How I learned to stop worrying and love the bowel movement.

My new daughter poops.  This is, in and of itself, nothing special; she was born with a fully functioning gastrointestinal system, and that includes the emergency egress at the tail end.  It’s an elegant, well-designed system – food goes in, waste comes out – and I thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster every day that she came out completely and utterly normal, albeit a bit on the small side.  All that being said, the kind of waste my child eliminates on a daily basis (oftentimes twice a day) could easily precipitate the kind of clean-up efforts that would make the Exxon Valdez look like a spilled bottle of soda.

The very first time I changed my daughter’s diaper, she took a big, wet, smelly shit on me.  I’m talking about that first day right in the hospital, too; I didn’t hesitate to jump in and take on my fatherly duties like some people.  If you’re not aware, the first few bowel movements of a newborn child consist of this black tarry substance called meconium, which is apparently Latin for JESUS CHRIST LOOK AT THAT.  No sooner had I opened my daughter’s diaper and unfolded it did she begin to blow what looked like a giant pitch-black Hubba Yubba bubble of meconium out of her tiny little asshole.  I stood there, transfixed, not knowing whether to run or call for help, as the quivering, bulbous sac of digested amniotic fluid grew; finally gravity overcame surface tension and the bubble burst.  It as like an earthquake at the La Brea Tar Pits in miniature.

Thankfully the meconium phase does not last that long; soon my beautiful daughter was filling her diapers with the kind of toxic sludge that strongly resembled Gulden’s Spicy Brown Mustard.  This was a welcome relief from the unholy black Spider-Man symbiote at first, until I realized that the lowered viscosity of this particular bowel emanation meant that my daughter could fire it out of her butthole at relativistic speeds.  She became particularly adept at holding a few rounds in reserve, lying in wait until her unwitting father attempted to change her diaper; I would think that she was done pooping her pants, only to receive a salvo of piping hot poo as soon as I exposed her little rump to fresh air and a baby wipe.  If she feels especially saucy, she’ll wait until I lift her legs up to expose her butt, and then uses the angle to turn her rear-end into a  mortar, sending a parabola of poo deep into enemy territory.  I’m enrolling her at West Point in September.

My daughter even uses her ass to express displeasure, especially when she’s being examined by strangers at the doctor’s office.  At her two-week wellness check-up, she was subjected to the dreaded rectal thermometer by the nurse and decided to respond with a short cry of distress accompanied by an audible pop, which was immediately followed by a massive shotgun blast of baby crap all over the nurse’s hands.  

Well, at least I haven’t caught a stream of piss in the face.  Thank goodness for small favors.