A disclaimer: If you are squeamish or easily grossed out, you might want to skip this post.
Oh holy mother of all that stinks! We just had our first experience with a real solid-food poopy diaper and it exceeded our expectations. By a long ways. To paraphrase a friend, it was hell in microfleece.
You have to understand that for us, going from our old breastmilk diapers to these solid food ones is like teaching a kid to drive a farm truck on 1000 acres in Iowa and then setting him lose with a stick shift in New York City. We’re not ready!
Because truly, breastmilk poops don’t stink. We got a tiny bit of poop in each diaper that was delightfully odor free. There was no need for a fancy pail. Then solid food entered our lives two weeks ago, and we got a few poops that kind of stunk. Then, troublingly, no poops at all for two days. Then yesterday the dam broke, so to speak, and it left Matt gagging and me laughing at Matt for gagging.
Well, karma’s a bi*ch, let me tell you.
Today I thought Simon smelled a little poopy, went to change him, and disaster struck. I did not know the grab-both-feet trick. I mean, I grab Simon’s feet sometimes, but it’s not the first thing I do while diapering. Nor is it automatic. It hasn’t had to be. Until now.
The scene that unfolded was something from the more scatalogically oriented sections of 120 Days of Sodom. I took off the diaper and there was poop everywhere. And since I didn’t have Simon’s legs in my hands, wherever it wasn’t, it got to be–real fast. His feet, legs, shirt, bib, hands, face. It was just awful. I didn’t know what to grab or try to wipe off first. He even got the walls.
It was like wrestling a poop octopus. In fact, I kept thinking of a hilarious scene in Ed Wood where Bela Lugosi is wrestling a motorized octopus movie-maker Ed Wood did not have a motor for. Bela had to pretend to wrestle the thing while also moving its arms around to make it look alive. Poor humiliated Bela didn’t know what to grab first, and neither did I. The difference? My little octopus was very much alive and was having the time of his life squirming around in his own filth.
At the end, Matt came to help me and we dumped Simon straight into the bath. Where he then proceeded to pee in an arc that landed directly on our toothbrushes. Sigh….
Simon’s all cleaned up now and I’m feeling more prepared for the next mess. All that remains, evidence-wise, is a bucket of clothing with half a box of Oxiclean dumped into it and two parents with mild cases of PTSD.