BUT
Here is my story that will recount to all of you that toddlers still have lots of needs too...
Warning: Gross Baby Poop story to follow.
DH, Macie and I hit up Di.sneyland on Saturday. Now, the backstory is that Macie has had about 4 days of pooping 5 or 6 times. Sometimes soft, sometimes hard, but lots and lots of poop. We don't know if something in her diet changed that we can't pinpoint, or if she has some of daddy's spicy sauce on her rice and that caused it, but generally, it just means she's had a really red bottom (ouch!) and we're ointmenting it up.
At Disneyland, she said 'poopoos' at dinner and then a few minutes later, we smelled it. So I took her into the bathroom at fan.tasyland and they have to baby changing tables (formica countertops, nothing special - the childcare center is where you have breathing room to change them). I put her down and realized this was no ordinary poop. She had been wearing a big coat (because hello, it's like 55 degrees out and we so.cal folks have no temperature control. Everything below 72 might as well be freezing), and underneath that, her pants had exploded with poop all the way to her shoulders. SHOULDERS! She hasn't had a poop like this since she was 2 weeks old! Apparently as I had carried her, my arm had been under her jacket, so the poop is now all over the arm of MY jacket! And as I'm chaning her, I had done the public bathroom thing and laid the clean diaper underneath the dirty diaper to avoid her adorable bottom from having to rest on the surface where 100 other unknown baby bottoms had been. This meant I ruined the next diaper before I even put it on her.
THat's when I realized this situation was far from under control. The bathroom is crowded, there's a line of moms waiting to change their children's diapers, and I am stuck. I have no hope of getting out of there anytime soon. So I just mentally accept that this is my opportunity to be the parent all the other parents look at and think, 'gosh, I'm glad that's not me. How embarassing for her'. I start pulling off all the soiled clothing and thinking what am I going to do? I don't have more clothes...until I realized I DID! I had her PJ's with me (because she typically will fall asleep on the 20 minute drive home and hello, toddler already asleep, why wake her up? Just bring PJ's!). But if I didn't, I would've had to have left the bathroom with baby in diaper (and aren't I thankful that at least I still bring like 2 or 3 extra diapers with me incase something like this happens? But no clothes anymore.) and walk her down to main street and pay way too much for a micky onesie for her to wear home. But the PJ's saved it. And I mean those clothes were COVERED in Poop. I couldn't even rinse them out because it would've involved getting them soaked (and remember the super busy bathroom and super cold temperatures)
The lowest point for me, was when the 3rd woman next to me (who did not speak a word of English) kept looking over at me and shaking her head. She then put her diaper wipes on the counter between us and patted them, essentially telling me to take a whole bunch (I took a few because I needed them, then I took a few more...then she pulled our 5 or 6 more and put them next to me. I used them all. She laughed as she left. Not meanly, just laughed.). I appriciated her nice-ness.
And by the way, my daughter was now the one who's bottom was spreading poop all over the counter. Remember how I don't want to put her naked bottom on there? It's because of mom's and poop stories like this that I always wipe down the counter before hand. And I will even more so continue to do that now.
When I was finally ready to exit the bathroom, soiled clothes in one hand, pj'd toddler in the other, it had been about 15 minutes since I had gone in. DH had his own funny story. At about 5 minutes, he was telling himself, 'that must've been a bad one'. At 10 minutes he thought, 'okay, now I KNOW that was a bad one'. Around 15 minutes, he heard two ladies exiting the bathroom say to each other, 'could you believe how much poop that mom was dealing with!?'. Then I came out and when he saw Macie in her PJ's, he instinctively knew it had been a trying 15 minutes.
The story ends well. Macie rode the carousel in her PJ's, none the worse, and enjoyed herself. We headed home and she got a big bath the next morning (because of the whole, sleeping toddler thing).
She may be growing up, but I think she'll still need my help for a while. And why do we do all this?
2 comments:
Oh man, that sounds terrible! That'll be one of those "remember what I had to go through for you" kind of stories to tell her down the road!
We've recently had some blow outs too. It's so bizarre when it happens because you don't really expect it at this age! All par for the course, right?
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