It All Comes Down to This

FYI: I started this post three days ago, if that tells you anything. However, the story keeps building and also? You shouldn't read this if you don't want to hear about poop.

All my reinforcements have left and now I am living what shall henceforth be known as "my life." You see, I am the proud owner of two fairly young souls who need much feeding, cleaning, molding, shaping, guidance and discipline. That bit of responsibility was easier to shoulder when someone else was helping to get dinner on the table, keep my floors vacuumed and my toddler entertained.



By all accounts, Natalie is an easy baby. I can't complain and maybe she has earned this status because Wyatt was so not easy, but whatever; she's proving to be a gem of an infant. Wyatt is still very two and approaching three, which I've been told is more challenging than two by many folks (and folks, I believe you).

We've had an interesting week around here. In addition to figuring out how to leave the house with two kids (which I've done successfully multiple times. Yay!), both kids have had serious poop issues. Wyatt's started over the weekend when he wouldn't go, despite having had success on the potty Friday night and being highly praised for that. Somehow we went from yay! ten marshmallows and three quarters from Grandpa! to "no, Mommy, I don't have any poop in me." In fact, Sunday morning I asked, "Wyatt, how's that poop coming?" (he'd opted for a diaper to complete the task) and he replied, "It's going well, Mommy, thanks for asking." Liar. By Sunday night Jeff was on the phone with a flight doc and I was off to Target with a completely miserable two-year old (who pitched such a fit about not getting to go that I took him, and then he spent our time at Target telling me he just wanted to go home) to purchase milk of magnesia. We dosed him before bed, finally got him to sleep at about 10:00 - entirely not his normal bedtime - only to have him wake up at midnight, completely inconsolable. For the first time in our lives, Wyatt slept with us for the night.

Monday morning rolled around and nothing had happened. So I called the nurse hotline at the peds clinic, was told they have 48 hours to reply to calls but that they triage them in order of importance and then wondered where a constipated toddler falls on the spectrum. So Jeff called the flight doc again, reported our zero success rate and was told we should re-dose the medicine and also suggested an enema. Yeah, that is entirely unappealing when your kid is a crying, blubbering mess and you also have a cluster-feeding three-week old to take care of. I informed Jeff that if that was the plan, he'd need to come home to help. We decided I'd give him the medicine again and that if nothing had happened by noon, Jeff would bring the big guns and we'd see what happened. Meanwhile, the nurse called back (apparently constipation is either pretty serious or it was a slow day for triage) and confirmed that we should re-dose, but that she wanted to talk to a doctor and would call me back.

Natalie didn't want to be left out of all the action, so she had a complete blowout all over her and me. Good thing I was still in my pajamas at 9:30 in the morning. And even better that our pest control guy showed up right then. So I had Natalie upstairs changing her entire outfit when Wyatt announced he was pooping. Hallelujah! I got Natalie cleaned and dressed and the phone rang; the nurse was calling to tell me that Wyatt's case sounded severe enough that the doctor wanted to see him. I happily reported that he'd had success in the fifteen minutes since we'd last talked. She was surprised and told me we should continue 'diet modifications' for a few more days. Got it. I felt like I'd run a race by the time we'd finished that episode.

Fast forward to Monday night: Jeff was putting Natalie to bed, I was brushing my teeth in our room. I heard him say something along the lines of, "oh man!" and I assumed he was commenting on something he'd seen on tv. Nope. He was standing over the changing table and our tiny (but growing oh-so-fast) baby girl looking awestruck. I started to walk in there and he said, "you're stepping in it." Huh? I looked down and realized there was poop on the floor and all over the end of the changing table, not to mention Natalie and Jeff. I returned with Clorox wipes and was giving Jeff a bit of a hard time for his overreacting. He simply said, "did you see the door?" Well, no. I sure didn't see the spray pattern all over the back of her door. Holy cow. Jeff looked at me and informed me it had been a "rooster tail of shit." Lovely.

But like a bad infomercial, there's still more. Tuesday evening Wyatt looked panicky all of a sudden and told us he needed to poop. Jeff raced upstairs to with him to the little potty and discovered that the milk of magnesia was still working, and perhaps too well. Our little guy had completely crapped his pants. He again called me for reinforcement and luckily Natalie was soundly sleeping in her swing so it all worked out okay. Surely that would be the end of the bathroom issues, right? Nope. Yesterday Wyatt did it again, only he did it while Natalie was eating so I had a screaming baby (laying on a blanket outside the bathroom, in case you're wondering) and a toddler who thought he was pretty funny, what with all that poop in his pants.

So that's how it's going, now that we're alone with no extra hands. In case you were curious.