I am not easily grossed out.
Sure, years ago, I had the weakest stomach and would gag at the sound of someone else gagging. The sight of blood would make mine run cold. And bodily function clean-up? Best left to those who wouldn’t add the contents of their own innards to the mix. So what changed?
I became a Mom.
By then, I had had almost a decade of nanny experience- which absolutely made a difference and hardened me to the sight of unthinkable messes. But nothing really prepares you for the image of yourself in a foggy bathroom mirror as you squeegee snot out of your infant’s nose at 3am. Or the first time you catch spit-up in your hand and actually hold it there for a moment, wondering if you are indeed the best receptacle for this sort of thing. And the first time you have a toddler pee on your lap and you actually feel relieved that none made it onto the upholstery? Yeah, that’s a Parent Badge of Honor.
I’ve invented new terms during my short tenure as a parent; poosplosion and screamergency, to name a couple. This would suggest a familiarity to the types of events that can happen in a toddler’s day, wouldn’t it?
Yet today I found myself shocked.
I generally let my daughter run around the backyard without a swim diaper if she’s about to play in her little splash pool. (Those things are Diaper Gold and I’m not about to waste one if I can help it.) So there she was in her 18 month swimsuit, which, of course meant that it was down around her chest like Andre the Giant’s wrestling leotard- my daughter is a skinny Minnie- and she ran to the corner of the yard for “I Prive.” Which means privacy. Which always makes me rather suspicious.
And she had a poop. A huge one.
No problem, I thought. I’ll just let her step out of that baggy suit and that will be that. Except for the fact that it, ah, wasn’t that kind of poop. So I needed to hose her down. No big deal.
Except for the fact that she began to run around the yard like the naked hippie that I fear her to be.
And quite a bit of poop was stuck to her bottom. And to the swimsuit. And various parts of the yard- with no end to the bottom-wiggling, poop-flinging in sight.
So I tackled my daughter. (Oh, she laughed.) And I managed to hose her down with the gentlest setting on the spray hose that I could find. Which she hated, as the spray hose is one of her worst enemies even when watering the planters. I have no idea why. (Also on this list is the spin cycle and Wally, our Roomba.) And I then had the fabulous task of finding each little present left in the yard and spray-hosing them into oblivion. Which is really when my stomach began to lurch.
That, combined with Nora’s screeches of dismay every time a poop ball exploded, made me need to sit on the [cleanest part of the] grass and catch my breath for a moment.
The little nudie joined me, snuggling onto my lap and patting my face, like- We did it, Mom.
And I felt okay again.
Until she peed on me.
