It’s amazing how interesting poop becomes once you have children. Upon the birth of your first born, it naturally becomes socially acceptable to discuss shit in the greatest of detail. The other day I found myself casually discussing baby crap with a nice stranger at the bank. From the color to the texture to smell to the frequency, in those early days of child-rearing, you almost forget a time when human feces wasn’t a constant thought running through your head.
There are different levels to how serious a baby’s shit can be. There are poops, turds, skid marks, and then there are those ‘how-did-that-much-crap-come-out-of-something-so-tiny-and-no-amount-of-wet-wipe-can-undo-that-damage’ kind of poops. These are most often referred to as blowouts.
Most, if not all us, parents have felt the wrath of these inescapable, dreaded shit-storms. Plagued by this unavoidable annoyance, the topic of blowouts regularly finds itself inserted into parental conversations – right up there with sleep training methods and clever tactics to get your little one to eat something other than chicken nuggets. Once you get a group of parents together, discussions about their most recent blowout experience quickly turns into a contest of trying to one-up each other with their worst, most catastrophic encounter of the craptastic kind.
In those early months, when your tiny cherub is on a liquid diet, these diaper explosions are the messiest. As a mother of three little ones – both formula and breastfed – I’m here to tell you, nothing compares to the explosive shit-storm of a breastfed baby. The farts alone sound like they’re coming from the back end of an adult male who’s suffering from a severe case of bubble guts. They’re loud, wet and can easily be heard from the opposite end of the house.
One time, while my tiny darling accompanied me grocery shopping, she let one rip right in the middle of a crowded store only to have a passerby give me a stink eye as if I was the perpetrator – because no baby could’ve created that earth-shattering rumble that fell upon her ears and echoed up and down the store aisles. Well, ma’am, if you are reading this, reserve your side eyes for someone who deserves it. It wasn’t me!
The unsightly color explosion produced as a result of boob milk is one of the many reasons why we can’t have nice things. It’s the brightest colors of the rainbow that set into the most permanent stains with an utmost refusal to ever disappear. Clothes and furniture are discolored in every shade of neon and olive green to mustard and radioactive yellow, marking its territory everywhere her little bum has rested. My house looks like some lunatic went paint-balling, leaving no surface unscathed. Couch, high chair seat, blankets, swing, bed. You name it, she’s shat on it.
Even while you hold her, no one is safe. I’ve lost track of how many times she’s silently shit all over me and herself – and it wasn’t until I felt a dampness upon my arm or looked in the mirror to see her “mark” did I realize the horror that was happening. She’s basically a ticking time bomb, not knowing when or where she’s going to explode.
All her beautifully colored clothing in every shade of pink has a gorgeous shit stain on the backside. Basically, only her black leggings are hiding the abomination it endured at the behest of my 5-month-old. Her wardrobe is forever ruined and not a detergent on the market is strong enough to penetrate the stubborn spots. Once it hits the fabric, it’s there to stay.
My sweet little cherub’s favorite place to defecate is her carrier. It’s almost as if upon immediate placement in it, her body signals ‘it’s time to number two the literal shit out of this car seat’ because it happens Every. Single. Time. Whenever we’re in transit, I have to make sure we’re prepared with at last 5 outfit changes and you better believe, upon arrival to our destination, an immediate detour to the bathroom is required, because she now is bathing in shit soup.
My latest hack is basically dressing her in less than worthy attire while on the go. Essentially, during transport she looks like a bum. If her outfit’s fate is turning into a tie-dye shit-stain, there’s no reason to ruin it.
The only silver lining to all of this is, the stench isn’t as disgusting as it looks. It almost has a sweet pungent odor that’s indicative of the liquid gold diet. Once we start introducing solids, the smell will promise to be almost unbearable. Then my complaint will be, “How does a tiny turd the size of a quarter stink up an entire house?”
This post was originally published on Bless this Beautiful Mess.