At some point during the trancelike blur of those initial days and weeks postpartum...

Loren pooped while Jim was in the middle of changing his diaper.

Photo by Izabelly Marques on Unsplash

During the Spring of 2020 when most of the world was shut down, my husband and I spent a significant amount of time preparing Loren’s nursery. With nowhere to go and seemingly nothing to do, we were ahead of the game. I was 6 months pregnant with Loren, and the nursery was complete.

As enthusiastic parents-to-be, we were fixated on every detail of our pregnancy and preparing for baby’s arrival, and with a lingering lockdown in place, we had more than enough time to dawdle in our decision making.

“Which side of the changing table do you think Loren’s high-contrast black and white mobile should hang on?” I paused for a moment, considering my own question, and jumped back in before Jim could answer. “I liked it on the left, above where his head will be, because it feels more natural for me to change him that way being right-handed.”

Jim agreed. He thought Loren’s head should be on the left side of the changing table too, but for an entirely different reason. “I think his butt should face the door,” he said.

When I asked why, Jim reasoned that if poop were to shoot out of Loren’s butt, hypothetically speaking of course, that it would shoot onto the wooden floor and towards the door, as opposed to the rocking chair and the blanket ladder, both of which were on the other side of the changing table.

I laughed and rolled my eyes, “Poop doesn’t shoot out of a kid’s butt,” I told him.

“It could,” he said.

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At some point during the trancelike blur of those initial days and weeks postpartum, Loren pooped while Jim was in the middle of changing his diaper. I paused with concern and my eyes got wide when I heard a “splat” come from the other room.

Jim called and I came running. He gripped Loren’s ankles with his left hand, carefully elevating them above the mess. His face was red with laughter as he pointed to a mustard yellow splat the size of a banana on the floor. There was also poop on Loren’s pants and socks, on the edge of the changing table, and on top of the disposable diaper pail.

I was shocked. It was rather fascinating that a creature this small could produce a mess this big.

“See?” Jim said, smiling out of the corner of his mouth while beginning to wipe up the mess. “I told you it shoots out.”

“Shoots out” was an understatement compared to what I was looking at. The more I cleaned, the more yellow splatters I saw. It was on the floor, the baseboards, the bottom of the door. It was everywhere I never thought poop would go.

It took both of us a good twenty minutes to clean up the mess. We sacrificed a handful of coveted Covid-19 era disinfectant wipes for the hard surfaces where poop had splattered, put a fresh sheet on the changing table, and gave Loren a bath. Before long, things were under control.

A few hours later, when I went to change Loren’s diaper again, I laughed when I saw a splat of yellow poop still clinging to the wall. This time Jim shuffled into the nursery. He looked at the wall and then back at me before we both erupted into belly laughs.

Later that night as I was dozing in and out of consciousness while nursing Loren, it dawned on me that neither Jim nor I had bothered to clean the remaining poop off the wall. I stifled a laugh as I quietly moved Loren to the other breast. The poop wasn’t going anywhere, at least not tonight.