The Grossness of Parenting

People talk about the joy of having a new baby.  They talk about their pride in the child's first steps.  They emphasize cheerfully the good grades and high school and college diplomas.  But there is a dark side to parenting that often goes ignored.

Yes, I'm talking about poop, and its relations in the bodily functions family.  Children, particularly below age 4 years, are horribly disgusting creatures.  We mistake them for being human beings because they look sort of like us.  I assure you it is a ruse.  Children do not really become civilized or human until at least 4 years of age.  Right now, you may be thinking, "Oh, she's full of it.  I know of at least one or two kids who don't fit her overgeneralized statement."  Their parents lied.  If you are the parent, you lied to yourself.  Or your forgot, due to the trauma of the experience.

When first most people learn they are with child, it's usually one of two ways:  through pissing on a stick or excessive vomiting which induces them to piss on a stick.  (I do acknowledge that the first often occurs by a surprising lack of seemingly pointless bloodletting on a lunar basis.  Because of the strangeness of the female body suddenly NOT being gross and unwieldy, women become suspicious and suddenly desire to urinate on their hands to check for alien invaders.)  It's kind of gross, and the vomiting can stick around a long time.  Some moms actually experience morning sickness for the entire duration of a pregnancy.  Isn't that a joy?

As I also outlined, and my darling husband Andrew phrased so eloquently, the female body's pH can alter and cause "cock rot" to result after a man has intercourse with a pregnant woman and does not wash immediately afterward.  (This is not true for all cases.)

And then there's birth:  a gruesomely painful, often deadly experience in which a Cadillac tries to drive into a parking space intended for a motorcycle, metaphorically speaking.  For some of us, that Cadillac is an Escalade.  Anyway, it's a gory, bloody, flesh-tearing, mucous-spewing, sweaty, and sometimes vomitous experience.  And if you're really unlucky, mom and/or baby has a bowel movement in the process, further complicating matters.

Oh, but the little dear is so cute and "tiny" and makes the most adorable little faces.  Ah...wait, he's...oh, yeah, he's just shat in his diaper.  It's your turn to change it.

For the first few months, on a liquid diet, baby poop can rocket out the back of the diaper to shoulder blade level.  (I have photographic evidence.)  In some bouncing bundles of joy, iron-fortified baby formula can cause serious unpleasant side-effects like projectile vomiting and projectile poop.  At least one little boy who shall remain nameless (*cough*mynephew*cough) fell victim to this experience as a baby and fired off some blasts from his changing table that hit the wall over 4 feet away.  But don't worry, whatever didn't hit the wall landed in his crib.

Things start to settle down a bit after baby starts on her solids.  Her poops (while more disgusting in odor and consistency) are seldom spewing out the back of her clothes onto her car safety seat's fabric.  She's just always covered in baby food somehow now.  But look how cute she is trying to walk!  No, don't touch that!  It'll fall and break--

Eventually, parents get tired of changing diapers.  They start to think that maybe it's time the child took matters into his own hands.  Aheh.

And then, the poor fools, they allow children access to their own privates.  We call this "potty training".  Some people affectionately deem it "toilet learning".  At this point in the process, I'm referring to it as the perfect justification for buying that Bissell SpotBot for the carpet.

Do I dare to share with you the experience of potty training thus far?  I think you will have to wait.  I'm still too traumatized after having to inform the restaurant tonight that my son shat on the floor under the table and smeared it on the seat on his way back up.  But don't worry, we got our fair share of clean-up work to do on him in the parking lot afterward.  Maybe someday Bissell will invent the SpotBot for cleaning fecal matter off toddlers in public places.

So, I say to you, children are disgusting, filthy creatures.  In part, I blame the way we raise them.  After all, if we never used diapers, and didn't have to worry about furniture and flooring (and disease), we'd have been more like our ancestors in finding ways to avoid many of the problems modern parents face.  But as it is in our modern society, we are left to muck about in the mire that is child-rearing.







[Seriously, I love my kid.  I just don't believe he's human yet.  I'm hoping he will be by age 5.  Keep your fingers crossed for me, will ya?]