Other Babies’ Smelly Diapers
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.
Raga says...
With my wife and I, it is the other way around- she’s more easily grossed out by smelly diapers and I consider myself hardy and handy with the change station.
It would be interesting to hear from parents with more than one kid- surely, if there’s a parent-specific dimension to poop tolerance, there could also be variation in repulsion and non-repulsion (not attraction, please lord!) levels between children.
I’m not sure what’s the point of conducting studies like these ad-nauseum, but they sure reek of fun.
SciFi Dad says...
I can’t say the same. Toddler puke has GOT to be the most foul smelling stuff on the planet. When my daughter was younger she used to get herself so worked up that she would vomit… several times I had to stop clean-up for a few minutes to regain gastrointestinal composure before continuing.
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