Halloween '08 (Oh Poop! A History Lesson)

When you first have a child, they make you worry from the get go.

"They" can be anyone or anything. The very first "they" is the staff at the hospital.

They give you a sheet with three columns and right at the start, you get your worry on. The sheet with three columns is your basic input/output simple spreadsheet. And it consumes you almost instantly.

When did he latch?

Was that a poop or pee diaper?

Was it a big poop or a little poop?

What color was it (yeah, fun topic there)?

Did he feed the whole time or just kind of hang out?

When did he delatch?

How long did he feed?

Is that a lot of spit up?

Was he burped?

So on, so forth. The sheet is evil. Way evil. And although the poop is there at the beginning, there isn't always a schedule once the initial wave is over. At least with this child there isn't.

Sage has an uncanny ability to know that something is up - he has known from day 1 that he was a first child and that his parents worry about him like first time parents do. He likes this role and knows how to mess with us in that regard.

Shortly after we got home from the hospital, the child messed with us. Since we aren't on the formula path, there is really only one thing we can measure. At this point, we were worried about output.

Specifically pooh.

We were worried, at least in the background. As a first time parent you don't want to call the peds every time your child spits up, farts or doesn't pooh. Especially with a child that knows his role and will typically pooh once you call, being worried about pooh. The child was sleeping in the car seat carrier. Akin to this: Even at this early age (like 2-3 weeks or so), we knew that if he was content, not to move him. So this time, when he woke up, he was content and we didn't move him. He smiled, it was cute, look how content he was. And then he poohed with a vengeance. With the force of 3 grown men. Covering the car seat in such a fashion that the entire thing had to be dismantled, scrubbed, cleaned, washed and sanitized. Twice.

That is how we learned about the car seat butt cover and it hasn't happen to the car seat since.

Fast forward to this past weekend.

There have been moments of anti-pooh. Mini-poop strikes. Even they (the books in this case) say that a kiddo can have a normal schedule of pooping a couple of times a day to every 4-7 days. Not our son. He poops about every day and a half. Or he did until last Monday. And then he went poopless. For Tuesday. Wow, this is nice, only pee diapers to change. Wednesday. He was a farting machine mind you. But no poop. I'm okay with this, because they say 4-7 days is "normal". Thursday. Fartsy - yes, poopsy - no. I'm calling on Monday if this keeps up.

Friday.

Ahhh, Friday. We hang out, we play, we do errands, we are cute and fun and the perfect three and a half month old. We take pictures, we smile, we laugh, we coo. We get dressed for Halloween. We're a cute pumpkin.

We are also bringing plan Poop! 2.0 into action.

We are bouncing in the bouncy seat. A favorite pastime. And then we crank out a little. Getting cranky is one of the methods Sage has of communicating with us. It is pretty much the only method - and it states a number of things - I'm hungry, I'm dirty/wet, I'm tired, I'm hurting. He's pretty good about cranking out only for the "big stuff". So I pick him up and WHEW! Much to his parents relief and then chagrin, he pooped. The full extent of his poop-i-tude wasn't fully discovered until opened up on the changing table. He got the bouncy seat, the pumpkin outfit, a full diaper, his back, his legs, the changing table cover pad, the changing table cover, the extra cloth diaper we keep on top of those for just in case moments.

It was a 4+ wiper. Actually, I gave up after the fourth wipe and just ran a bath.

Happy Halloween!