Poop

I’m good with poop. The other day I was reminded in a funny way of just how talented, both physically and emotionally, I have become at handling poop.
I was changing one boy while Brian was changing the other(Brian had a snow day on account of the dusting we had the night before). This was in the morning after the boys had already pooped, so we don’t usually get another dirty diaper until later in the day if we do at all. Brian made a pained sound, and said something along the lines of:

“Oh gross. Ew. I think a fleck of poop might have fallen out of the diaper onto my hand. Disgusting. Excuse me while I go scrub my hands and boil myself.”

I laughed a lot about it, to the point where I was actually wondering why I found it so funny. (On a side note, Brian changes his fair share of dirty diapers when he’s around, but I’m the one usually home when they poop so it is usually me.) This prompted me to think about my poop-handling journey and how my attitude and behavior toward this smelly bodily function has changed over time.

The bare minimum poop-handling I do is two diapers a day and it’s usually more like three, four, or even five diapers, all of which vary in intensity, consistency, and sheer volume. With watching Alex, I’ve had to acclimate back to the intricacies of newborn poop while still maintaining the dexterity and quick-thinking involved in handling toddlers’ full diapers while they struggle to put blocks together or read a story or compete in a soccer match.

I remember my gag reflex creeping up when the boys were first born and we were changing their diapers. I wanted to disinfect the entire room and take a shower after the diapers were safely disposed of. These days if I get poop on my hands I am unaffected. Not that I don’t clean myself afterwards, but if I had gotten my hands in that situation in those early months I would have been grossed out, possibly vomited, and probably told a bunch of people about it, possibly causing them to vomit also. It’s amazing how I’ve changed.

I’ve come up with a chart but I see that it is too small to read...sorry. I'll try to interpret below the image because I can't figure out a better way to fix this.

On left: Intensity/Frequency of poop-handling incidents per day 10-1
The colors represent the level of grossed-out-ness/shock over time
Bars represent (from left) first 6 months, 8 months, 12, 18, 22

KEY
PURPLE: BEYOND COMPREHENSION
RED: Danger! Gag, choke, possible, vomit, boil hands, wash changing pad and all possibly-contaminated clothing, don't inhale, try to focus on happy place
ORANGE: Quite nasty, sanitize most things after, change at least pants/onesie
BLUE: Annoying, a little gross, change diaper only, wash hands, move on
GREEN: Don't even notice--rely on instinct, little fleck on the sock? no biggie just wipe off with wipe, think about dinner, dishes, or flower bed plans

Disregard the awkwardness of that...I've already spent WAY too much time on the chart to try to figure out how to edit it. I'm sure you get the general idea.