A Particularly Savory Post

He tries so hard to fart sometimes that it cracks me up. His face gets three shades of red and purple, his mouth purses, his eyes get big and round, he tucks his double chin down, and it’s hard not to become his own personal poop cheerleader—come on! You can do it!

I’m sure there are all kinds of invisible things going on right now, like brain growth and such, but it pretty much seems like his main life activity is pooping. I’m becoming more convinced that sometimes he wakes up at night crying for no other reason than wanting to poop. And for a quiet baby who rarely even cries, he sure spends a lot of time grunting.

E is quite intrigued by all this. As a toddler starting to read potty books and sit on a practice potty, this is an activity she gets. She likes to go around reporting “dee-dee [little brother] number two!” and takes it personally if I don’t involve her in the diaper-changing process. She fetches the new diaper and wipes Desitin on his bum. She used to lather up his scrotum but has gotten more accurate since I informed her that’s not where the rashes usually happen. She liked to wipe the poo off too, but I put a stop to that due to her disturbing habit of wanting to keep the dirty wipe afterwards.

It’s ironic how much of my life revolves around poop. I remember the days it was my goal to avoid having to ever digitally disimpact a patient (made it, barely on a few occasions), and when it was my job to do an emergency rectal exam on trauma cases in the MGH E.D. The patient would come in, their clothes would get cut off, and three people would do the log roll while one person palpated the spine and I whipped out the lacrilube I always carried and did a rectal check for prostate and tone, shouting out the findings to some person frantically scribbling to the side. Ah, how far I’ve come.