Bringing Up Baby

I was never one for bodily fluids, you know. At thirteen, when I got my first kiss, I was absolutely horrified to discover that the tongue that poked its way into my mouth was warm, wet and slimy, and covered in spit, and that I was, somehow, supposed to enjoy this revolting intrusion. It wasn’t even as if I didn’t know, intellectually, what was going to happen, it’s just that the real life manifestation of the much-giggled-over, highly discussed and anticipated event was far less romantic and much more barnyard than I had bargained for.

I have found that the experience of caring for small children is much the same. The runny noses, drooling chins, leaking orifices, stinking crevices, smeared clothing (yours and theirs) is never ending and was not part of my maternal fantasy when I was lovingly folding those freshly laundered, white-for-such-a-short-time, tiny shirts during the nesting phase of my first pregnancy.

I remember my mother telling me that when it’s your own baby you don’t mind changing their nappies – the smell and substance of the excretions are not as heinous as other peoples’, and that is to a large degree true. Indeed particularly in the first months, there is a strange sort of fascination in the contents of one’s beloved infant’s diaper, as many a parent will attest. Is it mustardy and seedy? Is it peanut-buttery in consistency? Isn’t it odd that whatever they eat (carrots, for instance) comes out almost exactly the same as it went in and you can tell precisely what they had for lunch? A bit later on you’re not quite so consumed but you are very professional and quick to deal with the contents and can whip it away and dispose of it before the smell kills you and are adept at airing out rooms and ones hands are already cracked and aged with a million washings in antibacterial substances anyway, so one more scrub hardly makes a difference.

However, there is one big exception to the maternal immunity to bodily fluids rule, and that is vomit.  I’m never going to get used to that and I’m never going to deal well with it.

Fortunately for me, Four was never a puker. In her short little life she has thrown up perhaps three times, and all of those, save one, have been when Husband has been present to clean up the mess. She was not a spit-up kind of baby, either thank God and merely burped in a ladylike way after feedings and fell asleep demurely on ones shoulder looking angelic (which is partly why I was fooled into having another one).

One, however, is another story.  The poor little chap has almost no other faults. He is incredibly easy going, very cheerful and loving, willing to nap whenever I decide it’s naptime (a very attractive quality in a child) giggles infectiously and loves to play games, eats well, sleeps well, BUT. When he is under the weather he vomits. Or when you give him an inadvisable combination of fruit and milk, he upchucks. Or if he’s been in the car too long, out comes the Technicolor yawn.  The stench is untenable. And you can hardly believe the enormous amount of matter that comes out of such a tiny little boy.  The funny thing is, that prior to barfing, he’s whiny, clingy, frets a lot, rubs his eyes and starts go all funny. Then he hurls. Then he cries for about 8 seconds. Then he feels MUCH better and starts to giggle, play, and go back to normal. Meanwhile the rest of us look on in horror, gag at the smell, wonder how we’re going to clean it all up, prevent Four from fainting in disgust, and all this time One is merely interested in playing with the former contents of his stomach and has to be forcibly held back.

While we were in Africa One and Four caught a stomach bug (in relay) and I spent days cleaning out the car, the car seat, the portable crib, towels, sheets, blankets, clothes etc. All of these, I should add, out in the bush where I washed them by hand with bars of prehistoric soap and hung them to dry on trees where they were regarded with frank curiosity by passing Waterbuck. And then the poor child has to go on the BRAT diet, which, for those of you not au fait with paediatric acronyms is the Banana, Rice, Applesauce, Toast diet. Poor One does not like rice or applesauce and has a rocky relationship with toast so he subsisted mainly on bananas for several days. By strange coincidence that was also the week he learned to imitate the sound that monkeys make (ooh ooh!) and did a most convincing impersonation of baboon body language after we had spotted a troupe of said simians on a game drive.
I wonder if there is any connection there? 
Milk seemed to be the major culprit in making him sick so I put a general ban on dairy products until we returned home which caused some grief but I had to do it. Four also had a bad experience with fizzy white grape juice, which brought us back to our bars of soap and the oddly fruited trees (thank goodness it didn’t rain!). 

I reflected that it was not setting off to Africa with a baby and a small child on my own for five weeks without an itinerary that showed courage and daring, it was cleaning up twelve separate incidents of projectile barfing with no washing machine in sight and nobody else to palm off the dirty job of clearing it up that really tested my mettle. It’s also one of those things where you cannot cut any corners. If a microscopic speck of it remains, it will stink up the environs for weeks on end and inspire a fresh bout of productive nausea, thus defeating the point of washing things in the first place. Ugh.

On a positive note, I discovered an amazing over the counter drug that is widely available in South Africa to stop nausea and vomiting, and it even comes in a paediatric suppository so that you can shove it up the bottom of a puking child who can’t keep the syrup version of the medicine down. Some people may balk at stuffing waxy pellets up the bum of their offspring, but by the time I found this miracle medicine I was more than happy to look at this end of a child for a change and although I don’t generally dose my kids as a preventative measure (yes, we don’t talk about Benadryl on the flights), I really, really didn’t want either one to start sicking up on me as we set off on the mammoth journey home and no trees to hang our clothes on inside the plane.

Once we got home, both children seemed to have recovered completely from their bug and were back to eating with gusto. Milk by the bottleful, plates of pasta with cheese, chicken drumsticks, candy canes (noted for their nutritional value) etc. All went swimmingly until last night when One became fretful and wouldn’t eat his supper. He kept pointing at the fridge and the microwave – this translates, as any fool knows, into “Get me some milk out of the fridge, put it in a bottle and warm it up for me immediately or I will put on my sad face and possibly cry”

We felt very sorry for him and did as we were told. But no sooner had he drunk half of it up, then he screwed up his cherubic little face, clutched his charmingly rotund belly in a pantomime of agony and promptly threw up on my shoes.

I considered sharing with Husband that I could now deal with such gastric emergencies with competence, or even, dare I say it, aplomb.

However, before I could say anything, he sprung into action with bucket, rags, cleaning fluids, uttering words of comfort to One and Four and reassuring me that he would deal with it all. Why didn’t I just take off my shoes and clothes and have a nice shower with the baby and go to bed?

Why not indeed?

No need to bring anything else up.

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