It all comes down to Poop
In an memorable episode of the TV show Scrubs, they sing a little song called "Everything Comes Down to Poo." According to the song, all medical questions can be answered by testing someone's poop. Interestingly, once you get pregnant and have a baby, pretty much everything does come back to poo. Let me explain...
Up until you become pregnant, poop may not consume your life. But once you're with child, it starts to take a more active role. For one, many women find pregnancy to be a roller coaster of constipation and diarrhea. Then as your child grows and presses on your internal organs, your poop may take on unexpected shapes.
But probably the most concerning - is the worry that you will poop while in labor. Which, for some reason, men think is hysterical. Well, it's not only the laboring woman that worries about this, but apparently the nurses do it, despite the fact that the doctors assure everyone that it happens all the time. When I was in labor, at some point the nurse checked me for dilation and said "Great job! Congratulations, you didn't poop!" I looked at her shocked, and of course relieved, yet very confused. What the hell would she have said if I had pooped?
Even after you deliver and are getting ready to go home, they won't discharge you unless you've told them you've pooped. If you've had an episiotomy or gotten your intestines taken out for a c-section, chances are you are terrified to poop.
All that was is just your poop. Now we can talk about the baby's poop...
As if being a new parent isn't stressful enough, the first day or two with baby you have to clean poop that best resembles tar. From that point on, you will be consumed with the amount of poops baby has, the consistency, and the color. You praise baby for pooping. You talk to your significant other about it. Sadly, it's not that gross when you get it on your hands or forehead or T-shirt. It's just poop. (Well it's not that gross when it's your baby's poop. Other babies poops are still disgusting.)
But as baby grows, you lose the excitement over a poopie diaper. Well replace it, actually, with excitement over poop in the potty. You fill your library with books about Easy Potty Training methods, and little one gets a bunch of books entitled things like "Where's the Poop?" and "Everybody Poops." You begin to bribe your kid with stickers, candy, and gifts if they just poop in the potty. Pooping in itself, becomes a major reward for parents, and cause for reward for kids. The first time Arianna pooped in the potty, I sent a picture to my mother. (Can you imagine? How disgusting is that?)
Poop rewarded me in a significantly different way a few weeks ago. It solved a question that has been perplexing me for months: What is the difference between a working mom and a stay at home mom?
Up until you become pregnant, poop may not consume your life. But once you're with child, it starts to take a more active role. For one, many women find pregnancy to be a roller coaster of constipation and diarrhea. Then as your child grows and presses on your internal organs, your poop may take on unexpected shapes.
But probably the most concerning - is the worry that you will poop while in labor. Which, for some reason, men think is hysterical. Well, it's not only the laboring woman that worries about this, but apparently the nurses do it, despite the fact that the doctors assure everyone that it happens all the time. When I was in labor, at some point the nurse checked me for dilation and said "Great job! Congratulations, you didn't poop!" I looked at her shocked, and of course relieved, yet very confused. What the hell would she have said if I had pooped?
Even after you deliver and are getting ready to go home, they won't discharge you unless you've told them you've pooped. If you've had an episiotomy or gotten your intestines taken out for a c-section, chances are you are terrified to poop.
All that was is just your poop. Now we can talk about the baby's poop...
As if being a new parent isn't stressful enough, the first day or two with baby you have to clean poop that best resembles tar. From that point on, you will be consumed with the amount of poops baby has, the consistency, and the color. You praise baby for pooping. You talk to your significant other about it. Sadly, it's not that gross when you get it on your hands or forehead or T-shirt. It's just poop. (Well it's not that gross when it's your baby's poop. Other babies poops are still disgusting.)
But as baby grows, you lose the excitement over a poopie diaper. Well replace it, actually, with excitement over poop in the potty. You fill your library with books about Easy Potty Training methods, and little one gets a bunch of books entitled things like "Where's the Poop?" and "Everybody Poops." You begin to bribe your kid with stickers, candy, and gifts if they just poop in the potty. Pooping in itself, becomes a major reward for parents, and cause for reward for kids. The first time Arianna pooped in the potty, I sent a picture to my mother. (Can you imagine? How disgusting is that?)
Poop rewarded me in a significantly different way a few weeks ago. It solved a question that has been perplexing me for months: What is the difference between a working mom and a stay at home mom?
On my eighth business day living the life of the unemployed, things became a little stinky.
While I was getting Arianna's bath ready, I told her to come into the bathroom and start taking her clothes off. It's a life skill we've been working on recently. What I hadn't known, however, was that she had pooped in her diaper a few minutes earlier. She stuck her hand into her diaper, pulled a handful of poop out, and gracefully rubbed it off on the wall.
After cleaning Arianna up, I had to bleach the wall. Fun.
A few hours later, I got ready for bed. On the way to bed, I let Sasha in the yard to relieve herself. It was raining pretty hard. I watched her run out, go to the bathroom, and run back in. I closed the door and came inside. Then I saw it. Sasha had stepped in poop and tracked it through the house.
So instead of going to bed, I had to wash Sasha's feet and the entire floor.
Marc witnessed the whole thing. (Keyword: witnessed.) When I was finally finished washing the dog and the floor, and myself, I went into the bedroom where Marc looked at me and asked "What took you so long to wash the floor?"
And that is the exact moment when I realized the difference between a working mother and a stay-at-home mother.
Had I still been working, when Marc said "What took you so long to wash the floor?" I would have responded with a fit - tears optional. It probably would have extended into the next day with words like "insensitive" and "inconsiderate" being thrown around quite a bit.
As a stay-at-home mother, I had a dramatically different response. When Marc asked "What took you so long?" I LAUGHED and asked if he could still smell poop. And that was it.
Those little obnoxious things that happen in life are just so much easier to deal with when you're not pulled in a hundred different directions each day. Had I had to be up early for work the next day, the poop incident would have sent me over the edge. I would have been over tired and out of patience, and I probably would have taken it out on Marc - who, as I found out, is genuinely clueless about sanitizing a floor.
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