My 3 month-old son is an endless source of indescribable, never-ending joy and pride. He is also endlessly amusing. Sometimes, he makes sounds and coos that have us laughing - I think he's trying to tell us jokes. Sometimes, he does funny things - licking the plush puppy heads sewn onto the strap covers of his car-seat because he lost his binky. Other times, the source of amusement is of a scatological nature. Allow me to tell the tale of the Four Diapers of the Poopocalypse.
The first diaper was when my son was only days old. He spent the first two weeks of his life in the NICU because he was preterm, so we weren't the primary diaper-changers yet. During one of our visits, he pooped, so we immediately jumped up to try our best. We got out a clean diaper, and the wipes, and undid the tabs of the diaper he was wearing. My husband took point and started cleaning our baby's bottom, when we discovered that he wasn't really ready to be cleaned up yet. He started to poop again, and my husband looked at it in horror. I flipped the diaper back up in front and we agreed to wait until he was done. My husband says it looked like a piping bag, and now giggles if I watch anything with cake decorating on TV. The lesson we took away from that is ALWAYS WAIT UNTIL HE'S DONE!
The second diaper happened one night when we were staying at my parents' house. My husband is a wonderful dad, so he tries to pitch in and cover the night shift on weekends. He woke up to do the 2am feeding, and began by changing the baby's diaper. As he describes it, he thought he saw a shadow as he took off the diaper, but found something much more terrifying. He yelled for me, sounding panicked. I dragged myself out of bed, and came out to see why he was so upset. Our son had done an amazing job of redecorating his pajamas. My husband asked me to hold the baby's legs up and out of the way and tried to clean him with the wipes. It seemed hopeless to me, so I suggested washing him off. We were both still half asleep, and not thinking very clearly. I started running the water in the sink, trying to get it to the right temperature, but my husband thought the shower would be better. He tried to turn on the water while holding the baby away from himself, but that wasn't working, so he put the baby down on the floor of the stall shower. Of course it was cold, so the baby started wailing, so we brought him over to the sink and washed him down. He calmed down immediately, and even sighed happily as the water ran over him. My husband washed him as I swept the pajamas and receiving blanket into a trash bag. The lesson from this incident was BATH TIME CALMS OUR SON DOWN NO MATTER WHAT.
(Footnote to this story: the next morning, when we were fully awake, I said to my husband "You know, we could probably salvage the blanket and pajamas and just wash them." He walked past me holding the offending garbage bag and said "If you want to dig through this bag and get them, be my guest.")
The third diaper was a multisensory event. Our son had pooped, so we both went to go change him. He tends to cry when he's having his diaper changed, so when it's messy, we like to help each other out. One parent will run binky interference, and the other will be on clean-up. This particular day, our boy was actually calm and cooing as we changed his diaper. We looked at each other as if to say "Can you believe it? He got past the stage of crying when we change his diaper!" but our triumph was short-lived. As we threw the dirty diaper into the trash, before we could get out a clean diaper, the baby started to pee. Everywhere. We grabbed a clean diaper and put it over him to block the spray, and saw that he was also spitting up. The lesson here: NEVER LEAVE THE BABY UNCOVERED. You never know when it might go off...
Now, it might be hard to believe, but our son actually has a little trouble in the poop department sometimes. The fourth diaper happened this past weekend, and my poor boy was painfully constipated. I looked up online for suggestions from other parents to help their constipated babies out and discovered a lot of people used a time-honored method. Taking the baby's temperature... So we thought we'd try it before calling the pediatrician. We put the baby down on his stomach and loosened the diaper. I dipped the thermometer in petroleum jelly, and pressed the button to turn it on. As I waited for the reading, the baby squirmed only a little, and didn't cry at all. My husband looked at me and looked at the thermometer. "How long is this going to take?" It did seem like it was taking a long time. 98.4... 98.5... 98.5.... 98.6.... when all of a sudden, I felt my hand being pushed back. I thought the baby was clenching so I looked over, and heard a squelching sound. Let's just say the thermometer worked. I yelled "Catch it!" and my husband flipped the diaper up to cover the baby's bottom. My husband and I began to laugh hysterically. I started coughing, I was laughing so hard. The baby just kicked his legs and cooed.
The lesson we learned from this one... POOP HAPPENS.
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