Oct 15
Well it’s Wednesday, Humpday for those of you that are struggling through the week. Not me. No sir. Not enough time to struggle through the week. Very busy. Wait until you get a load of the story today. Poop galore. I hope it’s as entertaining as it WASN’T to go through. Yeah, wrap your head around that last sentence. That ought to make the week go by just a second faster! The story is long, but I think worth it. That is if you like to hear about two things: poop (as I’ve mentioned) and me suffering. Win-win for some people!
Dah! ON WITH IT!!! Today’s story: DIAPER DANDY
Warning – the following contains baby story talk. It does include poop and lots of it. It’s my duty to let you know in advance. Duty. Get it?
RocketBoy (my son for those new readers – hahahahaha, who am I kidding…), went like babies do during our trip at the mall. I was going to change him when we got back to the car, but he was sound asleep – and when this kid finally naps during the day, you let him. Moving on…we’re heading home and decide to stop at the AT&T store so my wife could get her phone activated. As luck would have it – when we got close to the store, the baby started to wake up and fuss. I figured it was because of his diaper and volunteered to stay in the truck and change the baby.
She was in there 25-30 minutes…it felt like 5-6 hours. The following is a ’24′-like breakdown of events.
Minute one: The debacle begins. I climb into the back seat. For those who don’t know – I’m 6’4″ and despite this being an SUV, I don’t quite fit in the back there when I have the front seat back so far. So I’m sitting sideways and my feet are pinned behind the front seat. He starts to fuss more. I’m getting frustrated because I don’t fit back there – so I guess you can say – the two of us were fussing.
Minute two: I have to extricate RocketBoy (RB) from his car seat without him going ballistic. Mission not accomplished. It was hot out. I try to figure out the best way to change him without opening the doors and letting the heat in. So I’m trying to maneuver him around like Tetris piece. The problem is – the piece keeps changing shapes. He’s totally falling apart now and he’s shape-shifting.
Minute three: He’s screaming. I’m starting to stress because I don’t want him to cry so hard and hurt himself. It’s heartbreaking. I decide I have to get out to use the seat as my changing table. Not as easy as you’d think. The first problem is, he starts sliding sideways down towards the back of the seat because of the incline. I try and angle him to keep him comfortable. His arms are flailing now – causing him to continually slide down the seat and I notice his head is resting on the seatbelt thingy. Not good. I grab a blanket and cover the seatbelt thingy – it’s a technical term – better. Not perfect, but better until…
Minute four: He’s screaming. I decide I have to do this quickly. There’s no way around it. I go in…I open his diaper and I see it. It’s one of the things you hear about and you never understand until you see it. It was a disaster area. Poop was everywhere. His manhood and boys were a mustardish yellow brown, it was all over his bottom and his taint. It’s also leaked out of the side of the diaper and is on his clothes.
Minute four, 10 seconds: Still screaming. It is now literally everywhere. His flailing has caused it to spread like wildfire. He kicks his foot and it’s on his sock. Simultaneously, he is squirming and smearing his butt and legs. It’s migrated to his knee somehow. I lift him up and it’s on his back. I remove the sock. Now he kicks his bare foot into the diaper. I move his onsey to try and contain the damage – too late. There is now poop on my finger. It’s on the back of my hand. He’s like a monkey spreading the ebola virus…but a monkey I love.
Minutes five through seven: Still screaming. I am using wipes to wipe up his legs and man area. It’s not helping. The wipes are barely removing some of the debris. I wipe harder and it only sends him into another level of meltdown. Let’s call it Defcon 3 – four is the worst. At this point he starts peeing – straight up in the air – all over himself and his blanket that’s covering the seatbelt thingy.
Minutes eight through ten: Still screaming – his face is bright red. The heat from under the car is blowing up on me. I’m afraid it’s getting to him somehow. The A/C in the car is still blowing, albeit, cool air – not exactly cold. The mess cannot be contained. I’ve lost two socks, his onsey and all the wipes from the container. I’m in a near panic.
Minutes eleven through fifteen: Still screaming, bright red face, flailing and naked. Luckily my wife is smart. We have a backup package of wipes. Whew…at least I think I’m covered. I open the brand new package and much to my dismay I can’t grab a single wipee without the whole pack coming out. You see, I have meatpaws for hands. I am not known for nimble fingers, so there’s not much dexterity going on for the most part. I can draw, but as you’ve seen, not very well. Finally, I get one wipee after 10 attempts and I’m back in business. It’s like pissing on a house fire – I wipe one leg and I have to get more. I go to grab the second wipee and it’s not doing. No go. The entire package comes out. I’m almost done, so I don’t care and use the five or six stuck together as one. I’m rushing to get done so I can hold and console my son.
