I don't know if I blocked it out of my head after my daughter was born but how can so much shit come out of something so tiny? As my son hits one month old I have to marvel at the sheer number of diapers that we have gone through in this short amount of time. I have been thinking of advising my wife to just strap the diapers directly to her breast and skip the middleman or, should I say, middlebaby.
I have had this kid poop three times in the middle of changing one diaper. Let me paint the picture for you (insert brown paint joke here): The boy is either finishing eating or sleeping quietly after a feeding. And let me just add, does he ever stop eating? (I see a correlation!) You suddenly hear the sound of his diaper filling (well, not quite filling, but you get the point.) At first my wife and I pretend like we didn't hear it, hoping the other will take care of it. In this example, I decide to cave first and take care of it, because I am just a nice guy (and my wife is much better at pretending nothing happened than me... haha, just kidding!) I get the boy and slowly peel back the diaper, let some air hit the little guy's little yellow water cannon, so it doesn't turn into one. Once the coast is clear, I put the new diaper underneath, and quickly pull out the dirty one. Then I wipe the bottom and in mid-wipe, more poop starts coming out. So I wait and give it a minute or so. Then get another diaper, wipe again and toss the dirty diapers away and seal the new one. Then I go ahead and zip, button, screw, velcro, snap, whatever is required to get his clothes back on and pick him up. He looks at me, gives me the middle finger and unleashes another fecal storm into the new diaper. That's when I scream, then cry a little bit and leave him in a messy diaper for the next three days just to teach him a lesson. Just kidding, I only left him in the messy diaper for two days. Just kidding again (my son cannot give the middle finger yet and I would not leave any baby in a dirty diaper for very long... the scream and the tears--100% true.)
Now this scenario does not happen every time but it has occurred, unfortunately, more than once. And while I am talking about poop, I remember the first time with my daughter there was definitely a lot of concern about the shape, size, color, texture of every poop that she created. They even gave us a chart on what different poops signified. Though they did not give us a chart this time, we were still required to do poop augury. My daughter had wonderful, Dijon mustard colored poo for most of her first months, yet my son's has been greenish. Uh oh.... to the Internet!
Let me just go off on a little tangent and say that the worst thing any new parent should do is look for answers to medical questions on the Internet. You go to one of the big MD sites and type in your symptoms, or concerns and you get, the most probable causes, which is good... but then you make the mistake of continuing to reading. At the bottom of the list of possible issues are the rare one-in-a-million-chance diseases that are placed there to scare the living crap out of you (especially when your child has all of the symptoms!) But then again, you also tend to start Jelly Bellying the situation. This is a term that I use for when your mind starts making up stuff based on an implanted suggestion, for example, someone hands you a Jelly Belly jelly bean candy and asks you what flavor it is. You chew, and chew and can't figure out what it is... until the person who gave you the candy says what flavor it is and you instantly taste the flavor. You start seeing symptoms that aren't there and you slowly head down that road to panic and wasteful doctor visits. (Unless your child has the crazy rare one in a million disease... then I am just an ass.) Enough of this, back to the poop!
The green poop (according to both the Internet and poop charts--yes, they are out there, just Google newborn poop chart and see what you get) we believe is an allergy and my wife is pretty sure it is dairy based. God help her (she is a better person than me) since she has decided to cut all dairy out of her diet. I will say, that since she has stopped, the poop has gone to Dijon mustard color (and it was mucusy as well, but that cleared up too) so my wife was/is probably right (am I surprised?) I know that she really hopes that she is wrong, because she is really dying for some cheese, real half and half for her coffee, and lots of other dairy-based foods that I will not describe in detail. (after all, she does edit these posts for me so that would just be cruel.)
I know that the shit storm will eventually end and my son will start pooping normally. Normally will, however, be a double-edged sword. Less diapers, awesome! We will save some time, money and sanity. But as the frequency of downloads decreases, the smell will start to increase. Right now all of our garbage cans are quickly filling up with dirty diapers, but there is no smell. Hooray! Like all storms, this one will die down and eventually end. I know my wife and I will get through it, as we are an excellent team and work well together, and besides, we have done it before. Though, to be honest, despite my whining, at least the poop does not have the range of his pee. After a couple of near misses, he finally got me this morning, a glancing blow on the hand. Could have been worse!
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