Wednesday, April 22, 2009

The Hippo Effect

When Eric was a newborn, he had a great talent for drenching his changing table, outfit, and anything within a five foot radius... but not with pee. We were told all the horror stories of little boys and how they pee on everything whenever you take off their diapers. But not so with Eric. He had a greater talent that Rachel has inherited (genetic?). I call it the Hippo Effect.

It seems that Rachel, like Eric, has a charming tendency to blow-out her diapers with projectile poo. There she is: sweetly nursing away when all of a sudden she stops. And then you hear it. The mother of all poo diapers.

With Eric it took some trial and error before we realized that you have to wait at least five minutes because if you rush in to change the diaper, you will only have more projectiles coming at you without the benefit of the diaper barrier.

Why do I mention this? Because I'm setting up for a funny story (at my husband's expense of course... poor John) :-)

A couple of days ago I was resting on the couch downstairs, and I sent John up to change Rachel on the diaper station Pack N' Play in our bedroom. I thought, 'Finally, I get some 'me' time!'

About 3 minutes later I hear "Jen I need help!"
He sounds frantic. I'm thinking, "For God's sake, I manage to change Rachel's diapers without help" (For all those out there without kids, you would be surprised about how competitive and upset you get when your husband can't manage on his own). But I waddle upstairs to see what the problem is.

This is what I encounter: There's John standing over the changing table with pee and poo literally up to his elbows. Rachel is naked and covered (I mean covered) in pee and poo and looking up at John very confused. The changing table is saturated in the stuff. I wish I had taken a picture. I would have laughed hysterically because it really was funny except that I now know that I'm about to be covered with baby feces, too.

So I take Rachel and put her under our bathroom faucet to rinse her off. John goes into the shower with the portable Pack N' Play changing table. Together we hose Rachel down and get her back into a diaper and dressed.

With Eric, I think John and I would have been traumatized by something like that. It's now par for the course (the very, very long course). But it's nice to know that our kids have a natural talent and could always go out and fertilize our lawn. Scott's fertilizer is pretty expensive.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Poor John! It's great that he's such a helpful Daddy :) Problem with waiting 5 minutes (which I learned to do, too) is that it desensitized me to the poopy diaper, so now I'll see that she's pooping and think to myself "ok, change her in a few minutes." ... half an hour or an hour later I'll think "she's probably wet, I'll change her" and when I open the diaper I'm like "oh, crap, I'm a terrible mother. I knew she had this in here!" Yikes. Mommy brain strikes again. :(

Anonymous said...

It is amazing the stuff that does not phase you anymore when you become a Mom! Poor John.