Actual Chat Excerpt

[17:46] Sanya: Oh, speaking of grossness immunity, I got human feces under my fingernails, didn't notice, ate a bunch of grapes, noticed the poop, and just washed my hands.
[17:47] Sanya: Then later I was cleaning myself off, the paper tore, and I scrubbed my hands for at least a minute while I gagged.
[17:47] Sanya: And the boy doesn't have precious baby poopsies, he shits.
[17:47] Sanya: We started giving him fruits and veggies a couple weeks ago.
[17:48] Lahdeedah: roflmao
[17:49] Sanya: So why does my own shit bother me, but the boy's crap under my nails make me shrug?

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.

Okay, Okay, I'm Up

This morning, I awakened at oh dark thirty hearing a smell. I realize one cannot technically hear smells, but that's the truth of it. One of the dogs was walking around, but there was also no jingle noise, so I deduced the dog in question was the younger beagle. (The older beagle had gotten her ponytail holder off.) This deduction was most unfortunate, because it meant I couldn't just slink back into dreamland with a clear conscience. The younger beagle is the one wearing diapers.

Yes, my auxiliary dog wears a diaper at night, for the same reason your toddler wears one at night. Despite being let out twice in the hour after eating, she doesn't always crap in the yard. She's holding it JUST IN CASE we violate all tradition and rationality and go for a midnight stroll. Of course, come 2:00 AM, she's about to explode like the crap bomb she is, and does it inside. Since most dogs will not willingly get crap on their fur, we put her in a diaper. She then holds it until we wake up between 7 and 8.

This morning, however, she must have really had to go.

So I got up, took her outside, took off the poop-filled diaper, and left both it and the dog outside. The dog, I eventually let back in, but the diaper was going to wait until I was awake.

On my way back in, I realized that one nugget of processed kibble had fallen out the leg hole onto the family room floor. I picked it up with a tissue, flushed it, sprayed bleach on the violated tile, wiped it up, and went back to bed.

Well, I would have, but my husband woke up, realized I wasn't there, and got up to help me deal with whatever had happened. We laughed for a few minutes, and then fell asleep.

Okay, I meant to, but even though the baby had enjoyed his 2 AM feeding as usual not too long before, all the activity convinced him that he was hungry for his dawn feeding NOW, thank you. So I snuggled him, and let him have it. Normally, I drift right off during this process. Normally, he lets go of the nipple when he's done having milk, instead of remaining attached like a barnacle on a shipwreck.

For some reason, this morning he wouldn't let go. So while I drifted off for a few minutes, I woke all the way up in the millisecond it took me to almost roll over and realize I was still attached with the kind of suction reserved for shop vacs and call girls. I detached my little suckerfish, but wow, I was insanely awake.

I had managed to convince my nipple that she would recover when my beloved son reacted as you would think to having an unusual number of feedings in the wee hours on top of not having taken a crap in the previous 36 hours. It was actually a magnificent sound. It was loud, rumbly, long, and ended with a gurgle. He was still deeply asleep, of course, with a face like an angel. But those diaper sounds are a blowout waiting to happen. My husband woke up, but I was already vertical, so I whisked our offspring to the changing station.

Barely containing the avalanche of crap, I got the child clean. I turned my back on him to dispose of the ten pound Pamper. That was when I got hit in the back with the patter of pee. He hasn't peed on us in two months, so at first I didn't even know what it was.

I used the dry part of my nursing bra to mop up the counter. My socks blotted the bathroom rug nicely. The towel the boy was lying on was done for, though, so I scooped up the little guy and replaced the towel one handed. After I finished putting on the clean diaper, I realized he was really, really awake and thrilled to see me. I put him next to his daddy, who was thrilled to see HIM, while I went and threw the rugs into the washer.

I was going back to bed when I saw the crap nuggets that had escaped the dog's diaper... and landed on the carpet, which means I can't bleach the area after picking up the poop. Now I have to get out the Spotbot before I can set my bare feet on that section of floor.

Now I'm half naked, damp, awake, and I'm hiding in the office. It's only just now dawn, but I can't deal with any more excrement today.