demon<\/del> angel any day. I\u2019m not phased by butt-sniffing. It doesn\u2019t bother me when other parents do it, and it seems like an undignified but necessary part of parenting, particularly if you\u2019re not one for risking feces-fingers.<\/p>\nBut my friend Andrea pointed out yesterday that the real loser in the whole situation is the baby. She said, \u201chow humiliating must it be to have people scooping you up and randomly burying their noses in your butt all day?\u201d<\/p>\n
I see her point, and I have to admit that my kids usually squeal in protest when I sniff their bums. However, I think their protest is less a protest over my demeaning their human dignity and more indignation at being forced to hold still for .7 seconds.<\/p>\n
I maintain that the real loser in the situation is the parent. After all, no matter what your reasons for doing it, at the end of the day you\u2019re still the one who just stuck your nose in someone else\u2019s butt. It may be your kid, and you may be trying to avoid the even more humiliating experience of finding yourself in public with baby poop on your hand, but it\u2019s still going to be hard for non-parents (and even some parents) to look at you the same way after you\u2019ve just sniffed butt.<\/p>\n
I guess there are some parents out there who find themselves disturbed and even a little upset when they lift their faces from their children\u2019s backsides and find their friends and family staring at them with varying expressions of dismay and disgust. Personally, though, I find that butt-sniffing offers a plethora of rewards in social situations that far outweigh the risks of offending others. There are so many things you can find out by sniffing a baby\u2019s butt in a circle of friends. You can immediately tell which parents in the room are uptight<\/del> socially conscientious and which aren\u2019t. The laid-back parents will take it in stride and maybe even grab a kid of their own for a sniff, just for good measure. The socially conscientious parents will either quickly avert their eyes or look at you with open reproach and move to a different part of the room. I use these reactions as a roadmap for choosing friends. I mean, if they\u2019re upset when I sniff a baby\u2019s bottom, they\u2019re really gonna lose it when my child teaches theirs colorful swear words or refers to God as \u201c<\/em>her\u201c\u2026again.<\/em> I find that avoiding friendships with people who are conscious of social propriety is mutually beneficial. I always feel awkward and embarrassed around them, and they usually spend the following week trying to undo the damage my children did to theirs during that brief and painful play-date, and the next several months avoiding eye contact with me in public. The butt-sniff test is a foolproof way to avoid all that discomfort.<\/p>\nAlso, nothing diffuses tension like someone brazenly sniffing baby bum. Anytime I manage to unfortunately entangle myself in a conversation about politics or, God forbid, social morality, I always look around frantically for a baby to sniff. It works like a charm. Other people have a complete inability to take your views seriously after seeing you bury your face in your baby\u2019s butt. Usually they can\u2019t even get over the sight to pick the conversational thread back up again. And those tenacious souls who can, those blessed people who just keep right on telling you why you\u2019re wrong while you\u2019re smell-checking a toddler\u2019s diaper, those people will almost certainly fold in the face of an impromptu diaper-change. Even if there isn\u2019t a need for one, I just go ahead and pull out the diapers and wipes and watch them skitter away uncomfortably like the cashiers at Whole Foods when I bring all my kids along for the ride.<\/p>\n
One time the Ogre and I went to a wine-tasting party with some acquaintances from our local grocery store. (We made more friends in Vegas at Trader Joe\u2019s than anywhere else\u2026psycho-analyze that,if you dare.) After a few glasses of wine we found ourselves outside on the patio talking to a Wiccan couple. It was all going fine until they happened to bring up how happy they were that Obama was elected, as it was an important step for racial relations in our country, and the Ogre replied, \u201cWell, I\u2019m a war-mongering conservative.\u201d <\/em>I literally looked around frantically for a baby butt, but unfortunately that evening was the second time in three years that we had hired a babysitter. No children were available. The conversation deteriorated from there, and even my astute observations about the pentagrams they were wearing (gleaned from Supernatural, <\/em>of course)\u00a0couldn\u2019t save the evening. I\u2019m pretty sure I made things worse, actually. I tried again by over-enthusiastically joining them for karaoke, but my off-key Janis Joplin seemed to clear the room rather than cheer it.\u00a0 By the end of the evening the entire party had heard about my husband\u2019s political incorrectness and ushered us out the door with\u00a0 many a disapproving glare.<\/p>\nI remain convinced that had a baby been present, the party would have been saved. There\u2019s just no better way to diffuse tension. Baby butt-sniffing may in fact be inappropriate and gross. It may even be undignified for both baby and parents. But by God,\u00a0 it\u2019s useful<\/em>. And I, for one, will never trade that usefulness in for any amount of social propriety. Besides, all my remaining human dignity pretty much went out the window the first time I found myself naked from the waist-down in a roomful of strangers with my feet up in stirrups.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you\u2019re a parent, you know what I\u2019m talking about. That moment when you think you catch a whiff of something but you aren\u2019t really sure, and you\u2019re faced with one of two options: either unbutton layers of baby clothing in order to peer gingerly into the recesses of the diaper, hoping against hope that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1110,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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That moment when you think you catch a whiff of something but you aren't really sure, and you're\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2012\/07\/baby-butt-sniffing-a-philosophical-treatise.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Barefoot and Pregnant\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-07-16T19:24:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2017-03-09T22:13:26+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/files\/2012\/07\/Quit-Sniffing-my-Butt.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Calah Alexander\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Calah Alexander\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2012\/07\/baby-butt-sniffing-a-philosophical-treatise.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2012\/07\/baby-butt-sniffing-a-philosophical-treatise.html\",\"name\":\"Baby Butt-Sniffing: A Philosophical Treatise\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-07-16T19:24:42+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-03-09T22:13:26+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/#\/schema\/person\/cbd5af11d9f73881b801bf2e07eb8757\"},\"description\":\"If you're a parent, you know what I'm talking about. 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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/225\/2012\/07\/Quit-Sniffing-my-Butt.jpg\" "\\"Quit")
<\/a>If you\u2019re a parent, you know what I\u2019m talking about. That moment when you think you catch a whiff of something but you aren\u2019t really sure, and you\u2019re faced with one of two options: either unbutton layers of baby clothing in order to peer gingerly into the recesses of the diaper, hoping against hope that you don\u2019t accidentally stick your finger in poop in the process, or pick the kid up and bury your nose in Junior\u2019s bum for a good, long whiff.<\/p>\n