22 Poops Behind

Last Sunday, Dave was fairly alarmed when I told him that Rhys hadn’t had a bowel movement since the previous Thursday. “Well, how many does he usually have a day?” I began to calculate…let’s see, 3 every hour, carry the 2, minus the 1… “about 6- 8 a day,” I said. With his booming voice he said, “Grace! That means he’s 22 poops behind! Call his Doctor!”

I always hate to bug our pediatricians on weekends knowing they are trying to enjoy their free time and their families, yet they are on call. I had done a few minutes research on the internet & found that infant constipation is fairly normal, especially after introducing formula. I had just introduced a daily dose of 2 oz. formula last Wednesday since Rhys is still not back at up to his original birth weight of 9 lbs. 7 oz.

So, the Doc says that we need to stick up a lubricated q-tip up his anus to stimulate his bowels. What on earth?!?! I’d never heard of such a thing, and certainly never had to do this with Ransom.

Good thing “J” was over. “J” is better known as “targetshopper” in the blogging world. “J” & I have been best friends since 1988. If your keeping count that’s 21 years!

I guess it takes a friend of 21 years to do what I’m about to describe…

J used to work in a pediatricians office & knows what she’s doing. When she volunteered to do the honors, I was all game.

First she instructed me to get the child naked. Naturally, thinking something would be going into my child’s butt hole I got him naked and set him face down on the changing pad.

Wrong.

Besides a screaming baby, we would have had a much bigger mess.

Naturally, I was worried the q-tip would come off & get stuck in his butt, so I grabbed one of those hemroid cream inserter thingys.

Wrong.

Dave & J scoffed at my idea saying it wouldn’t go in far enough.

Some say to use a thermometer but since ours is electronic, I didn’t want to risk not being able to wash it off properly.

Dave came out with one of Ransom’s q-tips. The kind for toddlers with the big bulge on the end to protect them from sticking it in their ears too far.

Wrong.

There was no way I was going to allow that giant tip to go in and not come back out.

Finally, we all 3 agreed that we should just use a normal size q-tip… until we realized we didn’t have any. ay ay ay. Dave took one of the toddler q-tips and cut off the big bulge part. J lubed it up with vaseline & turned Rhys over on his back with a diaper underneath him. She said there was potential for it to, ahem, “blast out.”

As we got started, nothing was happening. I told J I thought she should stick the q-tip in farther.

Wrong.

Dave said to me, “she can’t stick it in there any farther, he doesn’t have that much space to begin with. Jeez.”

Well. Excuuuuuuuse me. How on earth am I supposed to know how far up an infants butt to stick a q-tip in order to procure a poop coming out? The whole thing felt so un-natural.

After a few minutes, Rhys started grunting, looking around, and growing calmer and calmer until he was completely still. And then with one big push, it started oozing out with the consistency and color of Grey Poupon Dijon Mustard.

After that a few things happened in rapid succession:

1. Dave muttered something about hearing Ransom call for him, who, might I add, was in bed at the time and neither J nor I heard him.

2. I took one good look at it oozing out and suddenly felt oddly disgusted & began to gag, throw up in my mouth and run out of the room heading for water.

3. Rhys took one big sigh of relief and promptly fell asleep.

All of this left J in the room by herself doing our dirty work. Oops.