Warning: this post contains a high level of gross! Proceed at your own risk.
I am not easily grossed out. I like it when my husband gives me gory details of some procedure he did at work. I flip through the pages of his medical journals and don’t wince at the pictures of who-knows-what. I’m pretty tough, usually.
This is handy, since being a parent is oftentimes very gross. As one of my friends put it once, there’s always some excretion from your kid getting on you. Whether it’s drool, spit-up, vomit, blood, or, yes, stuff that is in a diaper.
We experienced a quintessential gross parenting moment Thursday night.
I was busy in the kitchen, makin’ some Shabbos food, and my husband was in the bathroom with the kids, giving our toddler a bath while the baby happily stood by the edge of the tub, peering over at his brother (or the toys). There was happiness, giggling, nachas. What a beautiful family we have!
Then, from the bathroom, with a strained and slightly panicked tone, I hear my husband call out
“Honey, I need some help in here!!!”
Quickly, I wash and dry my hands, disastrous scenarios running through my mind. You know, the kind that I never would have thought about until I was a mother, but now have a permanent spot in my head space, urging me to exercise Constant Vigilance.
When I get to the bathroom (all of ten steps, maybe), I see my husband holding a struggling and kvetching baby, and a perplexed looking toddler standing in a tub. Oh, and excrement. Lots of it, also floating in the tub. Great.
But it gets better.
My husband fills me in on the situation, saying with a . . . giggle?
“I noticed that Little Man went to the bathroom in the tub, and then I noticed that Really Little Man was reaching into the tub, scooping it up and eating it.”
Eating it, people.
(These are the kinds of posts that I will have to delete when the kids get older.)
My husband is laughing with a sort of disbelieving chuckle. He chortles to me,
“Really Little Man has poo on his face. All over it!”
I fail to see the humor here, exactly. Mainly I am just GROSSED OUT. Big time.
I whip into action, swiftly removing the (still perplexed and now protesting) toddler from the tub. I wrap him in a towel and whisk him off to his room. I gently explain to him why he had to leave the tub so quickly, and he solemnly repeats the info back to me, in his squeaky little voice,
“Leave the tub so fast. Water dirty. Yeah.”
My husband is still amused by the situation. I am still grossed out, and more than a little displeased at having to clean/disinfect/sterilize/hermetically seal the tub and toys. Yuck.
Anyways, this is not the first – nor last, I suspect – time that there will be #2 in my tub. There will probably be more and varied grossness that I have yet to see. It’s just part of parenting. And that’s okay with me. Still, I wish there were a magic button I could push when things like this happen. You know, summon the amazing cleaning gnomes to disinfect those toys for me. Oh well…
What’s the grossest parental experience you’ve the the pleasure to share? Or have heard of?
(FTR, my husband gave me permission to share this story)
Rivki Silver ~ thoughts & music 
Most of our poo stories are hysterical rather than gross. Well, to us, the innocent bystanders might have been traumatized. I don’t really do well with throw up. I’ve definitely had prolonged gag fests while cleaning up that lovely part of motherhood :(
Everyone please take a moment to thank your parents and other caregivers….
Oh Rivki, how I’ve missed reading your blog! I don’t have anything to contribute just yet, but I’m sure I will soon!
ah yes, my kids have eaten poop. fun times, fun times. What was really great was the time Reena started PAINTING her brother with it. Emergency bath! Here’s the problem— when kids are 1 or 2, you can kind of laugh at it. My kids are now almost 5, still not potty trained, and still poop smearing— it’s common for kids on the spectrum apparently. argh. May your kiddos outgrow it soon!
Okay, that just filled my grossness quotient for the year. Glad you are back to blogging though!
my brother painted himself, his entire crib (every single railing) and the walls all around with his poop. it was awesome. not.
My friend’s kid ate the dog’s poop though and I have to admit I’d rather my kid ate my other kid’s poo and than a dogs. and for the record I never in my wildest dreams imagined that is a sentence I would ever be typing!
Oh.My.Gosh. That is the epitome of grossness! Yuck!!
Thank g-d my kids haven’t done any of that yet and I hope they never do! Ewwww.
I’ve had my fair share of dirty diapers to change and clean up after (in fact today my daughter’s diaper went down her leg, on my clothes and on the linen too) but thank goodness a hundred times over that I’ve never experienced this!! Gross!!
Good luck with all the cleaning-on top of the unpacking you’ve gotta do!
Okay, I thought it was gross when we were visiting my brother and one of my kids ate dog food. This wins for the grossest ever. (We’ve had the “paint the crib and walls with poop” experience too.)
Me too! Me too! Yesterday! I have to report it, although the post is so old! Okay, it wasn’t quite as gross as this, but with a 10-year-old, I thought I was beyond grossness, so it hit me pretty hard. I had noticed a funny smell in my daughter’s room for some time, it smelt – not nice. Yucky. I blamed it on the cat and went looking for spots of cat’s pee – nothing. I picked everything up from the floor, washed everything – didn’t help. Now yesterday I spotted a funny thing on the floor between her desk and the wall. It turned out to be beautiful egg she and her dad had painted for Easter. A (formerly) hard-boiled egg. For Easter!! It had been there since Easter! O_O The shell was cracked, I won’t describe what the inside looked like (it had spilt on the floor and surrounding things, of course). I cleaned the mess up, and then I had to lie down and couldn’t eat for the rest of the day… I can’t think of it too much, even today. But now the smell is so nice!
Oh, yuck!! My appetite would probably have been spoiled, too. Spoiled food can be very disgusting.