Only a Mother

There are a few things that are reserved only for parents, that the outside world--people who haven't been there or who barely remember it--just wouldn't understand, or even think about.

Like talking about your baby's poop, for instance. I texted Jason last night to tell him about Adelyn's bathroom habits (more specifically, that she had said "Phew!" after finally going). I didn't expect this about parenting, that cleaning up stinky, gross poo could make you feel so happy. No matter how bad the stench is I'm always genuinely content to clean her up, because I know it means she's feeling relief.

I didn't expect that Jason and I would sit in our living room after putting Adelyn to bed, drinking a beer and unwinding after the day, and choose to talk about her poop. And not in a begrudging way either, in a fluid, natural "hey, she pooped three times today!" sort of way.

There are some poop stories that I'm sure I've told everyone at this point. Like when Adelyn was three weeks old and my sister Rachel was visiting from New York--we were changing a particularly gruesome diaper when Louie comes galloping in the room and proceeds to rub his butt all over the carpet in the nursery, leaving a brown, gooey trail in his path. I had poop on my hands changing Adelyn, staring at the poopy-task before me when I got done with the first one. Poop, I felt, had taken over my life.

And these are the kind of stories you tell everyone. Poop is only up for discussion when you're talking about babies or dogs, or when you're a mom.

I was sitting with Adelyn in my lap this morning, biting her nails, when I started thinking about these things. Things reserved only for parents. I stopped breastfeeding and now anyone can feed Adelyn--and our family loves to feed her, too. Anyone can and usually will change a diaper. They'll burp her or rock her when she cries, put her down for a nap and change her clothes. But only a mom gets to sit there--or, really, is willing to sit there--and bite off her baby's nails, or to talk about poop as freely as if discussing current events.

I heard about women biting their babies' nails when I got pregnant, and I secretly cringed at the thought. Not sure why.

But now, I cherish those things. Those sort of gross things only a mother will do.

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Easy Like Sunday Morning.

Five a.m.: Adelyn wakes me up crying. She eats. Gobbles it down so fast that she then spits it up all over the both of us. (I'm too tired to care, though. The upside of five a.m. feedings.) So then she's hungry again, on account of losing all her breakfast down her bib. Ten minutes into the second feeding and suddenly she's making that face--you know, that face--and I feel something wet pushed up against my stomach. Her diaper. Oh, and her cute little white onesie is now sort of greenish-tinted from the waist down. Adelyn's still gulping down her milk like pooping your pants is no big deal or something. I go upstairs to change her clothes and mine. But I forgot that lying her down too quickly after she eats almost always results in monstrous spit-up. And, yup. There it is. My poor daughter horizontal on the changing table, naked. Green poop up to her belly button and spit-up decorating the rest.

Oh, lazy Sundays.

Once we got ourselves both cleaned up, though, Adelyn decided to be in the best mood ever. Like, wasn't that so fun?? It's 11 a.m. now and she's still wide-awake, staring at her hands and cooing and smiling.

And I can't tell you how amazing it is to hear a sound come out of her mouth that's not of the "waaaaaah-waaaaaah" variety. Feels like progress.

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Poop explosions and landmark events.

Adelyn's umbilical cord stump fell off yesterday. And thank god. That thing was disgusting.

It was hanging by a thread for days, and each time we changed her diaper I felt like I was torturing her, accidentally nudging that black, icky scab hanging off her stomach.

Right after a diaper change yesterday, I looked down and realized it was gone. I frantically searched the floor--my dogs were roaming around and no telling what they would do with it if they found it first--and there it was, finally, inside her diaper.

I put it in on the kitchen counter for a while (which in retrospect sounds like a disgusting choice), trying to decide what to do with it. Toss it? Keep it? I'm not much of a pack-rat, but Jason sometimes is. But we hated that thing. So I texted him to be considerate, to share the good news and ask his opinion about the scab's future.

"Mind if I toss it?" I asked.

Knowing Jason's usual history I'd assume it would have wound up stuffed in a drawer somewhere. Inside a box. Inside of another box. Stuffed into a Kroger bag filled with receipts. The man throws nothing away.

But he wrote back, "Get that thing out of here!"

So into the trash can it went, landing on top of a pile of dirty diapers and soaked-through breast pads.

And it fell off just in time, because today, Adelyn had her first explosive poop. (You're not supposed to give a newborn a bath until that wretched thing is gone.) She hadn't pooped since last night before bed, and I'd spent the day googling "newborn poop" and "how to make my newborn go to the bathroom." You know, over-reacting and assuming the worst.

Just about an hour ago I noticed her back was soaking wet. She had pooped out 24 hours worth of waste in one fell swoop--up her back, leaking down to her toes, puddled into her newly-naked belly button. It was too big of a job for mere wet wipes to handle.

She took her first bath like a champ. No crying. In fact, she fell asleep midway through.

(Cropped so as to not embarrass her to death in fifteen years. The detail about her poop explosion was plenty.)

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