Poop...a story (Warning...Do Not Read If You Are Eating)

This one is for JDEGIRL. Who has a poop story of her own today.

I apolgize if I've told this before (although I don't think I have.) (This is actually an excerpt from an email I sent my Girlfriend K~ about a month after her baby was born.) I hope it makes you laugh.

Which brings me to my story, of the day I threw up on my baby...

It was a few weeks before Christmas in 2000. It was the day before my first ever law school exam and I was stressed to the nines. I had taken Gabriel to A~ T~ (his day care center), and then I returned home to study Contract Law.

I was curled up in bed, in my pajamas (this has always been my study ritual, since high school), studying the "law of contracts" flash cards. (Yes, flash cards. For law students. They make them. Seriously. So, if you ever have insomnia...)

The phone rang, and it was M~, one Gabe's day care providers, at A~ T~. M~ said, "I'm sorry to do this to you, since I know you have exams and all, but, Gabe's running a high fever, so, I need you to come get him."

My stress level went through the roof. How was I ever going to pass my contracts exam if I lost a whole day of study time? It was ten o'clock in the morning, and the test was the next day at 1:30. How could this possibly be happening???

Tense to the point of having a nervous breakdown, I rushed to the center to pick up my 9 month old. I brought him home, and it was a little after 11:00. It was a beautiful, sunny day, with the sun shining on a few inches of snow outside. I opened all the shades in the house, hoping that the sunlight would brighten my mood.

I was hungry, so, I put Gabe in his high chair, and I went to fix us some lunch. He was in a remarkably good mood for a baby who had a high fever. I sat down at the table with my contracts outline in front of me, to eat some spaghetti. Gabe was happily eating some cheerios.

I had just finished my lunch when a god-awful smell wafted my way from Gabe's high chair. For the first time since we came home, he looked like he was sick. He had clearly filled his diaper, so, I went to pick him up out of his chair - my fingers closed around his ribs and his back with a nauseating "squish". I felt his back with my palm, and there was another "squish" as my hand pressed down on his crawler.

The poop...oh my goodness...it was coming out of his diaper and seeping up his back. When I got him fully out of the high chair, I realized, to my horror...HE HAD POOPED ALL THE WAY UP BACK, TO HIS NECK, and INTO HIS HAIR.

Yes. Poop. In his hair.

I laid him down on the changing pad on the floor in the middle of the living room. I got his crawler off of him, and when I went to open his onesie, the stench hit me, it hit me like a stench of nothing else that I have ever smelled in my life. It was totally and utterly rank. (And I had been changing poopy diapers daily for nine months by that time, so, you can imagine...it was truly an awful smell to elicit what happened next.)

I don't know what it was...whether it was the stench combined with my high stress level, or if the stench alone would have done it, but, the stench got the better of me, and I LOST MY LUNCH, yes, I puked…er…barfed…er...tossed my cookies, so to speak. ON MY BABY. And the floor. And myself.

So, there we were. The two of us. Both of us covered in poop and vomit. We were absolutely disgusting, and totally incongruous, looking like something from a horror film, in our bright, sunny living room.

I started to cry. Gabe started to cry. I stripped both of down to our birthday suits quickly. (Because I was afraid I would throw up again if I stayed one more second in the disgusting clothes.) So, now we were NAKED and covered inrefuse. And totally exposed to anyone out and about in the neighborhood since every shade in the house was up.

I was still crying. Gabe was still crying. I picked up Gabe's slippery naked body and ran upstairs to the bathroom, where I turned on the water in the shower and jumped in, still holding him. Where he became an even MORE slippery baby. I couldn't reach anything except the Baby Magic (what with trying to keep a hold of the slippery baby and crying and all), so, I scrubbed both of us from head to toe with the Baby Magic. He screamed at the top of his lungs during the whole ordeal, and squiggled and tried to get away, and it is a wonder, really, that I didn't drop him.

Finally, we were both scrubbed clean, free of vomit and poop, but, still crying. I dried Gabe off and took him to his room where I hastily got him into a fresh diaper, onesie and crawler. I dried myself off, but, did not put any clothes on, because I knew I still had to deal with the horrible mess in the family room, and, you know, why bother to put on clothes when you know they will just get disgusting from the disgusting job you are facing? So, I put Gabe in his crib, and I ran naked downstairs, with some old towels, which I used to clean up the mess on the floor (which, thank goodness, was hardwood and not carpeting), and then I picked up everything off the floor, all our disgusting clothes, the towels I used to clean up, and the diaper changing pad, and I ran to the basement with it, where I threw it in the washing machine, which I turned to "extra heavy duty wash" and dumped in a ton of soap.

Gabe was screaming in his crib. I hopped back in the shower for a minute to wash of the rest of the mess. I got out of the shower, put on some clothes, picked up Gabe, and called my husband, crying. "I threw up on the baby" I told him. He made all the right sympathetic noises while I told him the story, but, he told me later he was trying very very hard not to laugh. Then, I called my mom, still crying. My mother actually did laugh.

Something she apparently felt really bad about, since half an hour later she was at my door with a bag of Long John Silver's (because, seriously, nothing says love like fried fish and fried dough, right?) and she played with Gabe for about two hours, so I could study.

So, that's the story, of the day my baby shat all the way into his hair, and I threw up on him, as a result.

Oh, I got a B+ on the Contract exam...and Gabriel, to this day, refuses to get in a shower. He is strictly a bath boy.**

LM

**Gabriel began to take showers, on occasion, about a year ago, the summer after turned 6. But, he still doesn't like them very much, and he won't shower alone.