Uhhh…

My son may have eaten poop today. It was his own poop, so that’s not as bad as eating someone else’s poop, but I think he ate poop. How do you look at your son the same after (allegedly) eating poop?

So here’s what happened. Rory went down for a nap around 2:30. He’s been hit-and-miss when it comes to second naps for over a month now, so when he started bouncing around his crib instead of sleeping, we weren’t surprised. However, when Lisa went into his room about 30 minutes later, she knew why he hadn’t fallen asleep.

When a kid poops, the smell smacks you right when you walk into the room. I’ve become a bloodhound when it comes to smelling out poops—the faintest whiff is all I need to know my kid poo-poo’ed in their pants. Lisa’s nose isn’t quite as good as mine, but I’ve spend most of my life surrounded by poop, so I have more training. Lotta poop. Lots.

Back to Rory. Lisa goes to get him up while I watch Lucy downstairs. Suddenly, I hear her say, “ROB!” I run upstairs and smell the poo-poo but then also see two small, tiny poop pebbles on his mattress. He started bouncing up and down, stepping on them. I mean, I also feel great after a good poop, so I get it. But gross.

Rory either takes a big, solid poop ball or he does poops like this—lots and lots of tiny pebbles. Poop rocks as we call them. However, it had never been this pebbly before. They were tiny and they were everywhere. I quickly grabbed him and took him to the changing table in our bedroom.

We use reusable diapers so I can’t just chuck them but instead need to grab them and put them into a container to be rinsed off. I grab the container, get the new diaper out (can’t do that too late or he might pee all over you…learned that the hard way), and then pulled off the old diaper.

Poop rocks are falling everywhere onto the changing pad. There was nothing I could it…taking off the diaper was opening the dam holding back the poop rock river. I’m trying to be as fast as I can, turn to get the container, look back, see something in Rory’s hands and then, before I can even react, it’s in his mouth.

I screamed. Loudly. “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” Rory was starring at me, quiet for a second, then started loudly crying. I’m not sure if it’s because I scared him or because he just ate poop. Either one is worthy of crying.

Lisa was getting the bath ready in the next room and asked what happened.

“I think he ate poop!” I yelled.

“What?” she asked.

“Poop! He ate poop!!” I yelled back.

Rory was still crying as I stripped him down but cheered up when he saw his bath toys. I put him in and all was forgotten. For him.

Me? I know what happened. Now I need to see if Rory has developed a taste for it. Is he a poop kid now? Will he reach into his diaper for special snacks? We had a dog who ate poop (only when frozen in winter…poopsicles) and that wasn’t pretty. I hope Rory won’t become a poop baby, but to say I’m not worried would be a lie.

Could I have done something different here? Maybe. Have I learned anything? No. Poop-mergencies are a frantic time and it’s all about reactions. I reacted by trying to get a new diaper on my child and get the poop away. He reacted by eating it. It says a lot about both of us. Until next time…