“Let’s hope this works, Seb. Maybe tomorrow you’ll wake up, and it’ll all come out into the diaper before Mommy gets home.” Given that he was only six months old, I wasn’t expecting an answer, so I continued swishing him around and holding him so he could hit the bubbles in the tub with us.
Holding him up facing me, I chuckled when he grinned happily, the two tiny little teeth on the bottom row standing out clearly. Then, when he curled his feet up towards his chest, looking like he had when he’d first been born, I cursed that I hadn’t caught it on camera.
I was a photo whore when it came to my son and wife. Even though I already had four memory cards waiting to be downloaded onto my computer, I could never take enough of them. I caught them in every moment possible, even took selfies with them, and looked forward to the next moment I could capture.
I had so many that I’d taken of his birth, including when Addy had demanded an epidural and all the ‘good shit’ they had to get rid of the pain, her fear of medications erased by what she was going through.
I was just opening my mouth to tell him a story when the sound of something dropping in the water sounded, making me look around for the source. Hearing another one, I turned back again, but nothing stood out.
That was until the smell hit me just as Seb squeezed another poop out, the loud sound of it hitting the water making sense now.
One by one, the turd torpedos hit the water quickly, and I began to panic. If I stood up, I took the risk of slipping in the bath and hurting my son. If I didn’t, I was bathing in shit soup—literally.
“Jesus Christ, did you save it all up?” I cried, holding him as far away from me as I could. His only response was another nugget out the chamber.
Looking at the bathmat on the floor next to us, I came up with a solution. It’d involve me buying Addy a new one, but this was an emergency, so I’m sure she’d understand. It was the most disgusting thing I’d ever come across, and I had a lot of brothers, a lot of gross family members, and had already done six months of parenting—I should be immune to grossness, but I needed out of the bath. Now.
Leaning over the edge, I carefully laid him on his back before standing up and getting out of the water without accidentally stepping on him. The whole time he kept those damn feet up by his chest like he was using them to clear the blockage, and more came out of him as I wrapped a towel around my lower half.
When I was sure he was done, I carefully picked him up and ran to his bedroom to clean him off, and put a diaper on him. I wasn’t sure what four days' worth of baby poop looked like, but I was hoping it was all out of him now.
Once he was in his sleepsuit and tucked in—after I’d used almost an entire pack of wipes cleaning him down—I tiptoed quickly out of his room and back to the bathroom. Staring down at the water after I’d bagged up the ruined bathmat, I mulled over my options.
I had to find a way to get them out of the water before I drained it completely.
A colander!
Running downstairs, I grabbed the one we had and then went fishing. By the time I had them all out, I was pretty certain there couldn’t be anything left in my kid. He was so tiny, it was a wonder he hadn’t imploded. After that, I poured bleach in the tub and jumped in the separate shower cubicle Addy had requested we put in, and I’d never been so grateful for it until that moment.
As the bath soaked in the bleach, I scrubbed my skin repeatedly, doing my best to get everywhere the poopy water could have reached. Once I was done, I repeated the move another two times, only stopping when I noticed I’d scrubbed myself raw in some places.
I repeat: it was the grossest thing I’d encountered in my life to date. I needed to remove skin where I could to feel clean again.
Finally done, I stepped out of the shower, almost breaking my neck when my wet foot slipped on the tiled floor, stressing why bathmats were such a good investment. After a quick save—which involved a lot of arm windmilling that probably made me look like a dick—I sucked in a breath and promptly choked on the fumes from the bleach. We’d had three large bottles of the stuff in the bathroom cupboard, and one just hadn’t seemed like enough.