Poop

You know those mommy-blogs that post all about poop?

This is not that.

Except that for the moment it is.

I should preface by saying that we've had our share of baby poop.  Caroline is a frequent pooper, not to mention a remarkably noisy one. I like to say she is "working on a project in her pants" because of the way she screws her face up in serious contemplation. And everytime her poo is audible (which is frequent), it never fails to make us laugh.  Not only does she belch like a frat boy, she makes some serious noise from the other end, too.  Since we've started cloth diapering, all poo has been fully contained (no blow outs!) but there was an incident during a diaper change with David that required an extra load of laundry and earned her the nickname "Mustard Shooter."  I'm sure you can imagine the details.

So our little routine is that when Caroline wakes during the night, I feed her in our bed and then take her to her room for a diaper change (on weekends, and if he's already up for work, David does the diaper changes.  It's a good system.).  It was early this morning (around 5am) when she woke up to nurse and then she went to work on one of her projects.  I nudged David and asked if he'd change her diaper, and he said he wanted to sleep a few more minutes.  I decided to hold her for a bit longer and make sure she was finished with her project before I got up with her.  As I was lying there, half-asleep, I smelled something.  It smelled bad.

Breastmilk poop doesn't really smell at all, but my sleepy brain just thought that I was holding a baby with a dirty diaper and that dirty diaper stunk.  I couldn't figure out what else would smell bad.  About this time, David's alarm went off, and he shut it off but then snuggled back down under the covers.  (This is what happens when he stays up past his bed time so we can watch True Blood).  So I let out a long-suffering sigh, decided to let him catch a couple extra minutes of sleep, and got up to take the baby into her room to change her diaper.

At the door of the nursery, I stopped short.  The bad smell was worse.  In fact, it was almsot overpowering--was it the diaper pail?  And then, in the soft glow of the nightlight, I saw something dark strewn all over the light colored carpet of the nursery.  I let out another long-suffering sigh because I just knew Cooper had destroyed something and left torn up pieces all over the baby's room.

So I shifted the baby to my other arm, flipped on the light, and gasped.

There was dog poop EVERYWHERE.  And not just poop.  We are talking Grade A Diarrhea.

I immediately started gagging (because that is what I do) and stuck my head back in our bedroom door.  So much for David's extra minutes of sleep.  I was NOT dealing with this situation on my own.

I woke David, told him I needed his help in the nursery, and as he staggered to the doorway, I realized that I had stepped in a dollop of poop that was in the hallway and not in the baby's room.  SICK.

So David went to get paper towels, rags, carpet cleaner, and doggie-specific carpet cleaner, and after he wiped off my foot, I tiptoed around the many piles of feces (there were at least twenty separate lumps of diarrhea, stretching across the room from the doorway to the window and back) to get to the changing table, holding my breath so I wouldn't gag at the odor.  I changed Caro's diaper in record time, and then headed back to our bedroom to lie her down.

Now it's no secret that Little Mac has pooped in the house before, but never anything like this.  Mac's poops are always easy clean-up--scoop it up with toilet paper, drop it in the toilet, flush, and spray the carpet with the special enzyme doggie mess spray.  THIS was entirely a different matter.  David had to basically mop up each individual mess of poo with a paper towel, then scrub the carpet with hot water, then treat it with carpet cleaner and spray.  I offered to help (half-heartedly, but I did offer), but David told me to deal with the baby and he cleaned it all up by himself.  Also he didn't have to listen to me dry heave that way.

Obviously our go-to poop-in-the-house suspect is Little Mac, but judging by the sheer volume of this mess, we're thinking this was Cooper.  Cooper has been extra lazy this morning (he slept so heavily he didn't even hear the mailman).  And he hasn't eaten all day which is completely out of character for him.  I guess maybe he's not feeling well?  Poor baby.  We've had the baby gate up to keep the dogs out of our bedroom at night, but I still don't understand why he didn't bark or whine to wake us.  At any rate, we can only hope this was a freak accident.  We're keeping a close eye on Cooper and we'll see if he regains his appetite, or if he needs a chicken-and-rice diet for a couple of days.

So later this morning, we were carrying on with life as normal.  Caro was happily contained in her new lounging seat and I was doing laundry.

I went to the nursery to get the diaper pail and throw in a load of her diapers and--BAM--there was ANOTHER pile of poop in the nursery.

UNBELIEVABLE!

So I did what anyone would do.  I ran into the living room and yelled at Little Mac (this poo was pretty unmistakably hers, and it was NOT diarrhea).  She looked at me blankly, then turned around and walk the other way.  Cooper and Caroline both stared at me, somewhat bewildered.

I stormed out of the living room to take a picture of the poop, which I then sent via text to David, along with a lot of expletives (because everyone wants to spend their morning cleaning up dog shit and then get a picture of MORE dog shit via text, AMIRITE?).  Then I picked up the poo and flushed it, and treated the carpet with the last of the cleaner.  Then I called my mom to rant about the dogs.  I mean what the HELL is wrong with them?  I was either in the same room as the dogs, or in full view of the back door from the kitchen all morning.  There was absolutely NO EXCUSE for a dog not going outside.

My mom thinks the dogs are silently voicing their opinion of the new ranking order in the house.  Maybe so.  In which case, they had better GET OVER THEMSELVES and QUIT SHITTING INSIDE.  I'm at a loss as to how to deal with this.

So now the diaper pail is sitting in the uncarpeted hallway (based on my nonscientific, screwball theory that the dogs smell Caro's poo and think that the nursery is actually a bathroom), the baby gate is up in the doorway (no one enters the nursery without supervision!), and we will be steam cleaning the carpet in that room this weekend.

Also, I just asked a friend to dog and house sit for us Labor Day weekend.  Can't wait to see how that goes.