We all remember the utter hilarity that was T’s “Adventures in Dadding (Sh*t-Filled Edition)“post a while back. I prided myself on the fact that I have never, and will never, experience something as amazing as that day in T’s fatherhood journey. Everyone knows that parenthood is a far cry from sweet baby kisses under rainbows while unicorns graze in the background, sunshine shining down on everyone’s perfect smiles and glowing souls. Most often it looks like bags under the eyes, oh-shit-I-just-stepped-on-a-musical-toy-firetruck-at-3-in-the-morning, hair in a messy bun again, I think these clothes are clean, kind of situation.
And just to add to that glowing image of parenthood, I’m here to tell you about my adventures in momming and the moment that my pride in avoiding a T level of shit situation was lost.
Last Friday, when I picked Q up so he could help me make dinner, I noticed that my hand seemed to have something on it. I look closer and realize that Q had gone number 2, and somehow it managed to escape the confines of the diaper and completely cover the lower left quadrant of his onesie, the bottom half of his left leg, and majority of his left sock. Awesome. I cleaned up the mess, cleaned up the kid, got him new clothes and we were on our merry way. I thought it was a bit strange, since he had already had a couple of large diapers that day, but whatever, sometimes you just have a lot to get rid of. After getting Q settled back into his playing, I did what every good wife does….I texted T the poop report of the day. I promise you, texts to my spouse about our child’s bowel movements is more common that I would like to admit.
Fast forward to Saturday. Q wasn’t super into eating breakfast, and wanted to take an extra snuggle nap in the morning. Again, not completely out of the realm of normal, but this mama’s instincts kicked in and told me that he wasn’t feeling super great. After the morning nap, we moved on to lunch, which consisted of about 1.5 baby food pouches. Not a lot, but again, within the realm of normal for him. We had plans to head to our friend’s place to watch the KU game, so we loaded up and hit the road for the 20 minute drive. I decided to sit in the back with Q, for what turned out to be an adventurous trip. Approximately 10 minutes into the drive (and right in the middle of the I-94 tunnel in random heavy Saturday afternoon traffic), my little angel looked at me, grabbed my hand, moaned a little, burped, then vomited. In the heat of the moment, I grabbed a tiny bib that was in the seat organizer and proceeded to catch said vomit with my hands, trying to save his outfit and carseat from the line of fire. Those who know me know that I have a history of vomiting myself when having to clean up after our dog would puke, so this was dicey territory for me. As I yell at Taylor to pull the effing car over so we can deal with this, we get stuck in the slowest damn traffic I’ve ever seen on a Saturday in the Twin Cities.
To my dismay, there are no immediate exits. I’m stuck holding a pile of barfed up baby food, trying to breathe through my mouth and not notice what has happened. We finally get to an exit, pull over, clean up the kid/carseat and decide that we’re closer to our friends’ house than our own, so we’re going to go there to regroup and decide what to do. About 5 minutes later, we repeat the episode. Here I am again, with another pile of vomit in my hands, in a car, with no escape.
We FINALLY arrive, walk into our friends’ house with a puke covered child and plastic bags, explain the situation to our very understanding buddies, clean up the kid and decide to hang out for a while to give Q’s stomach some time to settle. We stayed for a few hours and enjoyed the KU game and their puppies, then decided to venture back onto the road and get our little sickie home. This time we were prepared with towels, washcloths, wipes and mental preparation. We got about 5 minutes from home, when the vomit machine woke up and struck again.
The rest of the day was spent snuggling, sleeping, and me staying up all night with the little mister just to make sure he was elevated and someone was there for him if he got sick again. Which he did. At 3:30 in the morning. On my chest.
All in all, he threw up 5 miserable times. I was puked on 3 times and shit on once. I guess I’ve officially earned my Mama title.
I’ll take those rainbows and unicorns now.
Go Team Stein 