What Goes In, Must Come Out...

Michael here, to provide in excruciating detail the last couple of days for poor little Tommy's life .

Since Tommy was born, we've had to deal with spit up on a pretty regular basis, but it never was more than a fairly regular inconvenience. But yesterday was a whole new chapter in gastronomical phenomenon that we hope in vain to never experience again.

Around lunch time, Tommy was eating his usual food--a vegetable, followed by some sort of fruit--in this case, it was sweet potatoes and corn, followed by peaches. The sweet pototes and corn went down without a hitch, as did the peaches--for a while, anyway.

I usually come home for lunch around 12:00 pm, and Tommy was well into his peaches when I went into the kitchen to make my own tasty lunch. As I slap the final piece of bread on my ham and cheese, Danielle calls for me to bring a paper towel--Tommy is spitting up. No sooner do I reach for the towels, when I hear Danielle cry out, "Oh! Oh! Oh! Hurry up!" Apparently, the spit up was only the preamble to a larger volcanic event that can only be described as oozing orange-y slime, proceeding in a steady stream from Tommy's mouth, down to his chest, legs and splashing to the floor below. As Danielle carries poor Tommy up to the bathroom to remove the former contents of his stomach, I attempt to wipe up the aftermath. Have you ever tried to wipe up egg whites? This seemed to best approximate the consistency of the mess, and no matter how many paper towels I used, it seems I only succeeded in smearing it around. Eventually I got the mess cleaned up, but my main concern was little Tommy.

This was our first experience with a bona fide case of vomit from our little boy, so naturally, we were concerned. He seemed rather sluggish the rest of the day, and didn't have much of an appetite. No fever was present, so our fears were allayed a little.

However, the following morning showed that not all was as well as we'd hope it would be, as it seems that his bottom end was bound and determined to outdo his top. I'm not certain what the fluid capacity is of a normal diaper, but his morning diaper was so full of diarrhea, that if we had waited one moment more I'm sure that it would have burst at the seams in a mudslide of barely digested vegetable matter. So explosive was this event that it filled every crevice of the diaper, very nearly spilling out over the top and sides, requiring no less than seven baby wipes to clean up. This is a very different experience from what is usually found in his diaper lately, which seems to have the consistency of warm Playdough, with the smell of pure concentrated evil.

So there you have it--our first experience with a sick baby working both ends, but thankfully not at the same time!

Michael