J. and I got a babysitter yesterday so that we could attend a couple of functions without a cranky baby. (Totally destroying my dreams of taking a chill baby with me everywhere, this baby has been intense ever since he was born: he is either very happy or very mad, sometimes within seconds of each other, and he does not believe that sleeping is worth doing). When we came home, the baby was happily sleeping in his space in our room, which lasted about 30 min, as if he knew we were home. That was fine - I needed to nurse him anyway - but it did not bode well for the rest of the night.
After approximately three resettlings necessitating rocking his little butt to get him back to sleep, he started acting more upset around 12:45 am, and I picked him up and sniffed him. Something smelled odd. Something smelled poopy, but not like normal baby poop.
This kid started solids, off and on, meaning when we have the energy for it, this week, so I thought it might be that. It sounded like he had pooped, and it smelled bad, so off we went to the changing table. J. followed with the little egg-shaped light that we use to try to keep from turning on brighter lights that will wake the baby up.
I took off the diaper. Yep, poopy. I sniffed it to check if it smelled like the weird poop smell. Nope. Normal baby poop smell of fermenting milk.
And then the poopsplosion began.
The first round sprayed poop not just onto the changing table, the cloth diapers we lay underneath him, and the clothes he'd been wearing, but onto my stomach, chest, and face, as well as the whole height of the dresser next to the changing table. I covered the area with a cloth diaper and left J. in charge as I ran to the bathroom to clean myself off. While I was there, round two was mostly contained by the diaper.
J. got the baby into a new diaper and sleeper and handed him off to me. I wiped down the dresser and the changing table while the baby happily smiled at the ceiling from the bed in his nursery.
When I carried a beaming, wide awake baby into the kitchen, J. was scrubbing diapers and sleepers in the sink.
"His poop is changing," J. said. "There are chunks of it in the sink."
And there were. Apparently solid food can cause constipation when you start it. And apparently this baby managed to get it out by using some force. Good job, baby.
J. cleaned the sink with kitchen cleaner twice.
Needless to say, neither the wide-awake baby nor the wide-awake momma got much sleep for the rest of the night. Which is pretty normal for this one. I have not gotten a straight six hour stretch of sleep since he was born, not even the one time that J. sent me downstairs to sleep in the basement for six hours. I was too busy worrying about how much trouble Mr. Demanding Baby was giving J. upstairs.
Send help.
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