Poop

Yesterday, my son could not poop. He’s never been a consistent pooper—usually every 3-4 days—but it’s never been a huge issue before. He will have what we call a poop ball (a small, round, hard-ish poop) then usually a blowout within 24 hours. However, yesterday was a different story.

He was on about day five of no poop. He is a formula baby so all you breast feeders out there who are shocked should know that formula babies poop way less. WAY less. But anyway, earlier in the day, he just started crying out of nowhere. He was just standing up in our child containment unit and started crying really hard. He’s not a big cryer so we were a little concerned. Then, at around 5 that night, it happened again.

Lisa had just gone on shift in the basement and Rory and I were playing in the containment unit. He then sort of squatted down, pushed, and screamed. Instant real tears. As a parent, I learned quickly the difference between a whine and a cry because a cry comes with real tears and a whine can be curtailed by goofy noises or hiding behind a chair.

I picked him up and held him and he held onto me, put his head on my shoulder, and pushed. And pushed. And pushed. Each time, nothing came out. His face was beet red, he was hot, and he was very, very upset.

Whenever something happens to my child, I call my sister, who is a nurse practitioner and has three kids, one of which I know has poop struggles. She suggested getting Pedia Lax, a baby suppository. It’s fires a little glycerin up his butt and greases the skids for a poop to come out. Yup, we had to fire glycerin up my kid’s butt. Nobody mentioned that at the ol’ baby class.

While I was at the store, he forced out a couple of hard poop balls with my wife but we never got the blowout we wanted. I did feed him some prunes (trusted by grandpas everywhere) to try to get things moving. However, this morning he still hadn’t had the big one, which meant we (aka my wife) had to take action. We strapped him down, inserted the tube, and suppositoried our child. Then, we waited.

But like me after a three egg over-easy scrambler, we did not have to wait long. We saw him push a little, cry a little, then heard it. Like a sopping wet T-shirt hitting the concrete. We heard his poop and then his giggles of joy. Our national nightmare was over. Rory had deuced.

In fact, he had really deuced. I’m not quite sure how much because I conveniently had a meeting to go to and missed out on the clean up (darn it!) but, according to Lisa, it was extensive. And with cloth diapering, it’s even better, folks!

We are learning quickly that Rory has my outside (my mini me) and some of Lisa’s insides (she didn’t love pooping as a child). It’ll be easier when he’s older and I can just feed him a chili cheese burrito to get things moving but until then, #thankgodforglycerin.