On weathering the Sh*t Storm

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!

On Kid-Wrangling and Pooping in the Woods

I tried to write my last post about something topical, and it did not go over very well, so I'm going back to telling embarrassing stories about myself. This one happened back in the dark days, when I was married to my ex-wife. The kids were very little and we were all out lawn-saling in Argyle. I believe it was the town-wide lawn sale because I remember that we had all been out in the car for a while.

Being veteran lawn-salers, we had established a basic plan for dealing with our kids while out. When we got to a lawn sale, one of the adults would get out and "scout" ahead; the other would stay in the car with the kids. If the scout saw something the other person would be interested in, then they would signal, and the car-bound adult would get the kids out of the car and bring them to the sale.

I like browsing, but it only takes me about 2 minutes to size up your average lawn sale, and figure out if there is anything I have interest in. It would have made more sense for me to be the scout, but 99% of the time it was my ex-wife. She would spend what seemed to be an eternity looking around, and I would sit in the car with the children. The kids would steadily get less happy about being strapped into their car seats, as one would expect. When the kids were very young, lawn saling was a lot easier, because they would usually just snooze in the car. While they slept, I had time to draw, write or read. As the kids got older, however, they became interested in the items they saw at the lawn sale and began begging to get out of the car. I obliged them more often than not.

My role at that point became, not a fellow lawn sale customer, as one would expect, but a kid-wrangler. My job was basically to manage the children and make sure that they did not destroy things at the lawn sale we were visiting. Kid-wrangling is not a fun job, especially when you have kids with ADHD. Let me tell you, everyone always knew the names of my kids, because I was constantly "yelling" at them to put stuff down, not to touch fragile items and to watch out for other lawn-salers, etc.

Kid-wrangling was not just my role at lawn sales -- it was one of my major roles in my marriage. Whenever we went out in public, it was what I did. I kid-wrangled at parties, grocery stores and anywhere there was a potential for unattended kids to cause major property damage. I should hire myself out, since I am pretty good at it. I remember going to a lot of parties at my ex-wife's family's homes, and all I did was chase the kids around. I barely seemed to get a chance to just sit, relax and visit. Anytime I tried to chill, I would eventually hear my ex-wife say something about how the kids were running amok, which was my cue to get up and deal with it. There were many times I just took the kids outside and sat alone with my plate of food and let the kids run crazy. I wasn't being anti-social; it was just the easiest way to wrangle the kids without having to hear my ex complain, after the party, about how she didn't get to talk to her family because she had to chase the kids all day (which is just one of a thousand reasons why we split up.)

Okay, lets get back to the story. One this particular day, we stopped at a promising lawn sale on the outskirts of town and my ex-wife hopped out and started looking around. I figured she would be a while because this sale had a lot of clothes for sale, and so I was just settling in for a long wait. The kids were comfortably chilling in their car seats, and all was fine.

Well, not quite everything.

I had been slowly feeling the build up of a pretty nasty bowel movement. I had mentioned to my ex-wife that we should probably stop somewhere soon, and we had decided we would find a place I could take care of business after the lawn sale we had just stopped at. Apparently, we forgot to consult my excretory system about our plan, because after sitting there for about 5 minutes I realized, after some pretty violent cramps, that the poop was coming very, very soon. Whether I was ready for it, or not.

It turned into one of those rare moments when you start having very dark debates with yourself. We were basically in the middle of nowhere -- well, nowhere with an easy access public toilet, anyway. We were also pretty far away from our home (at least 30 minutes). Even if there was a public toilet nearby, I would probably have soiled myself long before I unbuckled the kids and got them into the store or restaurant. Besides, trying to handle multiple children while I went to the bathroom was something that would have proved awkward as well. I began thinking about whether I should just let it go in my pants or not. It seemed like the easiest/most likely solution. I hadn't intentionally pooped my pants since I was in diapers and was not relishing the idea at all.

Just to add more complications, the car was some distance from the lawn sale itself so I would have had to yell to get my ex-wife's attention. I did not feel like calling across the yard, "Hey, I have got to take a massive dump, right now! Get in the car before I fill my pants!" The lawn's owner and the other two or three patrons may not have appreciated that bit of TMI. So it was time to get creative. Either that, or I would have a long squishy, stinky ride home.

I was quite familiar with the area nearby the lawn sale, as this was a road I drove on almost everyday to go to high school. It was not a very busy road, being surrouneded by woods on both sides. An idea struck me like a lightning bolt and the spark of hope became a conflagration. (Just wanted to use conflagration in a sentence, sorry!) The solution came to me. Does a bear shit in the woods? That I can neither confirm, nor deny, but I decided at that moment that I would.

I fired up the car and quickly sped away. My ex gave me a quizzical look and I tried to use some sort of sign language/ hand-signaling to indicate that I would be right back. She seemed to get the message because she appeared to go back to shopping. I couldn't tell exactly, because I was focused on getting to a place to do what I had to do and clenching my butt cheeks as tightly as possible. If I had a piece of coal, I would have shoved it between my cheeks and probably would have made a diamond.

I drove up the road about half a mile and pulled to the side of the road. The place I selected had woods on both sides, pretty close to the road and fairly thick. There was also enough room for me to pull the car completely off the road. Now this is where I might get accused of endangering the welfare of my children, depending on how rigid you follow the rules: I made a quick check of the kids to make sure they were all comfortable and settled in (they were). Carefully exiting the car (making sure not to bend, because I was sure that if I did, I would have lost control of my sphincter), I grabbed the keys, saw the baby's diaper bag, grabbed it and dashed madly into the woods. I was close enough where I could see the car and get to it in a second or two, but far enough so I wouldn't be squatting and waving to cars as they drove by.

I dug a quick hole with the heel of my shoe and dug the baby wipes out of the diaper bag. I was very proud of myself that despite the fact that all of my brain was devoted to preventing a messy accident, that I had the wherewithal to think about the post-poop clean up. I can just imagine trying to wipe with gathered leaves. It would have been more eco-friendly, for sure, but not that smooth on my butt. I gave one quick look to make sure there were no cars coming, or people wandering in the woods, dropped my pants and did the squat and drop. Sweet heaven! Sweet release!

I quickly got all the poop out, well maybe not all of it, but enough so that I could make it to a proper restroom and finish properly. I wiped, threw the used baby wipes into the hole and kicked the dirt back over my mess. I just have to say, for the record, I wish I could wipe with baby wipes all the time! You feel soooo clean afterwards. I quickly made my way back to the car and checked on the kids. They were all fine. No tears were shed. They just patiently waited for me to return. I turned the car around and headed back to the lawn sale to get my ex-wife and explain what I had done. For some strange reason she was neither shocked, nor surprised by my action.

This is a bit of a cautionary tale. When lawn-saling, make sure you have an established pooping strategy. When you are out there in the field (hopefully not literally), toilets are not always handy. Make sure you know where the public bathrooms are and the quickest route to them. Also, listen to your body. My bowels gave me plenty of warning, yet I kept ignoring them. The stomach cramps would rise and then subside making me think I could ride them out. I tempted fate, and fate almost won (a pair of pants and my dignity). Lastly, you should always carry baby wipes, even if you don't have a baby. They are to cleaning as duct tape is to home repairs. You never know where you may find yourself pooping, so be prepared!