Island Parent Magazine April-May 2022

DADSPEAK
A Meconium
Congratulations
Good friends of mine told me the other day that they
are having a baby. It’s amazing, hearing that news
and seeing their excitement. I was still thinking about
it that evening when I was changing a diaper and accidentally
thrust my fingers into a mound of soft excrement.
“Congrats, me,” I muttered to myself as I stared at my
fingers, coated in what no human’s fingers should ever be
coated in.
It made me think I needed to warn my friends about the
meconium poop. You know the one, the black ooze that
your baby births not long after they’ve been birthed, the
alien horror that can give heart attacks if arrived unannounced.
Changing that diaper, I stopped and stared off into space
for a minute, toddler staring at me confused, wondering
what I was doing with fingers covered in poo and staring
blankly at the wall, but truth be told by that point, I was
wondering if my friends were going to use cloth or disposable
diapers and wondering if we have old cloth ones we can
give them.
Poop slowly hardening on my fingers, I snapped out of
it and tried to remember what was safer: leaving the kid
on the bed and washing my hand (risk: him falling off the
bed; reward: poo off fingers faster) or finish changing kid
and then wash my hand (risk: good god man; reward: toddler
lives to terrorize another day). Always one to make a
half-assed decision that is somehow the worst of all worlds,
I kinda literally popped half of my body into the neighbouring
bathroom, while keeping one of my feet in the bedroom,
as if prepping to steal a base, when really I’m just prepping
excuses in my head as to how he fell off the bed that didn’t
involve the phrase “wanted to get poo off my fingers.”
So, I kinda washed my fingers too quickly, if we’re being
honest here, so I could whip the top half of my body back
in the room as if none of this ever happened. Of course, I
snapped my torso around so fast it felt like Andre the Giant
had grabbed my skull and smashed it against the wall, which
happens, because I forgot the wall was there because there
was poo, and also there was a toddler in a maybe-precarious
position.
22 Island Parent Magazine IslandParent.ca