Almost entirely about poo

One of the expected joys of parenthood is awaiting the event that will provide a humorous poo anecdote with which to regale others. Once parents have such material the story can then be trotted out to turn the stomach of childless friends and repeated annually at Christmases and birthdays to embarrass the child as they grow and mature. The first three months passed us by without us any remarkable poo action from our baby. Certainly there could be cause to comment on quantities or frequency of defecation from the lad but this appears somewhat lame and uninspiring compared to others’ tales of the time when the wee one unleashed a wave of excrement onto an elderly aunt or the neighbour’s cat.

However, Dominic decided yesterday that it was time to finally use his bodily functions to provide the material for such a tale.

Our ante natal group decided to meet up for lunch as we hadn’t really bothered in ages and other more organised groups made us feel our slackness acutely. One member had moved in her brand new home about two weeks ago and chose to host the event. We had a tour of the new residence once we had all gathered and it appeared to be to all present a lovely new flash house with copious amounts of space and all the modern conveniences the wealthy young family could want for.

After several minutes of making cute gooing noises and smiling at his baby chums, Dominic decided to drown out the chatter by unleashing a thunderous bout of flatulence. Such an occurrence might be considered rude in other company but at a mums and babies gathering it is pretty much the usual*. However, I detected a warm and wet sensation in my hand that allowed me to deduce that it was not merely gas that had erupted from young Dominic.

I asked to use the change table as the carpet looked nice and new so that even with a change mat I feared to disrobe the lad on it.

The change table in the nursery was quite a sight. It had the appearance and slightly smug demeanour of an elaborately decorated pink and white wedding cake. This change table somehow knew its place in life and its place within the centre of an exceedingly flash and overwhelmingly pink nursery.

However, the owners of this change table were sensible people. If one has a very fancy change table with a very pretty doily thing over the top, there are only two courses of action to prevent it becoming soiled.

One: never use the change table for any actual babies. Two: cover the top of the table in protective fabrics.

They had opted for the second option with considerable enthusiasm. The table was suitably shielded from coming in contact with any poo by the presence of a thick fluffy pick towel and on top of this lay a starched white cloth nappy. However, the sight of the pristine cloth nappy also concerned me; I had seen what Dominic can do to pristine white cloth nappies. So I decided to protect these protective surfaces with my own portable change mat and the unironed cloth nappy from my own bag. Having laid these out I felt I could safely put young Dominic down without the risk of unsightly stains.

Upon placing the lad down I noticed that the situation was dramatically worse than I had first suspected. The poo had not exploded though the nappy, but it had burst though both sides of his stretch and grow to smear itself over most of his hips, legs, my t-shirt and finally, splattering onto my right arm. I pulled out the packet of baby wipes and got to work. I cleaned up his legs and myself, carefully rolled up the bottom end of his stretch and grow so as to not spread further poo onto my son, and prepared a bag to put the devasted nappy into. I undid the nappy, not with the dark foreboding you might expect, but with the confident ease of a mother who has dealt with many a dirty nappy before. However, I was not ready for what lay before me.

Never before had I conceived of so much poo. I felt both amazed the nappy had been able to contain as much of it as it had and vaguely astonished that a baby could apparently excrete about 50% of their own body weight and not seem particularly disturbed. In fact, Dominic was smiling happily, delighted at his achievement.

I quickly mopped up as best I could and somehow got the overflowing nappy into the bag taking care not to let it lean to either side as that could had been catastrophic. I thought I was almost done in the cleaning up when disaster struck. With a sudden and ominous sound prophesying war, a mighty fountain momently was forced from the Dominic and a flood of poo surged forth. Without a nappy to slow down the coursing river of poo, it ran in all directions on the change mat threatening to make it way beyond my own protective borders onto the change table. Dominic giggled in sheer ecstasy of his work and began to kick his legs out of pleasure causing not only his feet to become covered but he was now also splashing his poo about to splatter on my arms as I desperately attempted to block the poo.

Just when things could not get any worse, they did. For Dominic decided the only thing that could possibly increase his enjoyment of his glorious achievement was to starting peeing. A mighty stream of urine burst forth in a triumphant arc celebrating his work. Tearing wipes out of the packet like a maniac, I managed to cover the offending organ and soak up the majority of the pee but alas enough liquid had already spilt onto the poo-covered mat to start their own little streams that would trickle their way off the mat onto the table as well.

So scores of wipes and sacrificing the remaining clean fabric of Dominic's stretch and grow, the mess was somehow cleaned up. I bagged his clothes and the unfortunate change mat, and changed Dominic into some clean clothes. Picking up Dominic, I surveyed the damage. There were prominent stains on three sides of the starched white cloth nappy and alas the poo had found its way past the towel onto the pretty pink layer of the table. On the bright side, it hadn’t breached those perimeters and made it onto the new carpet.

Cringing I peeled off the dirtied layers and trotted off to ask where the laundry was. It was too early to pretend like another baby had done it. Our host was very gracious and understanding, even though I doubt whether any baby in the history has ever managed to make such a prodigious mess without being terribly ill or possessed by some sort of demonic entity.

Oh dear, he has just woken up and is now sitting on my lap being adorably cute to try to guilt me into censoring out tales of his poo. Well I’ll post this but spare him from telling it at Christmas. I’ll probably have something much better by then.

* When it is the babies farting. I believe etiquette dictates that whilst it is OK for young mothers to get their breasts out in order to breastfeed, motherhood does not provide one with right to burp, fart, drool or spill food out of their mouth that is afforded to babies.

Oh and here is a cute picture.