Do not read this if you are capable of being grossed out.
Yesterday my wife came into my office looking pale. “Your daughter has just swallowed some hand sanitizer. I don’t know how much.”
I’ve been through some intense emergencies over the years, so I tried to respond calmly. “She did what!” I shouted.
I immediately Googled the CDC. The big concern is the alcohol content, so, take action if she shows signs of being drowsy. “In the meantime, give her crackers to absorb the alcohol,” I told my wife. Observing her for the next 10-30 minutes she was clearly not out of steam, in fact, she showed signs of increased hyperactivity.
I spent a while compiling all the internet resources I could, creating an emergency procedures manual for babies. I also added the poison control number into my Skype. Just as I was nearing completion, my wife called me in to the living room for help. Our one-year-old daughter had walked towards her covered in what Anne initially thought might be chocolate but then she remembered we didn’t have any chocolate. Also, it was slightly green. Our vivacious “drunk?” angel had removed her diaper and stuck a fist-full of poo in her mouth.
I burst into the living room and my socks skidded across a floor strewn haphazardly with poo. It was even on the toys and couch. “Baby or floor?” I asked my wife.
“You take the baby.” Anne said.
Is eating poo is a sign of being drunk? I mean even adults get into all sorts of stupid antics when they are drunk.
I carefully lifted up my child, covering my polo shirt in poo. I raced her to the bathroom where I took my poo-covered shirt and pants off as well. Instead of her usual bath, this mess called for a shower. I started hosing her down, getting what looked like green mud off of her, while she reached for everything that seemed interesting.
She kept trying to drink the dirty Thailand tap water. Tonight, I suppose, it’s better she ingest some tap water than her mouthful of poo. She, cluelessly, enjoyed a fun shower time.
With her chubby body cleaned, I could now get her dressed and resume our usual evening routine. It only took five minutes to wrestle a diaper and jumpsuit onto her.
She then became entranced with a picture of Tigger. When I hoisted her up to look at it, she yanked out one of my chest hairs and quickly ate it.
Is my daughter drunk?
Then I got a good whiff of her hair. It smelled of poo. “Anne, should I re-bathe her?”
“Yes, get it all off.”
Ok, bath-time. While the tub filled up, she leaned over the edge and played with the water. She was slippery getting into the tub because I had already put on her body-lotion when dressing her. She wasn’t happy about being bathed again. (Daddy, we did this already.) Ok, hair washed, clean baby, let’s finish this. Fussing at being toweled again, fussing at having clothes put back on (Is my baby a nudist at heart?), and finally more story-time routine.
Next, I took her to the living room where she was horrified to discover all of her poo was gone. At least there remained strange drops of water on the floor from Anne’s mopping. She leaned to the ground and, like a person dying of thirst in a desert, she began licking up the floor. (Yuck!) It’s a good thing Anne did an immaculate job of cleaning the floor.
My daughter must be drunk.
Anne put the baby in her playpen (baby prison) while she made dinner. Our daughter, horrified she was not the center of our attention, cried, so Anne took her out and let her roam, free-range in the living room.
I headed back to my office to print out my new procedures manual for dealing with disasters. Unfortunately, the section on tips for poo-flinging was left blank. A few minutes later, I came back into the living room and my daughter was playing with my socks. Yes, the same ones that stepped in the you-know-what.
What is my daughter’s fascination with her own feces? Is she drunk?
One more bath and we all fell asleep in the big bed, clean and punch-drunk.