I like to think I’m pretty resourceful. I usually put the dirty wipees in the dirty diaper. When I’m done, I fold it all up and reuse the sticky tabs to make a little dirty diaper ball. At this point I have wipees all over the place. I don’t have time to be neat. I’m stressed out and I feel like I’m a failure as a father. I can’t even change a diaper away from home. I’ll never be a road team. I have dirty wipees, socks and a onsey with poop on it – all over the place. In my frantic search for more wipes, things that were neatly in the bag my wife prepared are strewn throughout the back of the truck.
Minutes sixteen through twenty: Still screaming, bright red face and wearing only a diaper. I realize that it’s hot in the truck at this point and need to get RB in front of the A/C. So I grab him bring him to the front seat. The problem with that is that the truck is facing the sun and beating in on us. I decide I need to turn the truck around, but I need to put RB back in his car seat. It’s the law and since I’m facing Dale Mabry Highway, there are plenty of witnesses to see how I recklessly turned my car around with my son on my lap. I jump out and walk around the car to the passenger side back door and put him with only his diaper on into that car seat. You ever feel the fabric on those things? I pull the truck around and now I’m facing the AT&T store. I’m imagining people inside the store laughing their ass off at me getting in and out of the car. Sometimes with the baby, sometimes without. Stopping to catch their breath with a “Oooooh look, now the baby’s naked”… UGH. I climb in the back seat. As luck would have it, the sun was beating in and shining directly into the car seat. I finagled the ‘peed on’ blanket and an umbrella to block the sun. Back to my son. He still has poop on his knee. I grab a wipee that had a clean portion and use it to clean him up as best as I can. I pull him from the car seat and hold him on my lap between the two front seats so he can get the A/C which is on high. The bad news is the vents are pointing in different directions and the two in front of the passenger seat are closed. More panic, more stress.
How I survived without a heart attack is beyond me. As an adult just over fou—I meant thirty, this is the most stressed I’ve been for this amount of intense time.
Minutes twenty-one through twenty-five: Still screaming. I put him back in the car seat and yet again climb back out to adjust the vents. I return to hold him so the air is blowing on him. He’s overheated because it’s hot and because he’s been in meltdown mode for over twenty minutes. At least I know those are the reasons I’m sweating MY ass off. I think about going in to grab my wife. When he’s at this level, she breast feeds him and it’s one of the best ways to console him. I can’t leave him in the car. I can’t bring a ballistic baby into the AT&T store. I see a woman and think about asking her to grab the red head in the store. Then I think – that would make me look pathetic – like a horrible father. I can do this. I recall that the vacuum cleaner calms him right down. We also just got this CD that plays some funky sound that got his attention right away. I start making a sound I never made before and it hurt. But it was working! He stopped. I wasn’t sure if he was wondering what the hell I thought I was doing or if he was curious about the sound itself. I continued. Two minutes felt like twenty. My throat hurt. My mouth was dry and I was afraid to stop to re-salivate. I continued on despite worries that I would permanently affect my voice. I didn’t care. I had to succeed in getting him to stop crying. One second later, it was all I could take. I had to stop. He looked at me and his lip started quivering. I knew what was next.
Minutes twenty-six through my wife returning: He’s back to screaming, we’re hot, I’m exhausted, and I realize I have the energizer bunny as a son. I don’t know what to do. I’m out of ideas. I’m rocking and shushing him. I’m trying to put on a happy face, although the truth is, I want to join him and start wailing myself. Seems like it would help. Okay, not really. I consider throwing him on my breast and pray I can lactate for just a few minutes. I know that’s creepy, but I couldn’t resist adding it.
Suddenly the passenger side door opens. It’s my wife! She hears him crying and asks “has he been like this long?”. I try to explain quickly that he needs a boob – pronto. I wouldn’t actually say that to my wife for fear of pissing her off and sounding like a total dickhead. I can say it here, because she doesn’t read these posts and this one is waaaay to long to keep anyone’s attention. 
As I’m driving home, I’m relieved we all survived and RocketBoy was predictably calmed by feeding and my wife got her phone activated and everything was just perfect…until I noticed I still had poop on the back of my hand…
Hope you got this far.
Ken
Get on it! CLICK HERE NOW and fill in an email address – SPAM FREE!!!
Good night Attilla, Kentucky
”Comment