Posting about Poo.

I’m doing this one because I need a laugh 😆 and because, dammit, if after 5 children you can’t have anecdotes and stories about poo, what the hell do you have? So girls, this one is for you lot on your wedding days – if me and daddy are not there for some reason, promise me you’ll use it 😉

Fran practically starts with poo… or farting… pregnancy took it’s toll on me and I retired to bed in a temporary while decorating, bedroom one night and err… let one go. When Max came to bed several hours later, his eyeballs stung apparently. I can only assume that I had been knocked unconscious 😆

From then on, smells of that sort in this house have been measured on the ‘Blue Room Scale’  – and few things have ever exceeded it.

One thing that did, mercy on our souls in triplicate, was the infamous custard poo incident of ’99. Fran got something, I know not what and for weeks she emitted constant streams of foul smelling pale yellow something; this was the first of the 3 occasions in my life when one of my children made a medical person RUN. Which is, if you haven’t experienced it, a scary thing.

Amelie distinguished herself by pooping so dramatically over the operating theatre immediately after birth that that the midwife estimated she might have been a good 5 ounces heavier if only she’d hung on a few seconds longer. But that’s Amelie for you; started as she meant to go on. Trouble 😉 I’m not even going to mention the day I left her naked on the cream rented house carpet for about 10 seconds……

Even Freddie has a poo story – his first full on eye open moment came when he got a suppository to unbung him. I wasn’t there, but apparently he was NOT AMUSED.

Maddy, bless her, only ever did poos where she was supposed to; with her Aspergers tendencies, it was never going to be something she was prepared to do anywhere but a nappy or tolet. In fact, it all became a huge problem. She was petrified of the toilet splashing her and although she was dry at 2 1/2, she was still needing a nappy for poo at nearly 5. There were masses of rituals around it; a particular corner to go to, no one could look etc etc but still.. poo in nappy. Argh. Eventually I twigged it wasn’t going to fix itself and sort about moving her on. We bribed her with a packet of sweets on the shelf above the toilet (I know, I know) and started a plan. First of all we persuaded her to move to the bathroom for the event itself, still in nappy. Then we talked her in to pooing in a nappy but sat on the toilet, then we worked on the splash issue but undoing the nappy after and rolling the poo out and into the toilet. Then we did experiments with toilet paper in the loo to minimise splashes and eventually… lo! poos made it to the toilet unaided.

It was a great day 😆

Fran used poo as a weapon of war. It started when we brought home baby Maddy. Within days she had started to save a poo till bedtime and then dig it out and draw on the walls, the cot, herself – anything. Monster child. We tried various things but in the end what worked was a fab babygro with a zip from foot to neckline. We put her in that and then safety pinned the zip shut. Strait-jacket for a toddler terror 😆

When it came to going dry at night, that happened thanks to poo too. She started to save up poos for bedtime so we would have to go back up to her. She’s an outrage, I know – and I’m getting my revenge! – so we did the only thing we could think of and took her out of nappies at 3. She wasn’t ready really, though it did stop the night time poo-nuke and was the slowest of all the girls to actually get dry. proof, I suspect, that you simply can’t force things. (I’d do well to remember that.)

So you see, we have plenty of fun with poo in the Puddle house. Our favourite dinner time fond memory though is this one. Fran and Maddy, aged perhaps 4 and 1, had a bath together. Maddy was going through a phase of pooing in the bath (now I think about it, I see that we had an issue from early on…) and Fran was, quite reasonably, bother by this. She’s also a girl who can make reasonable leaps of imagination.

“Mummy, mummy! Come here. Maddy’s done a poo in the bath and it looks JUST LIKE A BANANA!!!!”

Yum.

Friday Club