A-Void-Ance
Posted on March 31, 2008
Filed Under kids, parenting, snark, another dread disease, advice, milestones, bat-ass crazy, bitching and moaning, recommendations, challenges |
The existence of a book analyzing a person’s relative health based on the color, consistency and frequency of bowel movements does not, somehow, surprise me. In fact, when I first read about Josh Richmant and Arish Sheth’s field guide to excrement on Salon.com, I was not entirely bowled over (pun intended). It just seems simple and apt and altogether inevitable. Surely a sign that I am a mother of two and have spent way too much time wiping tiny asses for the past eight years.
After all, what mother hasn’t cooed with pride over their infant’s first mecomium stool, that greenish black slick that is all the evidence an anxious new parent needs that their darling new baby possesses the very same digestive track as all other healthy babies the world over. There is comfort in this sameness. Expectations fulfilled. One off-colored elimination and the entire family is exhaling a collective sigh of relief.
And then there is the issue of the new mother’s own ability to defecate. Without a proper bowel movement, she is a prisoner in the maternity ward. More stool softeners are administered. Nurses talk in hushed whispers about her inability to poop as if it is a sign of this mother’s mental weakness. They have forgotten just how startlingly and scarring it is to pass a watermelon size creature from the vagina. They are focused on forcing this poor woman with the stitches to produce yet another expulsion that will surely tear her insides out, will lead to internal bleeding and the end of a perfectly good birthing experience. There is a stand-off. Armed guards stand at the bathroom door and order her performance. She will weep softly and pretend she has shat. They will rush in and insist on seeing the evidence and the new mother is forced to admit she has lied. Back to toilet for another attempt. Hours drag on before she achieves the successful void which is celebrated and admired and practically wrapped up along with the flowers and the teddy bears and the swaddled infant as souvenir of this important life changing event.
Now safely home with baby in arms, the true shit talking begins. There are long battles waged about whose turn it is to drag themselves from bed to change yet another diaper, change the whole outfit, the entire crib, in fact, because another runny infant stool has crept beyond the gathered leg pleats of even the most absorbent nappy and has stained the sheets and spoiled the cute footy-pajamas with the moons and stars.
This ritual grows tiresome, like Ground Hog day with diaper genies and Huggies’ wipes and changing table pads.
And somehow, in all its shit-filled sameness, life just sort of flies by until a person finds themselves suddenly parenting a child capable of crapping their pants at a zoo-themed birthday party even though they’ve been ‘potty trained’ for months. Just as quickly, they are Mom to an eight year old little boy who is crying as he clutches the porcelain, ‘It hurts Mommy, it hurts. Make it stop.” And without reaching up there to extract the compacted stool herself, she is powerless to help the child experiencing the distinct pain of his first anal fissure. Apricots are administered. A Sids bath is drawn. There is hand holding and supportive cheers while the boulder of poop is finally excreted. It is a monumental turd that refuses to be flushed away. It threatens to remain their as evidence of the ill effects of too many chicken finger/french fry combos for time eternal until someone gags their way through the process of breaking it up into flushable sized portions.
Because this defecation thing is something we all must do on a regular basis and because we parents have become sort of inured to the relative disgustingness of such discussions, 225,000 copies of What’s Your Poo Telling You? have been sold and the Poo Quality Index has become a popular topic at dinner parties, on episodes of Oprah and at play groups alike.
(I am happy to report that I have yet to discuss the PQI with anyone over tapas and dirty martinis or while standing attentively just to the right of the monkey bars. I’m not sure the suburban town in which I reside is ready for discussions about feces. But have no fear, I will probably make this social blunder very soon as I have a compulsive need to bring up shocking matters at regular intervals just to ensure that I am not too well liked in this town of 30,000 judgmental mom-types.)
Perhaps I am so comfortable with discussions of colon performance because I endured months and months of undignified testing in order for doctor’s to determine that my intestines are truly unique and mysterious and that no matter how many colonoscopies are conducted or stool samples collected and placed into small vials and stirred with little plastic spoons in preparation for lab analysis, no one is going to be able to determine the exact reason for my inner turmoil. The ability to sit in a room with a male doctor and exchange colorful commentary about one’s recent performance on the seat-of-ease is definitely an acquired skill. No matter how professional and gravely serious this doctor is about the topic, initially, there is that awkward silence that is you trying to determine just how much is too much information. I mean he’s asking but does he really, really want to know?
There is a distinct feeling that anything you say or do in regard to your bowel movements can and will be used against you in a future episode of Candid Camera. Such is the nature of the topic. But the success of the book and my ability to discuss poop for an entire and lengthy blog posting is evidence that we’re all in this together. To void or not to void has never been at question.
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9 Responses to “A-Void-Ance”
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Oh have mercy….
I thought of a really funny, pithy comment but I have to…go.
Well what do you know? I was just trying to convince myself to eat my morning bowl of wheat bran. Off I go. My bowel thanks you.
Heh. Having just had a colonoscopy, I’ve found a-void-ance to be, quite simply, impossible.
dirty martinis are so 2007…natch. but shit never goes out of style.
You just posted this so I would feel better about my post about flatulence last week, didn’t you? You’re a good woman.
After my kids leave home (and maybe sooner), I hope to go a whole decade or two without ever having to talk about anyone’s poo, or lack thereof. Decades.
shit happens.
You are a very gifted girl…
You would fit right in with an expatriate community in a developing country. With all the intestinal parasites and bad water, we all get sick so often that we’re very comfortable discussing our poo in mixed company, or collecting what I affectionately nicknamed the Dread Stool Sample to see what bug had got us down this time.
Giardia is my preferred weight loss method