On the Joy of Scat
Over the past three weeks or so, I’ve spent the weekdays fumbling around balancing Elizabeth’s care with working from home. I’ve done neither altogether too well, but in neither case has anything dire come from my incompetence. There are two days left, so here’s the obligatory knocking-on-wood.
During that time, Elizabeth has required all manner of attention, including but not limited to feeding, belching, diaper changing, radiological procedures, surgical procedures, catheterization, cooing, IVs (her favorite), and gentle reminders that she’s going to be joining the ranks of three-month-olds soon so can you JUST STOP PUKING ALL THE TIME? She’s seen the back seat of my car more times than if we were native Kentuckians, to and fro betwixt hospital and home, up and down I-75. The view facing rearward from the back seat is positively divine, as I’m sure any owner of a ‘99 Plymouth Breeze will tell you, so she doesn’t pitch a fit at all when snugly fastened and sitting in traffic.
The puking actually was at the heart of many of the non-cleaning-her-ass ministrations, as her general health became an issue of some concern even though she was gaining weight nicely. The operation alluded to above perportedly corrected her pyloric stenosis, thought to be the cause of the organic projections. There were not a few days after the surgery during which the volume and, indeed, average distance of these gastrointestinal upheavals increased markedly; but it seems we’ve made it through the thick of it. Sort of.
You see, at the factory, babies are made with a particular circuit switched “On” by default, a circuit which instructs the pertinent elements of their physiology to perform frequent and aggressive purges. If you’re lucky—yes, lucky—these are caught nicely within the folds of diapers, and so don’t make for metric tons of laundry. The Black family (just play along for now) has been something due South of lucky, however. We’ve petitioned the state of Ohio to declare our apartment in a State of Emergency. No replies as of yet.
We had thought that some cutting and nipping and whatnot—whatever it is surgeons do when they’re not shooting up to stay awake—would have reduced the vomiting. There was, as I recall, a very narrow window during which the sun cast down its warmth, the breeze gently folded around us, and Elizabeth escaped an amount of food consistent with a “normal”baby spitting up. Those were the most glorious five minutes in recent memory.
Then something magical happened: she puked, then cried, then puked some more, then probably cried and puked alternately for a few minutes. We simply stood by, lightly tapping our feet on the ground, expectantly; but it seemed as if it would never subside. Eventually, Danielle and I looked at one another and decided to put down the tequila and get to parenting.
The few days thereafter are hazy in my memory, but appear to have been a fairly rhythmic symphony of feeding, puking, cleaning, feeding, puking, cleaning, attempted sleeping, feeding, puking, and cleaning. Oh yes—there was the crying. I don’t mean crying like “Honey, I seem to have lodged the business end of a diesel engine in my rectum and I’m in a little bit of pain” crying. No, oh no. This was crying of another dimension altogether. The only thing that seemed to offer any respite from the crying was Elizabeth’s heart condition, which places her closer to the threshold of critically poor oxygenation than most folks. You can bet that that respite, then, wasn’t quite hoped for, and so wasn’t really a respite at all.
We tried several things. Obviously, first we threw bones and sacrificed several young neighbor kids to Tom Cruise and his Scientology brethren. I believe Dr. Spock himself suggested this as a first course of action. Alas, all those crazy fuckers could do was quote lines from Battlefield Earth as if it had been a Monty Python production. Normally, yes, that would work; but not this time.
After several skin grafts and trips to the salad bar, we decided to cut back on the feeding, both its volume and caloric density. Elizabeth is on a fairly regimented diet of 27-kilocalorie-per-ounce formula every three hours. She held her own for quite a few weeks, as we steadily approached the current three-ounces-per-feeding at the rate of 5 ml per week. The affect of the surgery on her whole GI system set her back a bit, it seems, so we decided to reset her parameters temporarily. We reduced both the calories and volume, some, as well as opted for a soy-based formula designed to minimize any lactose intolerance she might be experiencing. On (very wet) paper, this all makes sense.
Did you know that soy-based baby formula can make the little buggers constipated? Did you know that the infernal cries of a constipated baby make you want to place your head in a vice? Well, did you?
A few hours later, now, and there is a silence within the apartment that sends chills up my spine. We’ve switched away from the soy-based formula, and cut it with a little Pedialyte both to help manage phlegm and to keep her hydrated. Elizabeth also received (not at all from the shaking hand of an sleep-deprivation-enraged dad, or anything like that) a reasonable dose of Mylacon. All very natural and wholesome. But there’s something else.
She pooped. She dropped a nice, moderate amount of thick scat into her diaper. After days of empty flatulence, or, worse, no rectal discharges at all, Elizabeth is on her way to a happily shitty life. That warm brown smear is the very best thing I could’ve found on my finger this morning, I tell you what.
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