In Its Proper Channel

Dear Perfectly Normal Ladies,

Why do new parents talk nonstop about poop? When my baby is born next month, I'm not going to bore my childless friends to death talking about waste.

Uh huh. You and every other innocent that ever walked through the shoals of pregnancy.

But you have to make this vow. Everyone does. I did, my mother did, and her mother before her did as well. We were all going to be sparkling conversationalists the day after birth, and we certainly wouldn't go on and on about our child's obvious brilliance and beauty, LET ALONE fecal matter.

The very strongest among us even keep this vow for a week, maybe two. We have read extensively about meconium, and we chuckle gently as we explain to our spouses that greenish black tar is perfectly normal for infants. When it becomes "mustard seed" in appearance, we smile tolerantly as we assure the teenaged cousin changing his first diaper that it's natural.

However, when it becomes green and gooey, almost taffy like, no vow will stop us from racing to the internet, asking if our offspring is the victim of some kind of intestinal plague. Even if the internet is reassuring, we will still ask every single parent friend we have for further points of data. At lunch. In front of the childless girl. Sorry. It's the circle of life, my friend. The only way out is to not have kids at all, or for that matter, pets.

Finally, bear in mind that during baseball season, baseball fans talk about baseball. And for a new parent, it's always poop season. Between blowouts, texture changes, color changes, and strange smells, the infinite variety never grows stale.

For instance, blowouts. Some people think they're caused by diapers that are the wrong size for the infant. The factor in question is "volume." A diaper may fit properly, but be unequal to the infant's output ability.

My mate and I believe there is another cause. We call it the channel effect, or "up the chute." The crack between the baby's butt cheeks acts like the veins in a leaf. The capillary effect sucks the poop right up and over his tailbone in a fountain of feces. Of course, you don't realize this has happened until you pick up the baby, and it squelches out over the top of the diaper, and soaks though the onesie. Actually, you might not realize it even then, until the disgusting slop seeps through the sleeve of the nice hotel-quality lounging robe you got for a Christmas present, the one you stopped wearing when you realized you'd created a life form that throws up all the time.

But maybe your baby hadn't horked in three days so you thought it might be safe, so you were wearing it as you waved your husband down the driveway, holding his son so the last thing he saw on the way to the office would be his gorgeously attired wife and his heir learning to wave bye bye.

Oh, you were so wrong, but hey, at least you got the onesie off without smearing poop in the baby's hair. And this accomplishment is so much harder than it looks that you must tell your friends, and indeed, the ENTIRE INTERNET.