Once in a while my husband would gag when he was changing one of our baby’s diapers. For one reason or another I was always immune to this, and no matter how incredibly disgusting the poop was it never really bothered me. I figured I was just one of those people immune to getting grossed out by a poopy diaper.

Fast forward to last Sunday, when I was helping out in the church nursery. One of the babies had a dirty diaper so I went to change it, marveling at how this was probably the first poopy diaper I had ever changed for a baby that wasn’t my own. I was about ten seconds into the diaper change when all of a sudden it hit: I gagged. The poop was horrendous, and I was completely grossed out.

I managed to finish up the diaper change, but I was a little confused as to why this little boy’s poop made me want to upchuck while my own kids’ poop – although at times disgusting – never made me feel ill. Then it dawned on me that it’s just different with your own babies. I don’t think this kid had poop that was any more vile than what my babies had, but maybe my motherly instinct didn’t mask the horror of this diaper because it wasn’t from my own kid.

If you want to take it a step further, you can look at it like this: My babies have thrown up on me more times than I can count, but it never made me want to throw up in return. If a random baby were to throw up on me…say at the grocery store or somewhere else – I would probably throw up in return because I would be so disgusted. So I’m not making the claim that my kids’ poop wasn’t gross, but instead I’m making the claim that it was less gross to me.

Then again, maybe this kid just had really gross poop.

Posted by Tamsen Butler on Thursday, June 5th, 2008 at 10:55 am and is filed under Parenting.
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Tags: babies in the nursery, changing diapers, dirty diaper, gross poop
Posted in: Parenting