth….

…

You know what I’m going to say right?

…

Boobs.

(Ok, not that… but I’ll bet you didn’t think I was going to say that.)

My baby ate poop. 

Even now, as I type this, I’ve got the lights off and I’m peeking out the blinds waiting for Child Services to pull up at any minute.

I don’t know when it happened or how I missed it. It must have been at some point between “baby wipe” and “gag,” NB2.0 grabbed a filthy, poop-laden baby wipe and sucked on it like it was the sweet sweet nectar of the magical unicorn, Unicornicopius (I freakin rule at making up mythological names if you haven’t noticed already.)

Oh, the poor little thing. You know those Puss eyes? Like Puss in Boots…

Yeah these ones.

Well, she had that goin on but like times 1,000. The poor child.  Years of therapy because of this incident. For her, too.

Question: Is it too early to wash your kid’s mouth out with soap at six months of age? And does that “strategy” only pertain to bad language?

Question: Does this incident eff up my chances on getting on the nice list? Quite frankly I’m a little worried about presents this year. And technically I didn’t really do anything.

It’s probably a bad sign when your four-year-old crumples to a ball on the floor and starts sobbing uncontrollably because she witnessed her little sister eat poop. You want to console her, but it would require you to get out of fetal position yourself and swallow the throw up in your mouth first. Fat chance.

Well, I’m not sure who’s more scarred, really.

I’m ok with calling it a three way tie.

Therapy’s on me folks. Just add it to the tab.