Disclaimer: this post is not for the weak of stomach and should not be read within an hour of eating.
We were supposed to go to Connecticut to visit Annie's house. My Mom, Dad, Ellie and I were scheduled to make the trip today; but after a miserable weekend of teething and sleep deprivation, I had to make the decision to stay home.
Now what made this a particularly hard decision to make was that I've been struggling with feeling like a shut in recently. Elizabeth, as we just had diagnosed (thanks Heather!), had roseola. The fever was insane, but she's on the mend with the fever gone. Just the rash, which isn't contagious. Oh, and a fantastic bout of teething. All of this has turned our usually amulet sweet angel into a terribly cranky, achy, child at times wailing in searing pain. Yup, it's been a fun weekend. :) poor girl. So with having cancelled so many of our outings last week and putting just about everything on hold to comfort our baby, yes, I began to feel depressed. Because frankly, it was depressing! Who wants to feel sick! Shout out to Heather who felt the same way with Pippa's cold last week.
Alright, so back to the strength finding.
No Connecticut, but yes to a Wegman's trip in Mount Laurel. Also, we have had pictures at the adjacent Costco for almost 4 months. (I figured I should pick them up.) with an itemized shopping list, good spirits and sleepy baby, we headed out after our first nap.
About midway down 295, Ellie started smiling at me and being playful. I told her how much I love having my happy daughter back and singing to her in the rear view mirror.
I got a faint whiff of a number 2, so was thankful I'd added baby wipes to our shopping list. After pulling into a clutch parking spot, I was greeted with a huge grin and laughs as I opened the rear door. Ellie was returning to her giddy self, finally! Her face was covered in chunky orange goo. I thought, oh, poor baby! She threw up! And I quickly recounted what I'd fed her for breakfast. Oatmeal and applesauce. Hmmm... Not orange colored. Dreadfully, I looked down her body and discovered, to my horror, some of that same chunky orange goo peering out of her pink cloth diaper.
Oh. No.
It's poop. There's poop on her legs. There's poop on her arms, hands, feet, neck, mouth, eyebrows, eyelashes, up her nostrils, inside the ears, hair, sippy cup, pacifier. The carseat.
So rallying my senses and reminding myself to avoid breathing deeply, I grabbed the carseat, the diaper bag and my purse. The brisk walk to grab a shopping cart offered a lovely dripping from the carseat onto my right foot. Awesome.
A beeline down the baby aisle and snagging a box of diaper wipes, we were off to the restroom. We'd pay for them after. As we opened the bathroom door, I caught a glimpse of a woman in her Mid-eighties teetering toward the only handicapped stall, of course housing the changing table we were after. Most older women are so cheerful; sadly, this woman was as unhappy as she could be. She turned around to ask why I was allowed to bring my cart into the bathroom. She said her husband was waiting outside and they got into a fight because he wouldn't come into the restroom too. Then she asked me how old my baby boy was. (I mentioned she was in a pink diaper, right?) Ellie must've thought it was a ridiculous question because she showed her displeasure by (truly) vomiting on me. The older woman said, "oh, she just threw up on you." Ellie thought that assessment was equally dumb and vomited again. Now, with vomit running down the inside of my shirt, my arm, hands, and a baby smeared with poop, we watch the woman continue the inch by inch, foot, then cane, then other foot, then cane again move into the stall. I gave up, (judge all you want) and decided the sink was going to have to do.
Tearing open the box of wipes, I started with her face and hands, then tackled her body, then opened the diaper. The irony, the diaper didn't capture much of the poop, it was almost empty. Ha!
Finally cleaned up, the woman finally comes out of the bathroom stall, just as I'm dousing Ellie from head to toe in antibacterial lotion. (side note: it made me laugh when the same older woman walked out without washing her hands, but there couldn't have been anything dirtier than what we put into the trash can. Ha!). I scrubbed the carseat, bagging the clothes, diaper, pacifier and sippy cup. I wedged the carseat on the bottom compartment to air out while we shopped.
Ah, what do they say? Cleanliness is next to Godliness? At that moment it felt it! I marched over to the coffee bar and treated myself to a large latte. Yum!
For some reason, I felt surprisingly happy. I felt like if I could avoid vomiting, find remarkable patience and actually rouse some humor out of this, then I really can take on this motherhood thing.
Who knew I would discover my inner Mama strength in a ration of diarrhea? (dealing with the notion that my daughter may have attempted to consume her own feces? Well, I'll save that for another day.)
