poop

It is impossible to know just how wonderful a thing poop is until you have children. When babies are involved, poop is both exciting and wonderful. I have re-realized how wonderful poop is this week.

Before you have babies, the idea of changing a poopy diaper is enough to produce stomach-wrenching urges for many. Once the babies get here, however, that all changes (for some/most). Before I had my own babies, I tolerated changing poopy diapers, but was slightly disgusted with the task. My babies' poop, however, is a very natural thing to me. I've had poop from head to toe (on me), and it doesn't bother me in the least. I've been changing poopy diapers when, suddenly, poop has started to pour out of the bum again. Doesn't phase me, though.

All of that being said, I have very stinky children. There are many times when my husband and I negotiate/debate/fight about who should change the poopy diapers. Even if you don't mind the actual poop, you HAVE to be slightly nauseated by the SMELL of my children. I was reminded again this week, however, how wonderful poopy diapers are.

My oldest child spent all night on Monday and the morning of Tuesday in pain. He'd be fine one minute, and then doubled over and squealing in pain the next. We took him to the hospital and they thought it might be something called intussusception (I'd create a link to explain what it is, but I haven't figure out how yet. . .). They did an x-ray that showed no sign of it, but said that sometimes it doesn't show up in an x-ray. At that point, I was fairly certain that it was just constipation, but since intussusception can be serious I wanted to be certain. They said that he needed an ultrasound, but the technician in Grand Falls apparently "didn't feel qualified" to do an ultrasound on a baby (I could write a WHOLE other post on my annoyance with this). Anyhow, they decided that my poor baby needed to be sent on a 4 hour ambulance ride to the Janeway FOR AN ULTRASOUND! They put an IV in his hand, which he tried to pull out (but didn't get it out at first). Then they decided that they needed to put a tube down his nose as a precaution. Well, that was QUITE the ordeal! When they finally got it down, he ended up pulling it out and pulling out his IV along with it. They tried again, with no success. Anyhow, they ended up (because I was showing my annoyance) deciding to just re-insert the IV and leave the tube. We waited for about 5 hours (maybe more) for an ambulance to pick us up to bring us in there. We got in there, waited around forever for an ultrasound (luckily, they had movies and stuff there). The ultrasound showed that it was NOT intussesception, but just severe constipation. Anyhow, we were admitted, and went to bed, and they have him an enema the next morning to get him to poop. We were discharged by 11 am, which was wonderful, but just ADDED to my annoyance that we had to go in there for that to begin with!!

Anyhow, I have said all of that just to say that poop is a wonderful thing. You realize this even more when you have a child that can't poop!