Monday, June 15, 2009

Scatologist




I know that you have all seen the rather cute list of "jobs" that mothers do, things like...
nurse, taxi driver, chef, personal assistant, organizer, CFO, psychologist, etc..

They are all very true. However, I discovered one job that never makes the list, probably because it is not as "cute" as some other jobs.

Scatologist
I have had to add that to my resume this week. Let me tell you why...

B-man swallowed a little metal ball. The kind that are in the sets where you connect magnetic poles to balls and create different designs. It is a very cool toy and up until now we have had no problems. I guess there is a first time for everything.

B-man must have been experimenting. He's old enough to know better. Somehow one of those balls made it into his mouth, and before he knew it he had swallowed it. Q was watching him (it totally could have happened to me) and noticed he was acting like a cat with a hairball in its throat. They both got a little nervous about him swallowing a foreign item.

I was home only minutes later. Luckily we have several family doctors, and I was able to reach M's grandfather. He said that he will be fine, but that I needed to have him poop in a pot and make sure that it came out...

Hmmm, that really didn't sound fun. Although I was glad that I didn't have to go to the emergency room. After much thought I decided that I just couldn't do the pot thing. So instead we put Benjamin on alert. He used the toilet as usual and then I had to swoop in and be the mom.

Sometimes I wish I had another person around to give jobs like this to. I improvised a method to keep my hand clean by using a plastic grocery sack. I won't go into specifics, but after a very timid first try, I found a technique that worked well with minimum (how should I say this...) handling.

The first two days we had nothing. I was a little nervous that being so timid the first time I had missed the ball, and now I would never know if came out or not. But happily on day two we found the ball! B-man and I were very excited! We were so excited to be rid of foreign objects, and to be done with scatology, at least for a little while.

This is why I am worried. I think it's been too long since I had to change a diaper. For some reason this felt SO much different than changing a baby's bum, but I'm not really sure that it is...

8 comments:

Ina & co. said...

He he he! Totally different! Newborns are all runny and seedy. :) ha ha ha! And you could end up wearing it, remember? (Well, at least, I've been known to wear it!) And now we're getting to the "solid" phase... But anyway, you usually don't have to go digging through it... Aren't you excited??

anne said...

Bec: That is so nasty. I have a new baby, and a very recently potty-trained older baby, so I am really in the thick of the diaper phase, and it is NOTHING like that! That's the grossest.

RayRay said...

i sincerely apologize. i deserved that job...

Laura said...

oh, that's way different than changing a diaper. especially a newborn's. congratulations on being very, very brave. one time shayne (liza's) swallowed the little gem on my mom's baby ring necklace (long story) and we (they) had to do the same thing. everybody was gagging. even those not directly involved. it sounds like you handled it better than us!

beth said...

give me a diaper any day.

Shoshanah said...

Remember how I worked at a nursing home?
All I'm saying is Adult Diapers should never enter the equation.

Unknown said...

Very funny - C would have made me do it!

beth said...

rachel may have swallowed a small hair clip today, so i may have to watch out for it for the next couple of days in her diaper. i immediately thought of this post of yours and had to let you know!