Freaks & Geeks Parenting

This photo has nothing to do with the article, but it’s cute.

There is a little known, perfectly normal condition babies develop, where they stop crapping every day and crap only every few days.

My first encounter with young baby crap was when I was visiting my cousin. She and her husband were in transit for work and I was left with the kids for a few hours. I had to change the baby, who was not much older than Ronan.

For those of you who have not gathered your strength to wade in and deal with changing a really dirty diaper, babies have this unique ability to expel half their body weight in a single diaper. I really wish someone had told me that.

For the uninitiated, the first question is, what I am going to do with all this poo? Is the child sick? Are they backed up? Were they fed radioactive chocolate? What the hell is going on?

My poor baby cousin, once removed, suffered the indignity of me using a lot of wipes to scrape the poo off of his bottom and wondering if I was ever going to be done. The Dad came home just in time to find me trying to keep the kid’s feet out of his own shit. (I was unsuccessful and the kid got a complete change of clothes.)

That memory stands as the worst I have experienced until I changed Ronan’s diaper for the first time in the hospital. Meconium, baby’s first stool, looked just like Jell-O Chocolate Pudding but has the physical properties of superglue. I was just considering getting a paint scraper to pry it off when the nurse came in and made me feel completely incompetent, because I was in a state and she made it seem easy. This was because I had just spent twenty minutes doing all the hard work and all she had to do was put the new diaper on Ronan.

Being a parent, you soon get over your fear of shit. I’ve lost count of the number of times  I’ve gotten baby poo on me. Whomever invented the method of sticking your finger into the diaper to see if it’s wet is laughing his ass off in hell.

When Ryan, my brother, babysat for the second time, Ronan thanked him with a big poo all over the only shirt Ryan had with him. We came home to Ryan pointing to the wet patch on his shirt and accusatorily saying “Look what he did to my shirt!”

For a while, Ronan was crapping every day, and Terry was convinced it was diarrhea. It looked like regular baby poo to me, but she announced that it was diarrhea with such authority; I figured she read it in a book somewhere. A check with our pediatrician set us straight. Ronan was a normal baby; that is, he crapped a gigantic amount of poo.

Which brings me to Jason’s corollary to Murphy’s Law. No matter when you go to the store, the store will be out of the size diaper you need.

This happened to me today. Ronan is now a size 3. There were plenty of size 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 diapers. But absolutely no 3s. When I needed size 2s, there were plenty of 3s. Then there were no 2s. When he goes to 4s they will be out of that size.

I think parents everywhere will agree. The store somehow knows what size you need, and they will sell all those diapers just before you get to the store.

Just so in a few years when Ronan is old enough to read this blog, and then proceeds to demand that I take it down, I will close with the ditty that my parents sang to me when I was baby, in the interest of fair play:

(sung to the tune of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang)

Oh, You
Shitty Shitty Boom Boom
Shitty Shitty Boom Boom
We Love You

Oh, You
Pretty Shitty Boom Boom
Pretty Shitty Boom Boom
What’ll We Do?

Boom Boom Shitty Boom Boom
You’re So Nice To Have Around!