WARNING: If you’re scatological-averse, you might want to steer clear of this post. For that matter, my site in general may start to look like a redacted spy file when you start blacking out all the times I mention poop.
I’ve always appreciated a good poo or vomit story, and I have a strong stomach for this topic, as my dad is a veterinarian who used to receive work calls at the dinner table. I grew up munching chicken and rice casserole while listening to detailed descriptions of abscessed wounds and diarrhea. In elementary school, I was the girl who could gross out all the boys in the cafeteria.
Not much has changed, except that I’ve grown up, become a mom, and now have access to a whole new realm of material. As I’ve dated other moms, I’ve discovered that there is a whole beautiful world out there of women who can’t wait to tell you about their child’s latest blowout. We’re all up to our nostrils in our kids’ odorous debris, and we experience the biggest catharsis when we get to one-up each others’ stories.
How many times have you been talking with a fellow mom and said, “Ella threw up last night,” only to hear her say something like this: “You think that’s bad? Two weeks ago, Brandolyn threw up and it ricocheted off the toilet rim into my eye!” Well played, friend. Welllll playyyyed.
All moms love to talk about their kids’ poop and vomit, with the exception of the women who checked out after the warning label and are currently breathing into a paper bag at the mere mention of bodily fluids. (You squeamish friends, you’re my favorite. I adore you, because it’s just not fun talking about poo unless I can make someone squirm. Thank you for that.)
It starts with birth. I had people ask me about my son’s meconium, which apparently came out while he was doing time in the NICU and I was in a magnesium-induced stupor. Robbed of my first poop story, I quickly bounced back by entering into the world of cloth diapering.
You haven’t lived till you’ve scraped two-year-old, man-sized dookies off Fuzzibunz pocket diapers into the toilet. They create a backsplash that reverberates through the bathroom, dousing you with friendly sprinkles of diluted poop juice. And then you pile the diapers in the wash and hope there’s no residue when you wash your new jeans in the following load. (I heart cloth diapering. Ask me why!)
I felt like I passed through some kind of mommy rite of passage when my son was about nine or ten months old. Sitting in our glider rocker at bedtime, feet up, head back, numbing out as he drained me dry, I felt him let go. I held him to me as the Vesuvius of vomits built up inside his little body and exploded down my chest, between my boobs, pooling in my belly button, and streaming into my crotch.
I still have that robe, but I haven’t been able to wear it again, as I’d already given him some purple Pedialyte. The grape smell mixed with rancid breast milk was enough to curl my nose hairs at the mere glimpse of that pale pink satin.
These days it’s a little easier, although Elliott overdid it on the red dye 40 on Valentine’s Day and managed to hit every bleeping pillow, blanket, and toy in his room, not to mention bedframe, mattress, and carpet, with bright red barf. My high school girls’ small group was over that night. Best birth control ever.
After the Valentine’s Day Massacre, we’ve started running vomit practice drills, and I routinely quiz the kids on appropriate vomit receptacles. If Elliott feels even a wee bit pukacious (NEW WORD – I’ll publish a glossary at some point.), he knows to ask for The Big Bowl, and yeah, heck yeah, I’ve shoved his head into it when I felt like something was brewing.
Last year, after round eleventy billion with the wet-vac when he painted the hallway with his regurgitative art, I went to dump the contents of the vac into the toilet, only to realize that it was leaking down the freshly cleaned hallway. I panicked. Instead of dumping the vac into the toilet, I dumped it down the back of the toilet, all over the floor, the wall, the everything, the all of it. Mommy out. Commence dry heaving.
We recently had to invest in a new one of these babies. Sometime in the last six years, they redesigned it to heat up while cleaning. What genius decided heated bodily fluids were a good idea? Shaking. My. Head.
Soooo. Anyhooooo. The only thing better than sharing my own matters of Fecal and Upchuck is sitting back while you top them with your own. Consider this my Mother’s Day gift to you. A judgment-free zone for the Barfed-On Mom’s Lament. We work hard. We’ve cleaned up some seriously disgusting messes. We deserve this moment of indulgence. Yesterday a few of you told me about your kids vomiting into your mouths. Oh yes. This is the place for that. Tell me everything. I’ve got The Big Bowl nestled next to me and I’m ready for you.
My Mother’s Day Gift to You: Prizes for Poo
We’ll vote on the top two worst stories, and I’ll send the winner a seriously awesome Mother’s Day prize package that will make you want to thank your kid for doing what he did to you. Okayyyyy GO!
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images from flufftail.blogspot.com, thanksmama.com, icrowds.net, and kaboodle.com
