Disgusting

Crash course in tear ducts - in the corner of your eye, there's a drain. It allows your tears and assorted bits of bacteria to drain into your sinuses instead of out and down your face. That drain is covered by a membrane in unborn babies, and in many, many born babies. Until the membrane pops, tears and bacteria have nowhere to go, so the baby has constant giant gluey eye boogers. Some pediatricians will give you antibiotic ointment, which does clear up the goop... but instead your kid looks like you smeared vaseline on his eyelids. And the minute you stop using the ointment, the goop comes back. You have to decide if it's worth it. The only actual solution is time - my guy had his tear duct pop open the day he turned sixteen weeks old. In very rare cases, at around one year old, kids may need surgery, where a doctor basically takes a wire and pops the membrane.

The reason I want to be sure everyone knows about blocked tear ducts is because without that knowledge, you might look at pictures of me for the first four months of my child's existence and think, ew, does she realize her sleeves are covered with boogers? It was gross, even if they were not true nose goblins. Wherever my son's face would rub against my shirts, he would leave his eye boogers behind. In my daze, I would sometimes not know if I had changed my shirt that day, but all I had to do was look at my upper arms and the truth would stare up at me in a crusty green stripe.

I have managed to find something more disgusting.

Today he has a cold - coughing, snuffling, the works. He is of course nursing a little extra, as nature intended... but when he mashes his nose into my breast, and then pulls off, he is leaving his boogers behind, adorning my nipples with semicolons.

I love every bit of him, including his excretions, but this is ONE STEP TOO FAR.