Although the
breastfeeding got hazardous every once in a while, this is the point in our
story when things got dangerous. For
some reason, I never got the your-child-may-explode lesson from all that
pre-natal reading I did. No one says
that little bitty babies, from time to time, poop with extreme force. Seriously, there’s a learning curve here that
no one talks about.
I thought I’d at
least pass along these bits of information I’ve gleaned:
#1. When you feed him about eleven, he’ll
probably eat at three. It is very
important to change his diaper before putting him down at that eleven o’clock
feeding, or there’ll be a larger-than-expected present for the person waking up
at three.
#2.
If you are the one feeding at eleven, and you don’t change him, and he
has a blowout at three on the “other” person’s watch, be expected to be woken
up to help with the cleanup.
#3.
If you are woken up to help with the cleanup, don’t get grouchy. In fact, if grouchiness is detected, cover
your eyes and throat immediately, because retribution is coming.
Here is the
story. I was calmly and gently feeding
my son at eleven—yes, it’ s a shock that my role is the one that occurs at
eleven. I was watching some late-night
television and laughing as Jonah slipped off to sleep and I recall thinking,
“He’s so peaceful. I certainly don’t
want to intrude on his slumber.”
So, I made a
terrible decision: I didn’t change his
butt.
Now, here is the
point where you may think, “Matt, you fool!
Why didn’t you change his butt?”
Well, my response
is, as always, “I forgot to change his butt.”
Or,
I could always reply, “His butt was asleep.”
Or, "I didn’t want to wake his butt up.”
At any rate, I was
wrong. His butt was very much awake and
working overtime creating the slimy “refuse” that comes out of his very small
body. (Definition of refuse: toxic, sticky substance that smells a little
like my crazy neighbor’s house) Before
you jump on the “laugh at Matt” bandwagon, just remember: there’s a huge faction of experts that
recommend a sleeping baby NEVER be woken up.
Like the rhinoceros of the wilds of Africa, the sleeping baby is usually
best left alone to continue his slumber.
(I have actually heard about a baby angrily charging his parents and
inflicting massive bruising around the toes and ankles when he was woken up
before he finished his nap.)
As for me, I didn’t
wake him up and I gently placed him in his crib in his room, turned on the
classical music CD that he likes to listen to, and I went to our room to
snuggle with Sunday.
Fast forward about
3 1/2 hours. Out of the haze of my
dreams I heard, “Matt! Get in
here!” I mumbled something about African
Safaris and rolled over. Then I heard it
again. “Matt! Get in here!”
I woke up to realize that it was my lovely wife screeching at me. I got up and ran into Jonah’s room, thinking
that something had gone terribly wrong.
I opened the door and encountered a barnyard smell that brought me to
one knee.
Sunday was in there,
ready for a fight. At first glance, I
thought she was going to hurt Jonah. But
then I saw the direction her anger was pointing, and it was pointing at
me. Yep, she was considering knocking me
out right there in Jonah’s room. At that
moment, she seemed to look forward to guaranteeing that I was going to catch a
few more moments of sleep, courtesy of her vicious right uppercut.
It took a while to
talk her out of cutting me and convincing her to help with the crap-slick that
Jonah had created in his room. As we
began the cleanup effort, I felt like we should begin by recarpeting and repainting
the room. It was that bad. I felt like
someone had recreated the Exxon Valdez oil spill in this kid’s drawers and we
were called on to wash the pollution off his little pelican.
***As a warning to
those people living in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, we have placed all linens
and clothes in a hermetically sealed container, which will have a dangerous
half-life of 100 million years.***
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